What was the food chain?

This section was setup in August 2018 in order to move the existing related discussions from other sections into this new section to group them together, and separate from the other CH-related topics.

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rockfreak
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Re: What was the food chain?

Post by rockfreak »

But it might have been your demeanour as a copper John. I one went into a pub with a colleague who had been in the force and the landlord immediately looked a bit edgy. After our drinks had been served he sidled across and said to my friend: "OK guv? Everything all right?" Friend said that this was not an unusual occurrence. Maybe the old buffers had some city fraud issues.
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Re: What was the food chain?

Post by Mid A 15 »

J.R. wrote: Sun Jul 29, 2018 11:33 am Did anyone on here ever eat in the OB's Club when it was in London ?

I did once, and once was enough !!
I tried to once with another Old Blue friend who was also working in the City at the time. (Mid / late seventies).

We wandered in and didn't see a soul for about 5 minutes. Then a chap appeared and asked if he could help us? We explained that we were Old Blues and had popped in for a bite to eat and a drink. Oh we don't do lunches anymore - lack of demand he said. Then he introduced himself. Basil Etherton his name was. Seemed a pleasant enough chap but we never went back and I never discovered exactly what Basil did there. Unless he was on guard to tell OBs the Club no longer served lunches.
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michael scuffil
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Re: What was the food chain?

Post by michael scuffil »

J.R. wrote: Thu Jul 26, 2018 4:15 pm As I seem to remember, the food was supposed to have 'improved' under the tenure of a new school physician, Dr. 'Tommy' Scott.

All I can remember from my first week in 1958 is that it was edible, (just). There was no choice, so it was a case of eat or starve.

However, I'm drifting off topic.
Not to worry. I think it was less the work of Scott, and more that of Mrs Johnston and the installation of the new kitchens in (I think) 1954. While by modern standards the food was dreadful, pretty well all visiting sports teams (who ate lunch with us) were fulsome in their praise, saying it was much better than what they got.
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Re: What was the food chain?

Post by michael scuffil »

richardb wrote: Thu Jul 26, 2018 9:38 am We know that Baker wrote a pile of lies to cover up for Webb. But were they his own lies or would he have the Nuremberg defence that he was acting under orders?

Can anyone shed any light on who actually pulls the strings and tells Headmasters to cover up?
To answer your last question, and indeed your first, I think that the sort of managerialism you envisage was not then in place. I don't think anyone could 'tell' a headmaster to cover up, or indeed to do anything else. In those days the HM was on a level with the Clerk, and it is entirely possible that Baker and Salisbury conferred.

Let us go back a decade or three. There was, in the Prep, one Mr Pink. I have it on credible personal testimony that he was an abuser. He left suddenly in the sense that he did not return after the summer holiday of 1955. That this coincided (temporally) with the arrival of Seaman as HM was probably not a matter of chance. Seaman was a new broom determined to sweep clean, and I imagine his reputation preceded him. Now Mr Pink presumably got another job (anyone know where?). He probably had a glowing reference (from whom?). We do have to remember that the 1950s were not the 1980s, and the 1980s are not the 2010s.

Sexual abuse has become the sin against the Holy Ghost. Jimmy Saville is reviled. And yet the actor who played Dirty Den in Eastenders was a convicted murderer in real life, a fact that was barely mentioned when he recently died. Murder, it seems, can be forgiven, while sexual abuse cannot.
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Re: What was the food chain?

Post by richardb »

The stereotypical response from the school is that "safeguarding" has only recently been invented.

The school was in loco parentis and no parent needs to be told what to do if their child is abused, so why did the school employ different rules for other people's children in their charge?
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Great Plum
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Re: What was the food chain?

Post by Great Plum »

It would be interesting to see how the school’s response differs from others in a similar situation- I recall Charterhouse having a similar situation a few years ago...
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Re: What was the food chain?

Post by sejintenej »

michael scuffil wrote: Tue Jul 31, 2018 4:15 pm
Let us go back a decade or three. There was, in the Prep, one Mr Pink. I have it on credible personal testimony that he was an abuser.. We do have to remember that the 1950s were not the 1980s, and the 1980s are not the 2010s.
Yes, I remember Mr Pink and why is it that I remember him and not the 101 other masters I came into contact with? True, no specifics to tell a jury but enough to stop another (non-CH) abuser many years later.

Sexual abuse has become the sin against the Holy Ghost. Jimmy Saville is reviled. And yet the actor who played Dirty Den in Eastenders was a convicted murderer in real life, a fact that was barely mentioned when he recently died. Murder, it seems, can be forgiven, while sexual abuse cannot.
[/quote]
We joke in the family that you get 10 years for murder so after 50 years+ marriage I have killed five wives. (NOT TRUE - she's still with me alive). Your statement is too true; even the most awful crimes have become commonplace and do not lead to revulsion unless the press start up. We have the current abuse cases but ISTR that 80% of current cases relate to such abuse but how much do you hear? By contrast I have already recorded the life destroying effec ts of a simple theft years ago
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Re: What was the food chain?

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michael scuffil wrote: Tue Jul 31, 2018 4:15 pmSexual abuse has become the sin against the Holy Ghost. Jimmy Saville is reviled. And yet the actor who played Dirty Den in Eastenders was a convicted murderer in real life, a fact that was barely mentioned when he recently died. Murder, it seems, can be forgiven, while sexual abuse cannot.
I'd say it's always been more reviled than murder and for quite a long time. I seem to remember bits of Suetonius' Twelve Caesars where a predilection for children was used as proof that a certain caesar was morally flawed, but murder was just seen as a normal part of doing business. The more complex and cunning the murder, the more qualified that caesar was to govern the senate, but if their celebratory bacchanalia involved children as anything other than drinks carriers then they were obviously unfit for duty and their inevitable murder would barely raise eyebrows.

What has changed now is that as well as the scale of the uncovered abuses being greater, the people/institutions who have covered for them are also firmly being pushed into the light and held to account. The (former) Archbishop of Adelaide being a recent example.

To put it bluntly, for a lot of people murder is seen as something they could, under specific circumstances, commit themselves, particularly if there is a strong motive. Child abuse isn't and even for most criminals, let alone fine upstanding citizens, it is (and has been for some time) one of the few unforgivable crimes.
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Re: What was the food chain?

Post by Foureyes »

Mr Pink. I certainly remember him. He was senior housemaster of Prep B when I was there in 48-49, assisted by a Mr Keep as junior housemaster. Pink had a nasty practice of standing behind a boy who had upset him for some reason, placing his hands on the boy's shoulders and then digging fingers backwards and forwards across the boys collarbone. It happened to me once and was very painful. It only happened in class and as far as I remember we thought it a better alternative to a beating. It only happened in class, and, that apart, I can recall nothing against Pink.
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Re: What was the food chain?

Post by sejintenej »

scrub wrote: Tue Jul 31, 2018 6:46 pm
What has changed now is that as well as the scale of the uncovered abuses being greater, the people/institutions who have covered for them are also firmly being pushed into the light and held to account. The (former) Archbishop of Adelaide being a recent example.
A friend, perhaps my closest friend, was a priest, a teacher in the seminary, and left the Church because of its attitude to life, responsibility, control and the hiding of such crimes. Married, he has now retired from being a High Court Judge. He remains a committed Christian but writes scathingly, even on the internet, about the RC church as it is now. He was not alone in leaving - even now he has contact with his pupils who have left.
To put it bluntly, for a lot of people murder is seen as something they could, under specific circumstances, commit themselves, particularly if there is a strong motive. Child abuse isn't and even for most criminals, let alone fine upstanding citizens, it is (and has been for some time) one of the few unforgivable crimes.
I agree entirely. I simply cannot understand the allure of a child (and not being gay) especially that male allure.
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Re: What was the food chain?

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Re: What was the food chain?

Post by Avon »

I certainly remember an alternative interpretation of the oft-scrawled ‘BBB’.
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Re: What was the food chain?

Post by michael scuffil »

It only happened in class, and, that apart, I can recall nothing against Pink.

I never knew the man. But a contemporary (whom I could name, but won't) who had been in Prep B gave me convincing accounts of frank genital abuse in the dormitory late at night. I admit that this is hearsay and he may have been lying, but I don't think so. Of course, he was only 9 or 10 at the time, and by the time he told me this (a year or two later), Pink had gone. His name, incidentally, was a watchword for 'dirty old man' with a reputation for staring at naked boys. I would not remember all this about someone I'd never seen if it wasn't much talked about. And his departure was sudden and unannounced.
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Re: What was the food chain?

Post by postwarblue »

I was in Prep B for the school year 1946-7 and had no idea that Mr Pink was anything but an ordinary schoolmaster. I do remember being taught map reading very well by him in geography. He had a small rubber doggy bone that he sued as a missile towards the inattentive whose weird shape produced unexpected ricochets.
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Re: What was the food chain?

Post by rockfreak »

There are times when I think to myself "should I blow the gaff or not?" But Michael Scuffil has made some pertinent points about the whole sliding scale of sexual gropery to rapery and how it is treated in the courts as opposed to other serious assault (even murder) crimes.
I was in Prep B when Gordon Pink was busy fiddling about (like Uncle Ernie in The Who's Tommy) and it had been tolerated and indeed giggled about for much of my time there. As pre-pubescents and perhaps without today's greater knowledge of these things we maybe saw him as a rather shabbily dressed eccentric bachelor with some rather bizarre rude habits. The tragedy was that he was in other respects an excellent English teacher and also a humourist who could have his class in fits of laughter. It was low level stuff (ie below the waist) and usually involved trying to slide his hand up people's shorts in order to cop a feel. Towards the end of my time in Prep B a lad who might be described as the house clown (there's one in every house) suddenly announced: ""It's disgusting, all this fiddling. It shouldn't be allowed". I can see him to this day perched on the window ledge at the end of the dayroom with a notebook and pen soliciting "fiddling evidence" from a giggling dayroom. In the end he must have had enough because he presented it to his mother who went to the authorities, so that when I came back in Autumn 1955 into the Upper school I noted that Pink had gone.
While I don't condone any of this activity (and it doesn't change my long-held belief that boarding schools are outdated) I do think that Dr Scuffil has raised some good points (his truffles if you like) in asking why sexual pecadilloes at the lower end of the scale are so harshly penalised when, for instance, someone who physically assaults and knocks his kids around in the home, or for instance someone who assaults and batters older or vulnerable people, or throws acid over people, are treated no worse by the courts. When I raised this before was it Richardb who said that we now conform to the America "grid system" where sexual assault is considered a the crime of all crimes?
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