The Pyxides - 1. The Pyxides

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BOARDING SCHOOL CLOSES IN SCANDAL!!

After a six month long investigation into the Uppendham School, the all-boys English boarding school has officially been closed. The school that has been a visual blight on the Somerset countryside for the best part of four centuries will be pulled down at the end of the month. It has oft been joked in Somerset that either the architect for the school was a drunkard or the building crews had the plans inside out and upside down during construction, for surely nobody in their right mind could ever conceive of such a monstrosity.

When the journals of former pupils and staff started being published anonymously on the internet last year in May, nobody wanted to believe that such things could have ever occurred in a school, let alone occurred in one the most respected public schools in England. If the contents of those journals are to be fully believed then Uppendham has been far more of a blight on the lives of countless English boys since its inception in the early 1600s than it ever has been on the countryside panorama.

Of course, as a responsible reporter I do have to question the authenticity of some of these so-called journal entries. I find it hard to believe, in spite of the school’s ethos of every student and master keeping a personal journal, that the boys would have documented all of these goings on in such brazen detail for all to read. Or perhaps, it’s just that a part of me doesn’t want to believe that kids can be such cruel bastards.

Although the concept of fagging was commonplace in many boarding schools, it would seem that at Uppendham it was taken to the extreme. The term ‘fagging’ applies to the practice of having younger pupils act as personal servants to the most senior boys, thereby teaching the boys about service from both sides of the master and servant relationship.

Under the tutelage of more gentle sixth form boys, it usually meant things like shining shoes, running errands, and cooking breakfasts; for those not so fortunate, they may as well have entered indentured servitude. The older boy was also expected to discipline those boys assigned to him, and chastisements would range from the simple assigning of writing lines, most frequently Latin hexameters, to far harsher punishments such as birching and in later years caning, usually dispensed by the older boy rather than the form master or housemaster.

Although fagging had been abolished at most public schools by the 1980s, Uppendham seemed to be firmly entrenched in Victorian English attitudes. As evidenced by many of the journal entries that have come to light in recent months, it seems that Uppendham had indeed been a law unto itself for many a decade.

Since the late eighteenth century, there existed a group within the sixth form at Uppendham known as the Pyxides. The origins of the name are lost in the memories of time, but they were the most trusted of the sixth form and were supposed to be the eyes and ears of the schoolmaster. They are believed to be the forerunners to, and perhaps the source of inspiration for, the modern prefect system first introduced by Dr Thomas Arnold in the late 1820s. The group was established in order to report incidents of bullying, hazing, and any violations of the school rules that occurred in the privacy of the boarding houses when the housemaster was off premises.

Historically these rule violations had gone unpunished and unreported, but the Pyxides was formed so that abuses could be reported and the appropriate punishment could be meted out by the housemaster, or schoolmaster in the most extreme of cases. However, it would seem from records that following its formation the masters at Uppendham rarely ventured into the houses they were supposed to be overseeing and relied entirely on the Pyxides to ensure that school rules were being adhered to.

Prior to the formation of the Pyxides, Uppendham was reported to have a serious disciplinary problem. In fact, a review of the Punishment Log over the years has shown that until the 1750s both Tuesday and Friday afternoons were set aside as ‘Birching Afternoon’, and quite often requiring as many as four masters to be present to ensure that all of the boys assigned birching were disciplined before day’s end.

The formation of the Pyxides in the early 1760s by then schoolmaster Dr Raymond Tysdale led to a large drop in the number of birchings being handed out. Prior to then, the majority of birchings had been handed out when boys had been caught violating rules whilst in their houses during unannounced snap inspections by masters. It would seem that being away from the prying eyes of the masters the boys would tend to do as they pleased. After the formation of the Pyxides however, the only birchings were as a result of disruptions during class time.

Dr Tysdale and the school’s one hundred forty nine masters hailed the Pyxides as a brilliant success. They firmly believed that since everyone knew that they were the schoolmaster’s eyes and ears in the houses, the boys were now far less likely to violate school rules when the masters were not around. The fact that the number of birchings fell by nearly ninety per cent in the space of two terms reinforced this firmly held belief.

However, as the released journal entries have shown us, the Pyxides used this power to terrorise generations of young boys. Instead of helping the schoolmaster to stamp out bullying and harassment, they became the biggest instigators of it. On the surface, they were the very model of an Uppendham boy, but they had been granted so much power by the masters, and then left to wield that power unchecked, that they ruled over the houses with an iron fist and the masters took their word as gospel.

Any boy caught by them violating any school rule was threatened with being reported to the housemaster, and allegedly those boys who obeyed the rules were threatened that the master would be told that they had actually violated some rule or another. So the innocent and the guilty were faced with having no choice but to accede to the requests and the demands made by the most powerful boys in the school.

In 1987 the United Kingdom government banned the use of corporal punishment in all state school and in those private schools that received any funding from the government. It was then later banned in private schools in England and Wales in 1999. The reasons why this prohibition was not enforced by the masters at Uppendham is unknown.

Here follows a selection of the some of the journal entries that have been released to the media from the previously unnamed source.

August 12th, 1940 (journal entry from Mark Tilbury):

Carruthers caught me breaking curfew last night, for the third time in two weeks. He said that he can no longer overlook it and has to report it to our housemaster. I’m already in trouble with Master Tomlin for failing to hand in my last two pieces of homework on time, and I can’t be reported to him again. I begged Carruthers not to report me, and he told me that we could deal with the matter privately. The bastard gave me twenty whacks with the birch, in front of the entire house. I have never felt so ashamed.

September 19th, 1983 (journal entry from an unnamed boy):

James told me he had been summoned to Johnson’s room. Johnson had caught him smoking and was going to report it to our housemaster. Johnson said he was prepared to overlook in return for a favour. I knew exactly what he meant by that. He’d caught me out of bounds last month, and he made me the same offer. I’d already been told by our housemaster that if I broke one more rule this year I’d be expelled, so I took Johnson up on his offer. Christ, I didn’t even know that boys could do that with each other.

February 15th, 1907 (excerpt from Uppendham Punishment Log):

Student Infraction Punishment

Jacobs Late for class 5 strokes with the birch

Taylor Failure to hand in homework Lines - 100 Latin hexameters

Marson Talking in class Lines - 50 Latin hexameters

Gielgud Uttering an obscenity at a master 10 strokes with the birch

March 20th, 1737 (excerpt from Uppendham Punishment Log, prior to the creation of the Pyxides):

Student Infraction Punishment

Forsyth Late for class 5 strokes with the birch

Johnson Late for class (twice) 10 strokes with the birch

Jones Lying to a master 20 strokes with the birch

Pink Uttering an obscenity at a master 20 strokes with the birch

Mathers Bullying 15 strokes with the birch

Tobias Bullying 15 strokes with the birch

Furling Bullying 15 strokes with the birch

Asquith Bullying 15 strokes with the birch

January 7th 1809 (journal entry from a boy identified only as Simpson, presumed member of the Pyxides):

The new boy is cute. I guess I should give him a few weeks to get used to school life, but I don’t think I can wait. Smith is still laid up after my last session with him of reinforcing the school rules. The new boy so far hasn’t broken any rules, but since the schoolmaster believes anything that I tell him, a few birchings will soon make the new kid a willing participant. If only they would learn to cooperate from the beginning, I could dispense with getting them so many floggings from our masters.

March 28th, 2001 (journal entry, student’s name withheld):

The news of banning corporal punishment doesn’t seem to have reached the Pyxides. If anything, they have become more aggressive since the ban. When I started here three years ago, there was perhaps one or two canings a day, but lately it seems as though all those arseholes do is beat the younger boys. You would have thought things would have improved since Victorian times, but there are days when I feel as though I am a boy at Tom Brown’s Rugby or Wackford Squeers’ Dotheboys Hall. There are times I just want to go home.

April 6^th, 1962 (journal entry from an unidentified school nurse):

I thought I’d seen it all.

After nearly a decade of working in schools, I really thought I had seen everything that one schoolboy could do another. Today, I have sadly been disabused of that notion.

Four first years have been admitted with what are clearly abrasions from a caning, and a very severe caning at that, yet the schoolmaster has no record of a caning in the Punishment Log for any of these boys.

The boys refuse to tell me what has happened or who is responsible. I have my suspicions as to who the culprits are, and if I didn’t need this job, I’d act on those suspicions without reservation.

The best I can do is to give them some ointment for the abrasions and something to dull the obvious pain they are in. I plan to admit them to the infirmary for twenty-four observation. It’s not much, but they might at least get away from it all for a day or so.

Is this something that is appropriate for me to be recording in a journal? Probably not, and I’m sure that it will be censored if it is ever read.

March 11^th, 2009 (journal entry, student’s name withheld):

I love this place. A school where I can do whatever the hell I like as long as I service the Pyxides. It’s like a boys’ version of St Trinians here, but on some insane extreme level. It may be a bit much sometimes, but hey, at least I swing that way. I would happily allow Connors to use me the whole damn day if only he wasn’t so big. Sure, there are boys here who get caned and shit for rule breaking, but if they just went with the flow and enjoyed their time with the older boys, they’d have it fucking made here. The older boys get me alcohol, cigarettes, porn whatever. Looks like it’s gonna be five years of fun. Well, for me at least.

It still remains unclear as to exactly how the trials of these boys will proceed, though a provisional date has been scheduled for their commencement of March 5th of next year. There are currently hundreds of former members of the Pyxides who are still alive, some of whom are in very prominent positions, and they may well be called to stand trial.

It has been argued in some circles that the Pyxides could be viewed as something akin to an organisation or company, and that every former member should be tried as a single entity. Even those who did not actually do any wrong must have stood by and knowingly allowed these atrocities to occur. Consequently, in the eyes of many, they are viewed as being even more guilty than those who carried out the abuses.

It will take a long time to debate the legal nightmare of how to run the trial, to say nothing of conducting the investigation. If the journals are to be believed then the case will cover four centuries, meaning that many victims will never truly have justice, as many of the guilty will unfortunately be long dead.

I am sure that such a high profile trial as this promises to be, will serve to not only reopen some very old wounds amongst the victims but will also, I am sure, bring back long forgotten memories of actions perpetrated by the guilty.

The last schoolmaster at Uppendham was given the right of reply after reading this article ahead of publication. This is his response to the situation:

I would like to state, for the record, that the entire faculty and I here at Uppendham have cooperated fully with the police investigation over the past year. What has been discovered during that time has sickened me, and left the teaching staff shocked to the core.

Although I do not believe that all of the journal entries that have been seen in the media of late are genuine in terms of their content, many have been carbon-dated and so we must accept that they are, at the very least, from the time periods they purport to be from. Like many others, perhaps I just do not want to believe that such atrocities have occurred in a place of learning, or been committed by boys of such a relatively young age.

When the Pyxides was first formed, it was done with the very best of intentions. They were formed at a time when this school was going through an extremely difficult period of disciplinary problems. Their introduction cut birchings by ninety per cent, and I can understand the view of the teaching staff at the time that, as a result, the Pyxides was seen as a major success. I am sure that after having two afternoons a week dedicated to nothing other than birching students, by no less than four masters, for nearly a century, such a result could have blinded them to the possibility of “unofficial” punishments being dispensed.

They were supposed to be there to assist the masters and either head off potential problems or report any incidents of rule breaking. It seems as though they took the power they had been given and perverted it to suit their own means.

The current boys and masters have been thoroughly interviewed by the police, and it has become clear that there have been multiple instances of extreme abuse by some of the boys in the Pyxides. A few of the younger boys claim to have enjoyed the attention by asserting that they are either homosexual or bisexual, and they allege that they used the relationships with the older boys in order to illicitly obtain alcohol and tobacco. However, I find it extremely difficult to envision any twelve or thirteen year old boy, no matter what he alleges his sexual persuasion or proclivities to be, enjoying being used in such a manner.

Although the teaching staff has been formally cleared of any criminal complicity in these acts of barbarism, we all feel deeply ashamed that such acts were able to be committed without our knowledge, and by a group of boys in whom we placed great faith.

I know that the recent media attention garnered by this story has led to the question as to whether public schools should be allowed to continue to exist at all being raised. I will not venture an opinion on that subject, but I would ask that the remaining public schools are not judged based solely on the failures we have had exposed here at Uppendham.

I would also like to take this opportunity to express my sincerest apologies to all current and former boys of this school and to their families. I know that there is nothing that can be done to erase the years of abuse that occurred here, but hopefully the school’s closure, along with the demolition of the building, will be a first step along what I am sure will be a long road to recovery.

We will, of course, continue to assist the police with their enquiries and the ongoing investigations.