Book of the Month: Seven Years at Eton
The years under review in the
book Seven Years at Eton by James Brinsley-Richards are 1857 to 1864.
The book is one of very many written about the school which must be one of the
most famous in the world. It runs for nearly 450 pages and is largely an
affectionate look at the author’s schooldays.
Eton
being Eton there was mush ‘flogging’ and ‘swishing’ going on and the book
reflects that. Here’s an extract called ‘Under the Rod.’ The author and some
friends have been found drinking ale at a local hotel which is against the
rules and they must face the consequences.
The book is out of copyright
and is available on various sites free-of-charge online, including here.
Extracted from
Seven Years at Eton by James Brinsley-Richards (Richard Bentley and Son,
London: 1883).
Traditionalschooldiscipline@gmail.com
Descriptions like this are really interesting because it shows how the people in charge turned everything into a kind of huge game where younger kids would always end up getting massive spankings for reasons that didn't make any logical sense at all. Like how this James Brinsley-Richards describes that boys were sent on errands to get things from shops in the High Street. So they had to go there or else get a massive caning. But the High Street was out of bounds. So if they got caught they got a massive caning anyway. For doing something they didn't have a choice about.
ReplyDeleteI was reading some letters written by another Eton schoolboy earlier the same century as this book. And there was some similar arrangement. There was a fair in town and all the junior boys were banned from attending it. So the teachers and the senior boys would all go to the fair just to see how many of the younger boys they could catch. Then they'd get "a flogging" of course. So again it was deliberately designed like a game.
Although James Brinsley-Richards says that some of these rules were changed later in the 1800s. This sort of attitude carried on well into the 20th century. I saw a description and pic, might have been a different boarding school to Eton. Where a boy got sent into town on an errand for a prefect to buy them something they wanted. And he forgot to wear his regulation straw hat when he went. So the same prefect that had sent him in the first place, gave him a massive caning for not wearing his hat, that left huge bruises that lasted weeks.