I grew so rich that I was sent
By a pocket borough into Parliament
I always voted at my party's call,
And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
I thought so little, they rewarded me
By making me the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
(W.S. Gilbert, making fun of politicians and
the Navy career structure in H.M.S. Pinafore 1881),
Life was not much better for pupils at fee-paying 'public' schools than it was for working class children scraping an education where they could. A 'public school' in the U.K. has come to mean a private boarding school, where parents pay often huge fees to have their children housed in term, educated, and, very important, make useful connections for their future lives. (for details of their origin and development from free grammar schools, see Wikipedia) The future for boys from the gentry, aristocracy, or well-off families in the 18th and 19th century was expected to be: running the family country estates, enormous or small, becoming Members of Parliament and running the country, becoming officers in the army or, probably second choice, the navy; becoming Anglican clergymen and running the spiritual life of the nation, or entering the legal profession which, with Parliament, controlled the legal life of the nation. Boys were also expected to make a suitable marriage, hopefully to a girl who would bring more money and estates into the family, and girls were educated with this in mind too. Any girls who could not, or would not marry could become helpful companions to their families, and, of course, all girls were expected to do good works with the poor, especially if they had married one of the Clergy.
The eldest son, whether suitable or not, would inherit the family estates, which were probably entailed on the eldest male heir. This protected the often huge landholdings of the aristocracy from becoming fragmented. The remaining sons would often be offered a choice of suitable Anglican 'livings', ie church parishes with a rectory and an income, or would be bought a commission as an officer in the army or navy. They would be expected to work their way up to, maybe a bishopric in the Church, a General in the Army, or an Admiral in the Navy.
Children who inherited a title automatically also inherited a seat in the House of Lords, then much more powerful than it is in modern times. Also, until the Parliamentary Reform Acts of 1832, 1867 and 1884 many M.P.s in the House of Commons were more or less gifted their Parliamentary seats by the local landowner, who controlled the vote. The Reform Acts gave the vote to many working men, though no women could vote.
Boys would usually be sent at age seven to a preparatory boarding school and then to board at senior public school. Public school certainly toughened the boys up, if it did not kill them. Flogging was extensively practised at all major public schools; several masters were renowned for it, and were admiringly spoken of for the ferocity of their beatings. The best known of all, Dr. 'Flogger' Keate, headmaster of Eton from 1810 to 1834, once attempted to beat a hundred boys in turn. After he had beaten about twenty the rest started to pelt him with rotten eggs. He called in two masters with birches to assist him and continued beating.
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| Eton College, founded by Henry VI in 1440 (Wikipedia) |
He was known as Mad Shelley, and many a cruel torture was practised upon him for his moody and singular exclusiveness...I have seen him surrounded, hooted, baited like a maddened bull...'
Shelley once stabbed another boy with a fork, but did eventually settle in and became an exceptional scholar.
(Richard. Holmes, Shelley, the Pursuit, 1974, quote from an article by W.H. Mearke in
The Athenaeum, 1848)
The pupils were charged for the rods used; Charles Hotham's bill at Westminster School in 1743 included 1/- 'for the rods at School twice'
The school was very rough at that time, a coachman died after five scholars 'gave him a Westminster drubbing' and wild Lord March, future Duke of Richmond, aged eight, assaulted a master:
'Set fire to Viny's greasy locks, and boxed his ears to put it out again' (A.M.W. Stirling, The Hothams, 1918, Vol. 2, p.2; 3, internet edition available, California Digital Library)
The poet Lord Alfred Tennyson's brother was at Eton, and told his brother the students once stole a pig. They kept it on the roof until she had her piglets and then ate them; Tennyson put the story into one of his poems, though not naming the school:
'By night we dragged her to the College tower
From her warm bed and up the corkscrew stair
With hand and rope we hauled the groaning sow
And on the leads we kept her till she pigged.
(Tennyson, Walking to the Mail, Early Poems of Lord Alfred Tennyson, 1830 internet edition available, Project Gutenberg)
That story may or may not be true, but when the floor of the Old Chamber at Eton, where the pupils slept, was taken up in 1858 two cartloads of mutton bones taken down by rats were removed. Boarders were expected to go out to houses in the town to wash and buy breakfast, there was no glass in the windows until 1818. Pupils were still expected to sleep two to a bed at Harrow until 1805. As blankets were inadequate this may have been a good choice. (Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy,
The Public School Phenomenon, 1977, an excellent, entertaining account of British public schools)
So maybe the behaviour of these young aristocrats partly explains the violence of the staff.
Lord Stanley's son Johnny was flogged at Harrow School in 1851 for:
'secreting light and being up all night, and also for jumping over the dinner table when Dr. Vaughan was there...I hear the foulness of his language is as much complained of as his swearing"
His father, Lord Stanley just remarked: "Dr. Vaughan is a prig"'
(Nancy Mitford, ed. The Stanleys of Alderley, 1939p.211)
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| Harrow in 1862 founded 1572 under Elizabeth 1 (BBC Archive) |
'Two new punishments were invented at Harrow especially for him - one was to stop in on the half holiday, the other to have his name posted up as having done badly.'
Lyulph Stanley to his mother, concerning his brother Algernon, 1857, Mitford p. 193-4)
Algernon's parents did not consider these punishments enough and Algernon was moved from Harrow to Rugby; his mother, Lady Stanley said:
Rugby 'gives him a chance of strengthening his character in a rough sphere where more co-ercive measures are used. Perhaps you will think Rugby is not gentlemanlike - it is not polished, but anything is better for Algernon that will change the sauntering, idle, lazy tone of his mind and manner.'
(Mitford p.211)
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| Rugby school, founded in 1567 as a free grammar school for local boys (Wikipedia) |
Clearly the parents were totally behind severe punishments, and, of course, the boys' fathers would have experienced them previously. Here is another parent's comment, slightly earlier; 1687, by Mary Woodford:
'This evening I had the cutting news that my second boy was in rebellion at the College at Winton where he and all his Companions resolved not to make any verses, and being called upon to be whipped for it several of them refused to be punished, mine among the rest...God I beseech thee subdue their stubvborn hearts and give them grace to repent and accept of their punishment due to their fault, and let them not run to ruin for Christ's sake'
(D.H. Woodforde ed. Woodforde papers and diaries, 1932. Google internet edition available)
This is the Rev. Heber, writing to his son Richard in 1792, at the time of the French Revolution, describing how Richard's brothers schoolfellows:
'According to the prevailing Rage of the Times of standing up for the Rights of Boys adopting Tom Paine's principles and doctrines and rebelling against King Kent (the headmaster) barring the master out of the school. They were starved into submission. So may all Rightful Monarchs ever prevail against Levellers and Republicans, the pest of Society.'
(R. Cholmondeley ed. The Heber Letters, 1783-1832, pub. 1950, p.78, Google internet edition available)
Giving evidence before the Public Schools Commission in 1836, set up to investigate complaints, Creasy, who was sent to Eton in 1821 at the age of ten, sums up conditions as 'privations that might have broken down a cabin boy or would thought inhuman if inflicted on a galley-slave
(Christopher Hollis, Eton, a history, 1960 p.236 internet edition available on Google Books)
And, finally, here is the testimony of Lord Shaftesbury, famous for championing the rights of chimney sweepers' boy workers and founder of the Shaftsbury homes. He was sent to preparatory school, Manor House, Chiswick, aged seven:
'Evil of every kind was rampant...The memory of that place makes me shudder; it is repulsive to me even now. I think there never was such a wicked school before or since. The place was bad, wicked, filthy; and the treatment was starvation and cruelty.' Shaftesbury compared this school to Dotheboys Hall in Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby, 1838, the novel which made Victorians aware of the conditions in many of these boarding schools. Lord Shaftesbury went on to Harrow, aged twelve, and was apparently happy there.
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| Mrs. Squeers doses the boys, by Phiz, Nicholas Nickleby |
'Nothing could have been worse for the development of my mind than Dr. Butler's school, as it was strictly classical, nothing else being taught except a little ancient geography and history.'
(The Life and Times of Charles Darwin, ed. Francis Darwin, 1888)
'Lord Chesterfield, in 1704, wrote to his son:
'Dear Boy...
Pray mind your Greek particularly; for to know Greek very well is to be really learned: there is no great credit in knowing Latin, for everyone knows it.'
(Lord Chesterfield, letters to his son, Letter XLIX. C. Strachey ed. The Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield to his Son, 1901.)
Lord Chesterfield's letters on education were very celebrated in the 18th and 19th centuries,
even though his the son and godson actually turned out rather badly.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)also remembered his Latin lessons, at St. James' prep. school, around 1880, aged seven:
'Learning the 1st declension. Mensa, a table, mensa, o table, etc. "What does it mean, Sir?" ..."O table - you would use that in addressing a table, in invoking a table." And then, seeing he was not caring me with him, "You would use it in speaking to a table." "But I never do," I blurted out in honest amazement.
"If you are impertinent, you will be punished, let me tell you, very severely," was his conclusive rejoinder.'
(Churchill, My Early Life, 1930 p.24)
Here is Leonard Woolfe, describing the Headmaster of St. Paul's London, founded 1509, now a successful independent school. Woolfe was there from 1894-99:
'His vision of the school and education was narrow and fanatical. The object of a public school was, in his view, to give the boys the severest and most classical of classical educations'
(Leonard Woolfe, Sowing, 1880-1904, pub. 1960)
R. H. Quick summed up the curriculum, dammingly, in 1893:
'To produce a few scholars able to appreciate the classics of Greece and Rome they have sacrificed everybody else; and according to their own showing they have condemned a large proportion of the upper classes, nearly all the middle classes, and quite all the poorer classes to remain 'uneducated'. And, according to the theory of the schoolreoom, one-half of the human race - the women- they have not supposed to need education.
(R.H. Quick, Essays on educational reformers, new ed. 1893, p.18)
'There's a breathless hush in the Close tonight
Ten to make and the match to win -
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.'
(Sir Henry Newbolt, Vita Lampada)
'The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton'
(Attributed to the Duke of Wellington, 1856)
Public schools placed great importance on games, especially team games, and physical fitness. According to the boys' adventure story writer G. A. Henty (1832-1902):
'Boating or cricket, you had your choice, but once made, you had to be perfect in one or the other. Fellows rowed then and played cricket then. They had to.
(G. Manville Fenn, George Alfred Henty, 1907)
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At Bedales, a very progressive school, which highly valued physical fitness, this was the regime:
'There were runs before breakfast, the last two being swished in by a prefect with a cane. More runs in the afternoon, more swishing. The emphasis on labour was not comfortable: there were beds and butter to be made, much digging, the rougher the better, cows to be milked early on frosty mornings.'
Bedales also had earth closets, the headmaster would shovel the excrement into barrows and the boys dug it back into the ground as manure.
Girls were introduced to the school in 1898; the founder, J. H. Badley's wife refused to marry him unless he made the school co-educational.
(E.L. Grant-Watson, quoted in Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy The Public School Phenomenon, 1977, a fantastic account of public school life)
Boys were expected to call each other by their surnames:
'I must not call him Dick but Tuckfield for I shall be laughed at...'
(John Mordaunt, aged eleven, at Eton in 1820; Elizabeth. Hamilton, The Mordaunts, an Eighteenth Century Family1965, Google internet edition available)
John Mordaunt goes on to give his impression of Eton:
'Dearest Mama...I am in the Middle Remove, that is Middle 4th form and...I like Eton prettry well....I have a set of tea things with 6 cups & saucers, aand 6 knives & forks & spoons, with my name mark on them...I have also had an order for pens, ink, paper, and an inkstand...a great many of them (the boys) swears very badly, & others are quite the contrary...There has been a rough here not long ago, and one boy was expelled, some say for indecency and bullying the boys, and others for something about a fire in the college.'
'The boys of my age are all playing at Marbles now, the bigger boys play at Hockey, Fives and Single Stick, which is beating one another about as hard as you can with sticks I should not think it was a very agreeable game.'
'I am fag to Lord Dunlo, he is a very nice master I think. I do not get much fagged, but I do not mind if I am a little fagged.'
Fagging was the practise of giving the older boys a younger one to run errands for them. The idea was that the older boy would also mentor the younger. Boys in the 6th form also acted as prefects, responsible for school discipline under the masters, with one of them chosen as Head Boy.
Here is a description of fagging by William Tollemache who was at Westminster school in 1830:
I was only two years at Westminster so was a fag the whole time I was there. I had a rough, disagreeable master - Vance, the son of a surgeon. I was exactly like his servant out of school hours and had to clean his boots, brush his clothes, fill his jug from the pump in Dean's Yard and prepare his evening meal.'
E.D.H. Tollemache, The Tollemaches of Helmingham and Ham, 1949.
Doubts were expressed about the system; as early as 1693, the influential educationalist John Locke wrote:
I cannot but prefer breeding of a young Gentleman at home in his Father's sight under a good Governour, for till you can find a school wherein it is possible for the Master to look after the Manners of his Scholars...you have a strange Value for Words when...you think it worth while to hazard your Son's Innocence and Virtue for a little Greek and Latin.'
(John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 1693 p,148 internet edition available)
This, of course, depended on the attitude of the child's father, many were absent, dis-interested, or had other views on education; the famous Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder (1708-1778) said disapprovingly of Charles James Fox (1749-1806)later the bitter political rival of the virtuous, well brought up William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806):
'Lord Holland educated his children without the least regard to morality, and with such extravagant vulgar indulgence that the great change which has taken place among our youth has been dated from the time of his son's going to Eton.
Charles James Fox was introduced to gambling by his father aged fourteen, and spread the habit among the pupils at Eton, where William Pitt the Younger was also a pupil:
I never was concern'd with a young Gentleman of so good Abilities'
(Pitt's tutor, Dr. Burchett, quoted in B. Tunstall, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, 1938)
Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby from 1828 to 1841 is credited with much of the reform of public schools. He introduced the prefect system which taught boys management and discipline, and his management of the school is celebrated in Tom Brown's Schooldays. 1857, This best-selling book, with Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby, 1838, and F. W. Farrar's Eric, or Little by Little, 1858, a cautionary tale of the easy slide from virtue to vice and disgrace and early death, helped to make the Victorian public aware of the state of boarding schools. In 1861 a Royal Commission was set up to investigate and they were gradually brought into order.
“He read ‘Eric, or Little by Little,’” said McTurk; “so we gave him ‘St. Winifred’s, or the World of School.’ They spent all their spare time stealing at St. Winifred’s, when they weren’t praying or getting drunk at pubs. Well, that was only a week ago, and the Head’s a little bit shy of us. He called it constructive deviltry. Stalky invented it all.”
“Not the least good having a row with a master unless you can make an ass of him,” said Stalky'
(Rudyard Kipling, Stalky & Co, a satirical parody of the Victorian school story, 1899. Internet edition available)
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