Corporal Punishment
Corporal punishment had been always been traditional and frequent at Eton. Until Chenevix-Trench became Headmaster, disobedient students could be semi-publicly birched by the Headmaster or Lower Master on their bare buttocks as punishment for serious offences. In addition, senior students at the school, as part of their responsibility for maintaining day-to-day discipline, were permitted to cane other boys across the seat of the trousers, and this was a routine punishment. Chenevix-Trench abolished both of these traditions. To replace Headmaster's birching, he introduced private caning, also administered to the bare posterior of the boy, who was required to lower his trousers and underpants and bend over in Chenevix-Trench's office. A few boys resented this and felt that a caning over the trousers, as was standard practice at nearly all other schools by this time (1960s), would have sufficed.
Paul Foot, the journalist, had Chenevix-Trench as his housemaster at Shrewsbury in the 1950s. In 1996 Foot described the punishments that Chenevix-Trench had given there. Nick Cohen wrote in his obituary of Foot in The Observer:
| “ | Even by the standards of England's public schools, Anthony Chenevix-Trench, his housemaster at Shrewsbury, was a flagellomaniac. Foot recalled: 'He would offer his culprit an alternative: four strokes with the cane, which hurt; or six with the strap, with trousers down, which didn't. Sensible boys always chose the strap, despite the humiliation, and Trench, quite unable to control his glee, led the way to an upstairs room, which he locked, before hauling down the miscreant's trousers, lying him face down on a couch and lashing out with a belt.'
Naturally, Chenevix-Trench was promoted and became a headmaster, first of Eton, then of Fettes. Exposing him in Private Eye was one of Foot's happiest days in journalism. He received hundreds of congratulatory letters from the child abuser's old pupils, many of whom were now prominent in British life. |
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Nick Fraser, in his book The Importance of Being Eton: Inside the World's Most Powerful School, describes his own experiences of Chenevix-Trench at Eton. Reviewing the book, The Sunday Times said that he "was subjected to a furtive sexual assault by the headmaster, Anthony Chenevix-Trench, whose proclivities in this area were not made public until after his death, and it damaged him, he says, 'more than I could ever have brought myself to express'".
Eventually, his fondness for beating boys and his drinking became so embarrassing that he was forced to resign from Eton. The Independent on Sunday reported in 1994:
| “ | It is not recorded whether Anthony Chenevix-Trench, the former Eton headmaster, quoted Proverbs 13:24 to the boys he flogged, but glowing testimonies from them following allegations that he was a brute and an alcoholic suggest the essence of the quotation sank home. Chenevix-Trench was headmaster from 1963 to 1970. Claims that he became too ready with the lash and too fond of the bottle will be published this month in Eton Renewed, an authorised history of the school by Tim Card, its vice-provost. | ” |
Card writes that staff at the school were embarrassed by Chenevix-Trench's drinking and that he "regarded corporal punishment not as a last resort, but almost as the first". He claims the head was forced to resign eventually and that the matter was hushed up."
However, Christopher Hourmouzios reminisced to The Times: "He once flogged the living daylights out of me with a strap on my bare backside, and my brother tells me that the "headman", as we called Trench, once beat him and a whole divinity class of more than twenty boys one afternoon!" But, he went on: (he) "was the same man who abolished boxing at Bradfield, and later at Eton; who was a fine teacher who taught me Latin, just as he had his fellow PoWs after being captured by the Japanese in the Second World War; and who launched a modern, progressive appeal for new college buildings and facilities."
The Independent reported that the numerous letters to newspapers by former pupils showed a marked disparity between some who recalled "a monster of depravity" and others who described Chenevix-Trench as "upright, justified, a fine educationist, a victim, even."
In 1998 Fettes College decided to retain a commemorative plaque to Chenevix-Trench in its chapel, despite the allegations, "out of respect for all those pupils at Fettes who like and admire him."
Read more about this topic: Anthony Chenevix-Trench
Famous quotes containing the words corporal and/or punishment:
“The sense of death is most in apprehension,
And the poor beetle that we tread upon
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Inside, the others sat at their carpentry, varnishing, sorting, gluing, had still two years, five years to do. He was standing at the carstop.
The punishment begins.”
—Alfred Döblin (1878–1957)