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CH in this week's Economist magazine re sex scandal in 1815

Posted: Wed May 29, 2019 9:02 am
by brian walling
I was intrigued to see in this week's issue of The Economist magazine a passing reference to sexual escapades at Christ's Hospital in the Regency period (1811-20). The article, a review of a book written by Canadian history professor Robert Morrison, a specialist on the English Regency period, is not damning about CH but it is nevertheless another unwelcome piece of ridicule. Interestingly, the reviewer also mentions a couple of other Old Blues, Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (without connecting them to CH) in the same article, in relation to opium use. The Economist article can be viewed online at: https://www.economist.com/books-and-art ... -modernity

Re: CH in this week's Economist magazine re sex scandal in 1815

Posted: Wed May 29, 2019 4:43 pm
by sejintenej
We have to accept that different epochs had different mores. How many of us do (not) have royal blood in our veins resulting from kings and princes using their authority over chambermaids, other people's wives even up into the 1930's. Think of how many children resulted from wartime couplings between unmarried partners who didn't see each other again. It happens and the more dangerous the situation I suggest that the more it occurs.

Remember that the hotel where Maggie Thatcher nearly felt the bomb even 50 years ago would send a staff member ringing a bell around the bedroom corridors at 7am so that couples could return unseen to their allotted bedrooms. I used to work in Hove and the company manufactured an address in Western Avenue rather than use Brunswick Square because it was common knowledge that that was where moneyed toffs kept their mistresses.

As for opium, laudanum (?spelling) and similar drugs those were the painkilers and life enhancers known to the gentry and considered "normal" in the last century and even in my lifetime. It is close to a reverse of the time when men bathed in the sea completely naked and women fully clothed - now it is almost the opposite.

There is nothing to stop people learning about the past - it existed then, to a large extent it happens now . If peeps are to ridicule those historical facts of life then surely they are lesser educated in our past?

Re: CH in this week's Economist magazine re sex scandal in 1815

Posted: Fri May 31, 2019 6:58 pm
by LHA
Can anyone post the article?

Re: CH in this week's Economist magazine re sex scandal in 1815

Posted: Sun Jun 02, 2019 8:41 am
by dsm
The link above works

Re: CH in this week's Economist magazine re sex scandal in 1815

Posted: Sun Jun 02, 2019 8:17 pm
by bakunin
Says you have to pay for me.

Can anyone who can see it paste the relevant section?

Re: CH in this week's Economist magazine re sex scandal in 1815

Posted: Sun Jun 02, 2019 8:18 pm
by Pe.A
dsm wrote: Sun Jun 02, 2019 8:41 am The link above works
You need to suscribe and pay the dues to read the full article...

Re: CH in this week's Economist magazine re sex scandal in 1815

Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 10:35 pm
by stage crew
Pe.A wrote: Sun Jun 02, 2019 8:18 pm
dsm wrote: Sun Jun 02, 2019 8:41 am The link above works
You need to suscribe and pay the dues to read the full article...
Suffice to say, Sir Eyre Coote MP was caricatured by Cruikshank for paying older boys in the Mathematical School for a session of mutual flagellation in 1815; and being caught by the school nurse. https://images.app.goo.gl/PFx6mPeLtssVEY346

Re: CH in this week's Economist magazine re sex scandal in 1815

Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 11:16 pm
by adlop
Here's the relevant paragraph
Image

Re: CH in this week's Economist magazine re sex scandal in 1815

Posted: Tue Jun 04, 2019 2:42 pm
by Foureyes
I am sure that few will want to follow this up, but for those who do, it is worth bearing in mind that there were several people around this historical period with the same name, all of whom were army officers. This particular one was Sir Eyre Coote born 20 May 1762 and died 10 December 1823. His punishments for the C.H. affair in 1815 were curious. The Lord Mayor had him charged in the Mansion House, but the case was dismissed when Coote paid £1000 to the school. The Duke of York, then CinC, had him charged with 'conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman' and on being found guilty he was stripped of his rank and decorations, and dismissed from the army. He was also an MP, but Parliament did nothing about it and he only lost his seat at the Dissolution in 1818. I wonder why his fellow MPs seem to have taken a more sympathetic view???
David :shock:

Re: CH in this week's Economist magazine re sex scandal in 1815

Posted: Tue Jun 04, 2019 6:14 pm
by sejintenej
stage crew wrote: Mon Jun 03, 2019 10:35 pm
Pe.A wrote: Sun Jun 02, 2019 8:18 pm
dsm wrote: Sun Jun 02, 2019 8:41 am The link above works
You need to suscribe and pay the dues to read the full article...
Suffice to say, Sir Eyre Coote MP was caricatured by Cruikshank for paying older boys in the Mathematical School for a session of mutual flagellation in 1815; and being caught by the school nurse. https://images.app.goo.gl/PFx6mPeLtssVEY346
and yet " his eccentricities being perfetly innocent and not likely to produce injurious circumstances either to himself or to others were viewed without serious alarms by his friends"

At least CH earned £1000 (in those days) for the work of its pupils.
Things were very different in those days. Sorry CH pupils, male, female or inbetween, I don't fancy flaggelation even for that sort of money.

Re: CH in this week's Economist magazine re sex scandal in 1815

Posted: Tue Jun 04, 2019 7:38 pm
by rockfreak
You really must read all read James Brooke-Smith's recent book Gilded Youth which depicts the shenanigans that went on at boarding schools in times past. The loucheness, legover and libertarianism that went on at boarding schools in the Regency period was seemingly just a reflection of the same activity that was going on in society at the time (at least among the upper classes - the poor were probably being worked to death). Indeed rebellions against the school authorities were not unusual, especially when the young bucks (all from the moneyed classes) felt that their privileges to behave in roistering fashion were being circumscribed. On one occasion a beadle was given a severe thrashing by the older boys. Back then of course beadles were the main source of discipline while the senior boys were left to keep some sort of order, although this often seems to have been the kind of "order" meted out to Tom Brown in the book of the same name. The idea was that the actual teachers of classics were far too pedagogically privileged to have to be bothered by pastoral care. This changed with Arnold of Rugby who is said to have devised the system of the public school that pupils of my generation would have been familiar with. I must say however that remnants of the old system still seemed to sound an echo when I was there in the 1950s. Housemasters sometimes there when needed; sometimes not, and discipline too often left to a bunch of monitors whose milk of human kindness varied greatly.

Re: CH in this week's Economist magazine re sex scandal in 1815

Posted: Tue Jun 04, 2019 9:13 pm
by sejintenej
rockfreak wrote: Tue Jun 04, 2019 7:38 pm The loucheness, legover and libertarianism that went on at boarding schools in the Regency period was seemingly just a reflection of the same activity that was going on in society at the time (at least among the upper classes - the poor were probably being worked to death).
"at the time" does not seem to include the era of our youth. So far as "upper c;lasses" are concerned I am 99.9% sure that it was going on between cousins I had contact with and I suspect that they sometimes included a famous authoress and perhaps her even more famous writer husband even in my early years. They were very definitely upperest class; by contrast a friend brought up in the East End of London recalls over the odd pint or three how his father took him and paid for him to be taught how to conduct himself by the local "lady of the night". Females present also had appropriate and not very dissimilar tales of their youth. Class had absolutely nothing to do with it.
while the senior boys were left to keep some sort of order,
Shades of CH in our era.
This changed with Arnold of Rugby
. Please remember that there are those of us who, earning a living, worked long hours, ate and slept before working again. (I was doing 9am to 11pm four days a week pluse 9am Friday to 6pm Saturday and 3 Sundays in four. As for Arnold - the latest treatises on commercial law were my travel time reading, not Arnold. Hence I am lost by your reference.
Housemasters sometimes there when needed; sometimes not, and discipline too often left to a bunch of monitors whose milk of human kindness varied greatly.
CH again. And for goodness sake we learned early how to organise. to delegate, to control, to praise and to upbraid those around us just like a services officer. Da*n good training for later life.

Re: CH in this week's Economist magazine re sex scandal in 1815

Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2019 5:09 pm
by postwarblue
For Harrow in the late 1860s I refer the reader John Addington Symonds' 'Memoirs', ed. Phyllis Grosskurth, Hutchinson 1984

Re: CH in this week's Economist magazine re sex scandal in 1815

Posted: Sat Jun 08, 2019 6:29 pm
by Pe.A
stage crew wrote: Mon Jun 03, 2019 10:35 pm
Pe.A wrote: Sun Jun 02, 2019 8:18 pm
dsm wrote: Sun Jun 02, 2019 8:41 am The link above works
You need to suscribe and pay the dues to read the full article...
Suffice to say, Sir Eyre Coote MP was caricatured by Cruikshank for paying older boys in the Mathematical School for a session of mutual flagellation in 1815; and being caught by the school nurse. https://images.app.goo.gl/PFx6mPeLtssVEY346
Party time at CH...!!

Re: CH in this week's Economist magazine re sex scandal in 1815

Posted: Sat Jun 08, 2019 8:42 pm
by rockfreak
I think it's quite touching; older figures of authority back then being flagellated by pupils. Seems positively egalitarian. When I was there in the 50s it was definitively the other way round. We might have welcomed the chance to take the birch to some of them. "OK Macnutt, (or NT Fryer, or several others) bend over, here I come!"