Extract: Mr Boot’s Protector

 

The Golden Age for school tales in story papers for boys in the UK was probably from about 1910 to 1940. At first, they were all more or less the same. They were set at a posh boarding school and featured a set of chums who got into scrapes. They usually came up against masters and prefects swishing canes or birches.

By the 1930s the format was getting stale so some publishers looked at ways to freshen up the stories. Sometimes they went to bonkers lengths to find a new angle. We’ve seen some examples of this before, including The Master in the Purple Mask, The Invisible Schoolmaster, and Tiger Jake’s Academy

Mr Boot’s Protector, published in the Hotspur, is one of the attempts to freshen up the genre. Mr Boot is a weak, nervous man and incapable of controlling his boys. So, and here’s where it gets really daft, he hires Joe Rusty, a former circus hand as his bodyguard. And, of course, it is Rusty who restores order.

The Hotspur 15 June 1935

Credit: D C Thomson,

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