Remembering Eton’s notorious flogger

 

Eton, probably the most famous of the so-called “public” schools in England, was notorious for its floggings and other extreme violence. It was not alone in this but more seems to have been written about Eton than any other school in history

Gerva D’Olbert in his book Chastisement Across The Ages (The Fortune Press, 1956) recalls Dr John Keate who was usher [headmaster] of Eton from 1809 to 1834. Following an attempted rebellion, Keate flogged more than eighty boys on a single day, 30 June 1832

 

Posterity remembers, Of all the notorious flagellant ushers, most perhaps Dr. Keate, of Eton. He was said “to know the posteriors of his pupils far better than their faces,” which may be why posterity has kept his fame green. Meeting a former pupil in foreign parts, Dr. Keate was accosted by him and had to confess he could not recollect his pupil's face.

“Doctor;” quoth he, “you've flogged me oft, I wot;

And yet it seems that me you've quite forgot.

‘E’n now,’ says Keate, ‘I cannot guess your name,

The backs of boys are very much the same.’”

 

Two other incidents, typical of Keate’s methods, may be recorded here. One relates to his methods of teaching the Faith: “Blessed are the pure in heart,” he would angrily shout, “Boys, if you aren’t pure in heart, I’ll flog you.” The other tale describes how the short-sighted Doctor beat thirty boys in succession, each of whom protested his innocence; it was only after the castigation had been completed that Keate found he had been looking, not at the punishment-list, but at the list of candidates for Confirmation, who had only received the Sacrament of Penance in a way more satisfying to his Protestant beliefs. 

The Eton birch was much heavier than that used in many other establishments, weighing as it did twelve ounces, and being 4 feet 6 inches long; the Christ's Hospital implement weighed but three ounces and measured 2 feet 8 inches. 

Keate’s greatest feat was to beat eighty boys in one night. Further first-hand evidence of the severity of Etonian conditions even at a later period is provided by some “memories” of an anonymous “Old Boy”. Amongst other details this historian has offered to posterity the following: 

“... The conditions of a Junior Colleger’s life were very hard indeed. The practice of fagging had become an organised system of brutality and cruelty. I was frequently kept up until one or two o'clock in the morning waiting on my masters at supper, and undergoing every sort of bullying at their hands. I have been beaten on my palms with the back of a brush, or struck on both sides of my face, because I had not closed the shutter near my master’s bed tight enough, or because in making his bed I had left the seam of the lower sheet uppermost. When I was kept up fagging late at night, I had to look forward to the probability of a flogging next day for not knowing my lessons. Notwithstanding the frequent obstacles to study, my tutor, who had himself been a colleger, would listen to no excuses, and Dr. Keate was always ready with the birch on complaint of idleness.”

Sports Illustrated (yes, really!) said this in a profile of Keate.

 

Dr. Keate was undoubtedly the most brutal and bloodthirsty flogger who ever put hand to birch. He was a stocky five-footer with flaming red hair and huge shaggy eyebrows that he almost seemed to use as pointers for demonstration.

He was nicknamed “Baffin” from the noise he made in his irate fits of coughing. A brilliant classical scholar, he was convinced that every Etonian was a perpetual liar: “You're hardened to falsehood,” he would say angrily, in a voice that has been likened to the quacking of a duck; meanwhile, his fingers would wrap themselves gleefully around the bound handle of a bundle of stinging birch twigs.

Day after day, guilty and innocent alike were paraded before him; after a brief and biased trial, his victims were deprived of their striped trousers and held down by a school official over the traditional wooden flogging block while the Doctor warmed to his work. Should the punishment call for more than six strokes he would call for a new weapon, the cost being charged to his victim’s parents. When a certain boy could not be found for execution, Keate would seize a passerby of the same surname and perform on him.”

 

Picture credit (not actually a drawing of Dr. Keate): Getty Images

 

For more posts in the ‘Remembering’ series, click here

For more extracts from Chastisement Across The Ages, click here

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