was delivered and insisted the headmaster should cane much harder which he did: six of the hardest strokes he could muster while Mrs Pratchett beamed with great delight as each boy suffered his punishment. Dahl’s mother was outraged when she discovered that her son had been caned, and went to confront the school’s headmaster, who advised her to transfer Roald to another school if she disapproved of his methods. St Peter's School, Weston-super-Mare From the age of nine, Dahl attended St Peter's School, a boarding school in Weston-super-Mare, where he would remain for four years. Among many other tales, he describes having received six strokes of the cane after being accused of cheating. In the essay "The Life Story of a Penny", he claims that he still has the essay nearly 60 years on, and that he had been doing well until the nib of his pen broke — fountain pens were not permitted at the school. He whispered to his friend in hope of obtaining a spare nib, when the master, Captain Hardcastle, heard him and accused him of cheating, issuing him with a "stripe", meaning that the next morning he received six strokes of the cane from the headmaster, who refused to believe Dahl's version of events on the basis of Captain Hardcastle's status. Captain “Hardcastle” was later in fact revealed to be Captain Stephen Lancaster (1894-1971), a Great War veteran who was still teaching at the school in the early 1960s, and was also remembered by future notable pupils including John Cleese and Charles Higham. Many of the events he recalls from the school involved the matron. She once sprinkled soap shavings into the mouth of a pupil called Tweedie, to stop him from snoring. She also sent an eight-year-old boy, who had allegedly thrown a sponge across the dormitory, to the headmaster. Still in his pyjamas and dressing gown, the little boy then received six strokes of the cane. Wragg, another boy in Dahl's dormitory, sprinkled sugar over the corridor floor so they could hear that the matron was coming when she walked upon it. When the boy's friends refused to turn him in, the whole school was punished by the headmaster, who for the remainder of the term confiscated the keys to their tuck boxes containing food parcels which the pupils had received from their families. In the end, he returns home to his family