Memories: Winston Churchill

 

Winston Churchill, who is best known as Britain’s Prime Minister during the second world war wrote about his unpleasant experiences as a very young schoolboy in the 1880s. His experience was also featured in the film Young Winston and there is a clip of it here.

 

 

The Form Master’s observations about punishment were by no means without their warrant at St George’s School. Flogging with the birch in accordance with the Eton fashion was a great feature in its curriculum. But I am sure no Eton boy, and certainly no Harrow boy of my day, ever received such a cruel flogging as this Headmaster was accustomed to inflict upon the little boys who were in his care and power. They exceeded in severity anything that would be tolerated in any of the Reformatories under the Home Office.

My reading in later life has supplied me with some possible explanations of his temperament. Two or three times a month the whole school was marshalled to the Library, and one or more delinquents were hauled off to an adjoining apartment by the two head boys, and there flogged until they bled freely, while the rest sat quaking, listening to their screams. This form of correction was strongly reinforced by frequent religious services of a somewhat High Church character in the chapel.

 

Extracted from: Winston Churchill, My Early Life, (Thornton Butterworth Limited: 1930).

Picture credits: Unknown.

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