This may not be the best place to post this, but in movies from the 50s throughthe 90s, there's lots of schoolyard bullying, and sometimes it's just insane. In the book IT, set in the 50s, one kid nearly carves his name into another kid. I've never known anyone to experiemce things like that. Are there anh real examples of bullying that intense?
In the novel 'Tom Brown's School Days,' by Thomas Hughes, written in 1857 and set in the 1830s, there's a significant amount of bullying. This bullying includes serious physical harm. Hughes based the book partially on his own experiences at Rugby School, so it sounds like something that did happen there.