Interview for Platform

You may be a virgin or indeed riddled with STDs but I imagine buggery is not much of a problem you encounter or have encountered at school, count yourself lucky. This wasn’t the case for your average boarding school boy in the 1950’s, not only was it pretty much socially acceptable but it also happened a lot. I seem to recall the subject being brought up by many a red corduroy wearing fifty-something quite often, so I thought I would ask my dad to shed some light on the phenomenon.

Have you ever been buggered?

No.

Thats good. I know the system of fagging (in a nutshell, older boys getting younger boys to act as servants for them - Ed) was pretty popular back then, was this effectively a green pass to do what you liked i.e. buggery and other forms of sexual assault?

I was lucky, there was very little in my house. I was dorm captain I remember being called into the housemasters office where he told me that “buggery was afoot”. Prefects had a lot of control, in some ways more than the teachers, i didn’t personally hear or see any of this buggery going on but i am a pretty heavy sleeper so even though it was allegedly going on in my dorm i didn’t hear anything.

Did you ever bugger anyone?

No.

So did people just grin and bear it?

I remember a boy was caught doing it once and all of his house mates pinned him down and drew on his penis with marker pen.

A sort of naming and shaming?

Yeah, I suppose so.

That’s almost on the same level as buggery, I suppose you have to fight fire with fire, right?

Errr, yes.

Were there any schools that were famous for it?

I think it happened everywhere, a friend of mine at a school called Stowe said that during their school play, in the first act, the curtain rose to reveal two pupils buggering each other.

I kind of wished that happened at my school.

Yeah, pretty funny!

I suppose paedophilia is a similar issue, although a bit scarier.

There was a master at my prep school who rigged up a sound system in one of the dorms and told stories over a loud speaker, afterwards he would tuck all the boys in and have a fiddle under the sheets.

That’s pretty scary.

All the boys appeared to like it and were inpatient for it to be their turn.

Yikes.

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