The Head Boy's Fag

THE HEADBOY'S FAG - 1

THE FAG'S FIRST DAY AT OLLERTON COLLEGE

A Homoerotic Story

This is a short story concerning the the Head Boy's fag at an English public school called Ollerton College, located in a small county in the south west of England. The time is the early twentieth century, before the Great War, which changed so many things in England. But at the time of our story, Victorian values still reigned supreme in most English educational establishments and Ollerton as we shall call it for short was no exception. Indeed it was one of those places where time had stood still and all change whether for the better or for the worse, had until now been successfully resisted.

This is the setting for this tale, which beings with the first day of term and recounts the trials and tribulations of the fag of the newly nominated Head Boy. But before we learn about what befell this unfortunate lad on his very first day at Ollerton, let us first familiarise ourselves with the place itself and the idiosyncrasies of its way of life.

Ollerton College was a small, but very exclusive public school which had been founded in the reign of George IV by a joint endowment assembled originally from donations of several aristocratic senior British army officers, who wanted to create school to educate their male offspring. Initially, a new building, now known as School House, had been constructed in 1815 to house only 60 boys, all of whom were boarders, But given the fact that their parents were often absent, policing, for want of a better word, the then British Empire, the school also offered out-of-term accommodation to those boys who had no home to go to due to their parents' absences abroad. The school, therefore, acted very much in loco parentis for many of its boys throughout the year and for many boys became a home from home.

Over time, the school became known as an establishment of high academic standards; But possibly more important than academic achievement in the eyes of the military families from whom its charges were drawn, the school rapidly established a reputation for strictly enforced discipline. In a word Ollerton was a place where the cane and the birch reigned supreme. Even minor offences, if they could be called that, were punished quite severely and the sound of a well directed cane landing on a pair of naked buttocks could be heard on a more or less daily basis during term time. This was precisely what the patrons of the school thought of as a "character building environment" in which to educate their offspring. Whether the offspring agreed with this view or not is open to debate, as many of the lads spent a great deal of their time nursing very sore arses. But this was the way life was and the pupils just had to accept it, which, of course, having no alternative, they did. Suffice it to say that in spite of incessant beatings, the boys were, in general, not unhappy.

With the passage of time and the growing reputation of the school pupils were attracted from among the lower levels of the British aristocracy. And so, by the early twentieth century, the school intake was split about evenly between boys from military families and boys from the lower reaches of the British upper classes. Quite a few boys were known as the Honourable this, that or the other; this honorific indicating that they were the second sons of a lord. And with the growing interest of the wealthy, the endowments of the school had rapidly increased so that by 1900, Ollerton was a very well finance academic institution, controlled by a Board of Governors who had no financial problems to contend with.

By 1900, Ollerton had grown physically from its original School House of sixty boys, to five separate houses, of which the four additions were named after the southern counties: Dorset, Somerset, Devon and Sussex. The school governors, in their infinite wisdom, had decided that each house would be of identical size and so the four "new houses" as they were know, each also accommodated sixty boys. So the full complement of the school was precisely three hundred boys, with a yearly intake of sixty, thirteen year old boys from prep-school, being balanced by the outflow of sixty boys from the upper sixth form. All in all, Ollerton was a very Cartesian establishment.

Over the years, the original School House had been extensively enlarged to accommodate all the teaching requirements for 300 boys, who were lodged and accommodated across the five houses comprising the school. The old School House also held the main assembly hall and had the obligatory chapel in an annexe. In addition to the five main buildings, the school had built a substantial residential staff bloc in which its teaching staff could live. In keeping with the prestige of Ollerton, staff accommodation was generous and salaries were high so that the school had no problem in attracting first rate staff in all subjects. All the unmarried staff lived on the premises, but a number of married teachers with families preferred to live privately in town.

Finally to complete the inventory of the school's buildings, there was a separate service block, where the school laundry and other facilities, including the sick bay, were located. The laundry was a very important component in the life of the school; in the eyes of the powers that be, cleanliness was next to godliness (or was it the other way round?) All boys were expected to wear clean clothes each day, so the laundry was a very busy place.

At the time of our story, there were no plans to enlarge the school any further, although it had over the years acquired large tracts of land surrounding the original School House, which today were given over to playing fields: sport was a very important component of the school curriculum; along with regular naked arse beatings, sport was considered as being another very important character building element and fostering team spirit and leadership, both of which were considered precious attributes. The Governors saw Ollerton as a unique, educational jewel in the highly privileged world of public fee paying schools. Its endowments meant that it could please itself as to its future development which was not dictated by any economic considerations.

All in all, successive Boards of upper crust Governors complemented by snobbish headmasters had created a very exclusive school from which ordinary mortals were excluded, Not for Ollerton, scholarships or bursaries for boys of impoverished families. The hoi-polloi was not given even a whiff of the delights of Ollerton. It was a place based on excellence; a place of tradition, scholarship and discipline, especially discipline and was destined only for boys whose families knew what an important service it was rendering them and could afford the fees which were held at an eye-wateringly high level in spite of the very considerable income the school enjoyed from its weighty endowment. In short, Ollerton was a place for the privileged few. And the privileged few paid steeply for their privileges.

English public schools all have their own individual internal organisations and Ollerton was no exception. The boys were randomly allocated across the five houses, where they would be lodged and nourished for their entire school career. All teaching was conducted in School House, but the boys took their meals (the food was atrocious, but again, had that much vaunted character building quality about it ) and enjoyed their free time in their own houses.

Each of the five houses had a resident housemaster who lived in very spacious accommodation located in his house. The housemasters were sometimes married with their own children and sometimes not, but in addition to their pastoral duties they all taught classes in their chosen subject. The housemaster was also the ultimate dispenser of discipline in the house and for any boy to be referred to him usually implied a very painful experience. Successive headmasters and boards of governors had systematically seen that the housemasters they appointed toed the Ollerton line of strict discipline and were ardent supporters of the cane and the birch: not for Ollerton any new fangled ideas.

Outside of the classroom, the school was basically run by a group of house prefects: both junior, from the lower sixth and senior from the upper sixth forms. A boy who became a prefect started as a junior prefect in the lower sixth and progressed in this final upper sixth year, to the rank of senior prefect. So in all, provided that a prefect did not blot his copy book (a not unknown occurrence as prefects were boys too) he enjoyed two full years during which he could exercise his powers.

The main power which the prefects were given was the right to cane their younger schoolmates. And like all schoolboys given similar powers in public schools around the land, they exercised this power as if it was a "god given right": as if there was to be no tomorrow. Not a day went by but what some unfortunate lad felt the cane across his naked arse in some prefect's study. Oh yes; I forgot to mention; all beating at Ollerton was applied directly to the naked flesh of the unfortunate recipient. Some headmaster had, long ago, wisely declared that it was the boy and not the trousers which needed correction; and so the cane and the birch ever since that time, been applied "to the bare" as the genteel expression had it; on the bare bum as most of the younger boys put it; to the naked arse as most of the prefects put it, as ever using the most vulgar of terms as all schoolboys do.

The senior prefect of each house, the House Captain, was assisted in by two other senior prefects from the upper sixth all aged eighteen years old. Additionally, there were in each house, three junior prefects from the lower sixth. So all in all there were six prefects in maintaining order over some fifty or so boys in each house. The senior prefects were authorised to beat all and any of their house mates up to a maximum of six cuts of the cane on the bare. The junior prefects were not allowed to wield the cane and had to refer any boy whom they thought deserved punishment to one of the three senior prefects of his house. It goes without saying that when a senior prefect wielded the cane, moderation was thrown to the winds, so much so that at Ollerton a prefect's beating was much more feared than one delivered by most of the masters. It was the masters who disciplined the boys during class times and the prefects who took over at all other times. And so it was the prefects who were the main wielders of the cane at Ollerton: and wield it they did.

One should not, however, forget the Headmaster himself, who at the time of our story was a grim-faced classicist divine, called Dr. Clarence Mortimer Redvers-Grex. He was a cadaverous, bony man in his early forties who took the lower and upper sixths for ancient Greek. He was a bachelor, with all that that implies in public school life; and in common with many "men of the cloth" was an ardent believer and practitioner of corporal punishment. He was himself really very nifty with both cane and birch; a beating by him, which was never less than twelve strokes, was something to be avoided. He regularly flogged sixth formers from his Greek classes and relied upon referrals from his teaching staff to provide him with a steady flow of arses from the younger classes to beat. And beat them he did!

Although the senior prefects were limited to six strokes of the cane at any one time, the Head boy was allowed to give a maximum of twelve strokes "if he thought it justified". It is amazing just how many times twelve biting cuts of the cane the Head Boy deemed to be "justified" But the cream on the cake for the Head Boy was that he too was authorised to use the birch on what the Headmaster called "particularly recalcitrant boys and on those who were clearly recidivists." Ollerton had two types of birch: a senior birch which only the Headmaster used and the junior, lighter birch, which was in the hands of the Head Boy. But well applied, as it always was, the junior birch was a Head Boy's toy to be avoided.

The Head Boy of the school was chosen on merit by the Headmaster in consultation with his fellow teachers and could be from any of the five houses: but on his preferment, he had to move to School House, where, as Head Boy of the school and House Captain, he enjoyed what amounted almost to the status of a master in that he had a suite of two rooms, a study and a bedroom, and a wash room with private lavatory. At the time of this story there was only cold running water and the Head Boy still had to use the communal showers to wash himself. Hot water, when he needed it, was brought to him by his personal fag, who plays a central role in this story.

Reading this today, it is difficult for any of us to realise just how inconvenient life was at the beginning of the last century for virtually everyone except the very rich who had numerous servants whose job it was to keep their masters and mistresses happy. Electricity was in its infancy; heating was largely by open coal fires and cooking was on coal fired ranges or by gas made in the local gas works. Electric light had hardly made an appearance and places were still lit largely by candles, oil lamps and gas lamps with incandescent mantles: items which we today consider charming "decorators' pieces" but which at that time were essentials of daily life. Transport, other than long distance travel by steam train, was still for the most part, horse drawn.

But to come back from the nostalgia of social history, each sixth former, including all the prefects, had his own study bedroom, but had to use the communal washing and bathing facilities where, thank god, there was hot water on tap. The House Captain's study in each house was somewhat larger, but like the others he had to use the communal washing facilities. All other boys from the first through the fifth form slept in one of five twelve bed dormitories which were closely controlled by the prefects. Dormitory beatings were commonplace; all twelve occupants were made to stand at the bottom of their beds, drop their pyjama trousers, bend across te bed and allow the prefect or master to thrash their naked arses. And so as the reader will appreciate, there was little privacy at all and everyone knew more or less everything that was going on. Nothing could be kept secret for very long.

Now we come to the peculiar British practice called fagging. Each house of sixty boys had six prefects, each of whom had his own fag who was nothing more than an unpaid servant. You have to remember that the background of Ollertonians was from the upper classes and that servants were the norm. So fagging did not seem anything out of the ordinary, even to the fags themselves. Again it was thought to have that all important quality: character building; and so it was totally accepted by one and all as part of everyday school life. All the fags were first year boys who were expected to perform all sorts of menial tasks, free of charge for their fag-master prefect.

Of the remaining sixth formers, only those of the upper sixth, in their final year at school had the privilege of having access to the services of a fag. I say access because these fags were not attributed to any specific person: they had no specific fag-master, but were general dogsbodies at the beck and call of the nine boys in the upper sixth that had not had the privilege of being elevated to the rank of prefect. They were drawn from what can best be described as a "fag pool" located in what was the the junior boys' common room. When the call "faaaag" was issued in a loud voice by a sixth-former, one or other of the boys from the pool had to answer the call.

Ollerton had been conceived with exceptional mathematical precision. With a total of six prefects per house, (three from the lower and three from the upper sixth) each with a dedicated fag, and an intake of twelve new boys each year, only six boys of the new intake remained to fag for the nine boys of the upper sixth who were not themselves prefects. And so the system of the fag pool had been conceived; nine boys from the upper upper sixth had to "make do" with six fags amongst themselves. And to add insult to injury, the non-prefect upper sixth lads could not discipline their fags: they had to pass them on to one of the senior prefects if they wanted to see their fag beaten for some misdemeanour: real or imaginary; and make no mistake; misdemeanours were both legion and and regular so that referrals of pool fags to prefects for a beating were an everyday occurrence at Ollerton. Where Ollerton stood exactly in what might best be characterised as the "public schools arse beating league" has never been defined, but it certainly would have held its own against most comers.

So, by now the reader will have a good idea of the detailed structure and the pecking order, or more grandly put, the order of precedence of the boys: an order that was strictly maintained and observed by all. It was just the way things had always been done at Ollerton and everyone accepted it. In fact, in its own way, Ollerton was a faithful reflection of British society of the early twentieth century: everyone knew his place in the hierarchy and kept to it: a place for everyone and everyone in his place!.

The boys took all their meals and spent their leisure time in their own houses. There was tremendous rivalry between the houses on the sports field and boys quickly became attached to their own house, convinced of its superiority and fiercely defended its honour against all comers. Meals served were breakfast, lunch and supper, but there was a house kitchen in which the boys could make tea and toast and where the fags could also make breakfast for their fag masters; tea, that indispensable component of British life, toast and cocoa could also be made in the house kitchen. Afternoon tea parties at which the fags were expected to serve their fag masters were quite common.

So now let us turn to the fags and their fag-masters and in this case, quite specifically to the newly nominated Head Boy, one Sebastian Jeremy Mottram, the only son of Colonel Albert Jeremy Mottram. Sebastian had been accorded the imaginatively delightful nick-name, the Whacking Wanker, by those who had known and experienced him as a junior prefect the previous year. I think no explanation is needed as to the significance of this name: suffice it to say that it was not totally apposite. His fag was one, the Honourable Timothy Edward Clive Lattymer-Smith, the younger son of the fourth Lord Lattymer of Adel cum Eccup in the County of York. So, as you must by now have appreciated we have here a very upper crust combination of master (Mottram) and servant (Lattymer-Smith). Of course alluding to crusts and strata of school, society, Lattymer-Smith, in spite of his superior social rank, as a fag to Mottram, the Head Boy, as tantamount to a nobody.

But before continuing to explore the relationship between these two boys, the Head Boy from the sixth form and his fag, a first year recruit, it is worthwhile seeing how the remaining fags were allocated among the prefects.

Firstly in what was the very unequal and stratified society of Ollerton, by tradition, only the Head Boy was allowed to choose his personal fag from the new intake of sixty boys. Once his choice had been made, the other fifty-nine boys were each given a numbered lottery ticket, the counterfoils of which were put into a bucket and shaken up. Then each of the six prefects who was to have the privilege of having his own personal fag, selected blindly a counterfoil thus allocating him his fag. This was the nearest thing to democracy which existed at Ollerton. The remaining boys who had not been lucky enough by chance to be allocated to a single fag-master, constituted the members of the fag-pool. But although there was no stigma of inferiority attached to their position, as they had found themselves there purely by chance. it was inevitable, given the mathematics of the situation, that they became the dogsbodies of the fagging class as they served multiple masters.