Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

The whole business of trashy popular culture was nicely covered by GK Chesterton in an essay called "In Defence of Penny Dreadfuls". It appears that scary comics were just as prevalent a hundred years ago as now. Chesterton noted that whenever street scamps were arraigned before a magistrate on some charge or other they pleaded that they'd done it on account of reading a penny dreadful. In later times people had "done it" because they were under the influence of LSD, and in still later times because they'd watched a "video nasty". Chesterton thought that the magistrates were often unworldly in allowing the scamps to use these excuses. Maybe they were just unprincipled little scamps full stop. Flecker, Seaman, etc, both seem to have thought that you can stop the proles from having their cheap thrills. Big mistake. Orwell, in his magisterial way, wrote that the working classes would always find ways of outwitting you. He summed this up by citing that old music hall song "A Little Of What You Fancy Does You Good".

ASR wrote: Mon Mar 29, 2021 9:52 pm "I'm Backing Britain" stickers,

The (Yeomans'?) printing press in BaA was used to preprint envelopes with suitable slogans - 'We've got to get in to get on' and 'Make a ghost of the two tier post' were two I recall (and printed!)

I just caught up with this thread, eighteen months late.

In my day at CH (1970s), small-format British war comics and American-style comic-books were still referred to as trash mags by the boys, which leaves me wondering when and why the term first came into use at the school. As some will know, all comics were banned in Nazi Germany, because the regime considered them to be Schmutz und Schund (smut and trash), with the term Schundliteratur being applied to comics as a genre on the grounds that they were a degenerate form of literature which harmed children's minds. So how did the term trash mag invade the CH vocabulary? Did Flecker introduce it himself, taking his lead from Goebbels? Or was it a Seamanism - alongside pop slush - likewise copied from the Goebbels songbook?

Martin Chuzzletits wrote: Sat Oct 15, 2022 10:28 am I just caught up with this thread, eighteen months late.

In my day at CH (1970s), small-format British war comics and American-style comic-books were still referred to as trash mags by the boys, which leaves me wondering when and why the term first came into use at the school. As some will know, all comics were banned in Nazi Germany, because the regime considered them to be Schmutz und Schund (smut and trash), with the term Schundliteratur being applied to comics as a genre on the grounds that they were a degenerate form of literature which harmed children's minds. So how did the term trash mag invade the CH vocabulary? Did Flecker introduce it himself, taking his lead from Goebbels? Or was it a Seamanism - alongside pop slush - likewise copied from the Goebbels songbook?

Quite possibly but I always thought they were 'trash' mags to distinguish them from 'bog' mags which served quite another purpose.

Alex posted (some time ago!
Are there more examples of CH (Horsham) censorship?

One not mentioned was censorship of inward post. A certain member hereof had a girlfriend whose letters seem to have been somewhat "hot". Kit heard about this and the boy's inward mail was checked by Kit who I suspect allowed some to be read in his presence.

Worse, that boy's sister, very attractive in her youth, also spent time in Kit's office when she visited. Censorship