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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Traditional School Discipline
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There are several quotes from this story that humorously illustrate the difference in meanings ascribed to words and phrases from just under a century ago. To take just one instance : ' "Perhaps I had better hold him while you find your glasses again and give him the punishment he deserves.." "I should most certainly like you to" said Mr Boot now thoroughly aroused.' I know I would have been if I was in Mr Boot's boots. The caption to the illustration might also raise modern eyebrows to those who haven't read the story first...and maybe even some of those that had read it 'The boys seemed to be liking the lickings they were getting...' Two double-entendres for the price of one!
ReplyDeleteI much enjoyed this unusual story and I wish that I had attended as a day pupil a school exactly like that one! I would have also, in the years following, liked to have been a teacher at the same school! What a jolly good wheeze that would have been!
Yes…. I’d have enjoyed that too. From early on at school I found there was something strongly arousing about the cane. I saw boys by caned a fair bit in my youth and always enjoyed watching. Shame I didn’t become a teacher really.
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