Stranger than fiction: The Fag
Here is a truly bonkers clip from a documentary I fell over on YouTube when I was searching for something else. It is about a public school and a fag. I should explain (especially to my American readers) that a “public” school is in fact an elite private fee-paying boarding school and a “fag” is a younger boy who acts as a personal assistant to a senior boy. Back in the day the seniors had the authority to beat younger boys.
During the golden age of school fiction in the early 1900s
prefects are often seen wielding the cane.
The Hotspur
The Magnet
The prefect – junior “boy” scene remains a staple of
contemporary video school fiction, as in Tales
from St Datchets Academy by Sting Pictures.
Now back to the bonkers documentary. I don’t know when it
was made or by whom but judging by the cut-glass English accents of those
taking part I’d guess sometime between the nineteen thirties to nineteen
fifties. The interviewer asks the prefect (who looks about twenty-five), “You
have the power to inflict corporal punishment haven’t you?” The prefect readily
shows the cane he uses. “The instrument of torture,” the interviewer says with
a grin.
When would he cane a boy? “If a boy’s been late for
breakfast three times or has been continually disobedient or any other major
offence to all intents and purposes he can be beaten.”
We are then introduced to a “young gentleman”. “Well
Andrew,” the interviewer asks, “What exactly is a fag ....”
Indeed, stranger than fiction.
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