FROM THE FLORIDA ARCHIVES
There have many reports that the boys sent to the Florida School For Boys aka The Dozier School For Boys
were the "Worst of the worst" There were some boys there that fit that description, however the majority
were boys sent there for continued running away from home, skipping school or deemed as incorrigible.
Many were throw-away kids whose parents, lacking any parental skills, asked that they be sent there to
"Straighten Them Out"
Most of the floggings at the school were administered to the younger boys: A study of 250 boys
committed to Marianna showed they had received 691 whippings among them, the Miami News reported.
Eleven-year-old boys had received 38 percent of the beatings, and 17-year-old boys received just 3
percent.
RWS: There was also the fear of retaliation by the older boys, some even at 16 were as big as men.
Florida law at the time did not allow beating or corporal punishment for adults in jail. It did allow whipping or
strapping children. But the children's bureau of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare said in
its guidelines for juvenile lockups: "Corporal punishment should not be tolerated in any form."
Andrew Bowers, a Chaplin at the school from 1959-1963 recalls:
For most of its history, Dozier freely practiced flogging as a method of discipline, or as a matter of
whim. Mr. Bowers remembers, "they would spank the boys when they did wrong or really whenever
they wanted to. Some of them they treated pretty bad, they couldn't sit down for days."
Many beatings were bad. Sometimes they'd spank the children until they would have to lay on their stomachs
for two or three days.
The beatings were administered with a "weighted leather 'flogging strap." A witness to a flogging
described them as "sickening" :
A young boy [was] taken into a stark, bare, dimly lit room where he was compelled to lie on a small cot and
receive licks with a heavy leather strap. At the time the strap was being wielded by a man who was at
least six feet, three inches and weighed well over two hundred pounds. . . . The child quivers and
writhes. . . .
Another witness saw a child returning from a flogging and "bleeding profusely." Floggings were not
"officially" discontinued until 1968 by O.J. Keller under the Kirk administration.
Go here to get a definition of "Spanking vs Flogging. A leather whip with a wooden handle is a
"Flogging Device."
THE WORST OF THE WORST
FROM THE FLORIDA ARCHIVES
This is actually a picture of the boxing team.
This is actually a picture of the boxing team.
Worst of the worst? Look at these pictures and decide whether you believe that or not.
