Compared to other schools for boys in the period, in fact, the public schools were less frequently associated with homosexual acts. English education for boys outside the public-school system in the early nineteenth century was a hodge-podge of small day schools and boarding schools, many run by a single master and catering to a small group of pupils. It was these institutions whose masters appeared most frequently before the courts and in the newspapers in connection with the sexual abuse of pupils. John Spencer, a “tall, respectable-looking man, grayhaired, and about 60” was charged with “infamous conduct” with several of his pupils at his school in Hackney.20 A few years later, Neville Plumer was charged with assaulting four of his students at his school at 14 Charles Street.21 Twenty years earlier, the Times had printed a story about the alleged sexual assaults of Edward Caston on pupils under his care.22 John Wall’s “abominable conduct” toward the boys in his school was said to have been so persistent “that it became the general subject of conversation amongst boys from other schools.”23 Thomas Anderbon, a forty-five-year-old schoolmaster, described as “of superior education” in the Weekly Dispatch, was indicted for having committed an indecent assault upon one of his pupils on more than one occasion.24 These and many similar incidents were crimes of opportunity, in which older men took advantage of their positions of authority to abuse those younger and more vulnerable.
One of the few public-school cases reported in the press also involved the abuse of boys by an older individual, but not a schoolmaster. In 1842 Patrick Leigh Strachan, about thirty-eight years old, “of gentlemanly appearance, and who has since been discovered to be a man of considerable property,” was known to have gone to Harrow and Sandhurst College on at least three occasions and persuaded young men to accompany him back to his chambers in London, at which point “he proceeded to conduct himself in such a manner as to leave the criminality of his intentions beyond a doubt.” Based on the courtroom testimony, the authorities had “been making inquiries at other large establishments of a similar description, and there was every reason to believe that the prisoner had formed a deep-laid system of attack upon the youth of many of the public schools in the country.”25 Strachan had access to the boys at public schools because he himself had attended one, and he used his background as a pretext for his interest in these upper-class young men. His method on one occasion, it was said, was to “introduce himself into a respectable family [and make] arrangements for the youth to remain with him a few days in London, previous to going home.” The magistrate in the case observed “that at present he believed the extent of the prisoner’s proceedings had not been ascertained, but it was to be hoped that what had already occurred would operate as a sufficient warning to parents not to allow their children to make such visits for the future.”26
Strachan’s sexual acts with public-school students were publicized because he was essentially a predator from outside the school system, taking advantage of the trust that families extended to a member of their own class. The public disclosure of his activities was seen as a warning to other parents. Situations involving individuals within a school were more likely to be dealt with internally, as when William Johnson Cory, a master at Eton, was dismissed because of his romantic relationships with a small circle of his students.
This incident highlights the way in which allegations of sex between men wholly internal to the public schools often remained shrouded in ambiguity, even in the better-documented cases. In this instance, letters that seem highly suggestive of sexual desire between men survive. The language the correspondents use with each other, the jealousies that developed, and the male companions they took later in life all point to homoerotic desires.27 Yet it is impossible to say conclusively even whether allegations of sex between men were the cause of Cory’s dismissal from Eton, because the school did not make public or keep a record of its reasons, and the individuals involved never explicitly identified any sexual act between men in their copious correspondence. Instead they point to an environment of privilege and privacy, where disputes were settled among gentlemen without resorting to the law.28
The ability of those in elite schools to resolve these matters discreetly among themselves can be better understood by looking at one instance in the mid-nineteenth century when this practice broke down. The events of 1850 involved both the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, founded in the eighteenth century to train commissioned officers for the Royal Artillery and the Royal Engineers, and at the Carshalton Academy, started only in the mid-1840s as a preparatory academy for potential Woolwich students. The incident began when “three boys, who had recently been draughted in a lot of 10 from Carshalton to fill up vacancies at Woolwich, were accused by their new schoolfellows of grossly immoral practices.”29 The parents of the boys were informed, private hearings at the school were held, and the three were expelled. The incident did not end there, though, because “in the course of the investigation it unexpectedly transpired that the practices in question were more or less prevalent amongst the pupils of Carshalton Academy, whence the culprits had recently come.”30 These revelations sparked an extended investigation, “conducted by officers of the highest rank in the most cautious and secret manner,” that resulted in thirty pupils, mostly from Carshalton Academy, being sent home or withdrawing from the schools.
Roughly two-thirds of the parents of the accused boys complied with requests that they remove their boys rather than have them expelled. The remaining parents objected that they did not have the chance to confront their sons’ accusers, with one angry father, described as an officer of thirty years’ service, writing that “a secret committee has sat with closed doors and has examined 33 children in a way calculated to criminate [sic] themselves without any possibility of their knowing what charges are brought against them, or who were their accusers!”31 It was the objections of these parents, and their decision to make statements to the newspapers about the incident, that brought it to public notice; otherwise, it would almost certainly have been contained within the elite community of the schools.
Defenders of the schools’ approach argued that secrecy was maintained precisely for the protection of the accused boys. “Had a public investigation taken place . . . every one of their schoolfellows would have been cognizant of their disgrace . . . and the stigma thus affixed upon them would have clung to them in after life.”32 Because the matter was dealt with in secret, “their names are known to but a few, and would have been known to still fewer, had it not been for the injudicious contumacy of the parents of the 10 boys.” This correspondent to the Times also held out the hope that because these offenders were “mere children,” and because their names were not publicly revealed, “there is surely no reason why, having been thus promptly removed from the scene and from amongst the witnesses of their shame and their disgrace, they should not, in another career or amongst other associates, become in due time virtuous and estimable members of society.”33
But others responded that the secretive nature of the proceedings was not necessarily for the boys’ protection and did not necessarily serve their interests. If the behavior among the boys was really so widespread, it was suggested, then the administrators had been negligent in their oversight; and if it was not, then the administration had overreacted, using the protection of secrecy to err on the side of extensive dismissals, and in the process inflicting a severe punishment on boys who were perhaps guilty of only the slightest infractions. A different letter to the Times speculated that “the authorities of Woolwich are . . . building up for themselves a reputation for vigilance and discipline out of the mutilated characters of these sacrificed children.”34
Another line of accusations was directed not simply at the administrations of Woolwich and Carshalton but at the way boys were supervised in such institutions in general. One writer pointed out that in both schools, older boys shouldered the responsibility of supervising the younger ones. The Times indicated that it had heard from other credible sources that part of the problem lay within Woolwich Academy itself, where “tyranny of the most oppressive kind, and all the more