.

The New Headmasters

As I sat, that afternoon, upon his knee
While he read a “witty” book and I faux-laughed
I’m afraid, aged eight, I didn’t really see
What was happening: I now feel rather daft.
But “frottage,” back in Nineteen Eighty-Nine,
In an England run by toffs from public schools,
Such as Geoffrey Howe and Michael Heseltine,
Was, somehow, just about within the rules,
And in those public schools some men liked feeling,
Or caning boys’ bare, bottoms: “It’s tradition!”
“It makes them men! No knighthood without kneeling!”
So parents overlooked their boys’ perdition.

Fast-forward now to Twenty-Twenty Five
And the gentry, in Westminster, sit no more.
Influential heads are very much alive
But they’re women so they’re “caring” to the core,
Such that schoolboys may not be so much as touched,
“Ban running?” “Yes! The lad might trip and fall!”
A child, like a diamond’s, tightly clutched,
So he can’t be hurt, not even by a ball,
But the problem is he so “cannot be hurt”
That you may not even tell him he’s mistaken.
If he says he is a pig and rolls in dirt
Then he’s right and he might fear becoming bacon.

There’s no fondling in these schools, the cane’s long-banned,
But the teachers, most are women, will accept
When frightened, pining for a gentle hand
Or listening ear, a girl, emotions wrecked
On unexpected shards of dolomite,
As it hits her she must leave behind her toys,
Feels something in her life is not quite right . . .
Maybe she’s in fact one of the boys?
And here, perhaps, the fields of Eton play,
But in reverse; no birching, belt or sermon.
The adults just do as she says, obey;
Make her the grown-up, her life to determine.

As I sat, that afternoon, upon his knee
While he read a “witty” book and I faux-laughed
I’m afraid, aged eight, I didn’t really see
What would happen and how it was so daft
To think that one day, when I’m forty-four,
It could be any better than that time:
Yes, boys were groped or beaten to the floor,
And few of us would think to call it “crime,”
But now these girls, wrecked on these splintered rocks,
Lost life-boats smashing into some dark isle,
Have been given means their puberty to block,
Which has left them brittle-boned and infertile.

And some have had their breasts both cut away
And only then have seen they were confused.
Flogging, touching or this, either way,
Have they not both been horribly abused?
By adults whom you’d think that they could trust?
Whether sadists in black gowns who make boys cry?
And master-pederasts, concealing lust?
Or those who ask how girls “identify”?
Even though they’re far too young to even start
To mull on what they are and who they’ll be,
Such that they could rip their bodies clean apart?
Were we safer on those old headmasters’ knees?

.

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Lucius Falkland is the nom de plume of a writer and academic originally from London. His first poetry collection, The Evening The Times Newspaper Turned Into Jane Eyre, was published with Exeter House Publishing in 2025.

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13 Responses

  1. Mark Stellinga

    If the author of this very disturbing piece went through the same treachery as what children are being subjected to by today’s pederasts, I can easily understand his choice to pen and post it anonymously. I hope, for his sake, that’s not the case… extremely moving, Lucius (?).

    Reply
  2. Joseph S. Salemi

    In Europe people noticed that many Englishmen preferred a somewhat violent and hard-hitting sex, which the French called “le vice anglais.” It was often attributed to the no-nonsense whippings (with a rough birch rod) that were administered to boys as punishment in the public schools. The poet Swinburne’s fascination with S&M was probably doe to this practice (see his great poem “Our Lady of Pain”).

    There were many absurd things in the English public schools. The fanatical obsession with forcing every single boy to take part in sports was one of them, and shy and bookish students went through the torment of pain and injury. You could get “six of the best” from a prefect if you missed some goddamned footer practice. Six of the best were six harsh blows with a birch rod on your buttocks, struck against a chalk line drawn on the seat of your pants. If you tried to complain, you got “eight of the best.” If you screamed or wept, the prefect would say “You have made me lose count. We must begin again.”

    Yes, it was tough and unfair, and the sexual frottage was definitely present. But what is happening today, with these young girls being propagandized to take puberty blockers and get transition surgery, is truly sickening.

    If “Lucius Falkland” is a pseudonym, then what does that tell you about the collapse of freedom of speech and thought in the United Kingdom? The land that we once called the Mother of Parliaments has now become a GULAG.

    Reply
    • C.B. Anderson

      Here we have an echo or a trace of Lucius Cary Viscount Falkland, which might or might not have anything to do with this poem.

      Reply
  3. Joseph S. Salemi

    What’s the matter? Is everyone here too frightened to comment on the sexual abuse of students (both past and present) in British public schools?

    Whether boys get their bottoms whipped with birchen rods, or whether girls get cajoled into hormone blockers and trans surgery, the subject still deserves attention.

    Reply
  4. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Joe, you are right. This subject deserves much more attention than it’s getting. Thank you very much, Lucius Falkland, for your hard-hitting poem that paints a vivid and honest picture of child abuse past and present and poses the burning question few will tackle.

    In the 70s and 80s, I attended a British school with a crazy, cane-wielding headmaster and a brutal maths and physics teacher. Fear was my constant companion, and my heart ached for tear-stained children beaten sore and raw by these brutes. I remember reading about Jimmy Savile, Cyril Smith and their wicked ilk and being sickened to my stomach by the crimes swept under the carpet by those in power. But nothing could prepare me for the horrors children face today – all in the guise of “care”. The castration and mutilation of minors should never be swept under the carpet. Our silence ensures it will be, which is why this thoughtful and thought-provoking poem matters.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thanks, Susan. My knowledge of the various horrors of the British public schools came from my reading of the stories of H.H. Munro (“Saki”), and most especially from his novel “The Unbearable Bassington.”

      Whippings or “canings” were usually done with a birch branch that had been picked for its suppleness and for an abundance of small sharp buds. The branch was soaked overnight in brine, so that when it cut through to the skin the salt would enter the wound, causing redoubled pain. But besides the birch, there were also whalebone riding crops, swagger sticks, and switches of various types. The entire business had become a time-honored tradition of sadism in some schools. The canings could be done by the teaching staff, or by older boys (the “prefects”) who supervised their younger classmates.

      Reply
      • C.B. Anderson

        And compare this idea to the old English folk song “The Bitter Withy”. Also, there’s a hint of “Spare the rod, and spoil the child” that is cause for wonderment.

  5. Mike Bryant

    This poem does deserve attention. It must hit too close to home for some. It certainly reminds me of the overzealous whippings I received at the hands of a monk – a man of God, supposedly. Unfortunately, this hooded problem of a saint was passed from parochial school to parochial school, aided and abetted by bishops and popes, until his righteousness blossomed into full-scale child rape.

    These wayward teachers and spiritual leaders claim to act in the child’s – and even their parents’ – best interests, but what they’re really trying to do is shape these innocents into reflections of their own beliefs, fears, and desires.

    As Joe and Susan have pointed out, whether the tools are birch rods or puberty blockers, the outcome is too often the same: lasting harm. And tragically, many of those shaped in this way go on to shape others, perpetuating the cycle under the same banner of righteousness.

    And it looks like it is destined to continue:

    https://redstatenation.com/breaking-pope-leo-xivs-dark-past-shocking-cover-up-of-chicago-priests-child-abuse-allegations-exposed/#google_vignette

    Brother Damian Victor, I suppose, is now in hell – that is, of course, unless he made confession to a properly ordained priest or made a perfect act of contrition.

    So, yeah… I guess we’ve gone from child sacrifices to Baal BCE, to the birch rod of English boarding schools, to the psychological destruction, pharmacologically induced psychosis, and surgical neutering/mutilation of our precious children today.
    These predations are often sanctioned by our churches.
    So, yeah… today is much, much worse. They are making these children into permanent patients of the Military Medical Industrial Complex.
    These are crimes against humanity.

    There is, of course, a technical, Jesuitic defense for these criminals enshrined in the library of the Vatican – titled in gold, hallowed in Latin – that will explain perfectly why God’s people MUST accept the predations, and pay for the bureaucracy that turns them into serfs.

    I’m not buying it.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Prevost is a disciple of Blase Cupich, whose record of covering up the sexual abuse of children is well known. And if Prevost (as the record shows) has done the same in the places where he held authority, then it’s all just business as usual.

      Reply
      • Mike Bryant

        Hey Joseph, since the USAID money has dried up (I hope!) for all the Catholic and Protestant charities, I wonder if change could be forced on churches if parishioners held off all donations for a year or two.
        Of course, I’m only dreaming. Anyone who is still associated with the Godless hypocrites, must really enjoy, and take pride in, the spiritual showiness. The Truth is only a voice in the wilderness, for now.

  6. Joseph S. Salemi

    Let me add that one can also find information about caning and flogging in the British schools by reading Rudyard Kipling’s collection of schoolboy memories, “Stalky & Company.” This is a wonderful episodic novel, in pure Kiplingesque style, about all of the wild things that could go on in an all-boys place of learning. It was based on Kipling’s own experience in a military preparatory college in the west of England. Most literary critics dislike “Stalky & Company” because it does not sentimentalize and idealize British school life, in the typical “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” manner.

    Reply
  7. David Whippman

    A thought-provoking poem indeed. One type of abuse has been swapped for another, maybe deadlier type. Lucius, thanks for tackling this difficult subject.

    Reply
  8. Brian Yapko

    This is indeed a skillfully-wrought and carefully considered poem, Lucius, which offers some deep insights — and a deep indictment — of the abuses perpetrated upon innocent children by adults who are supposed to have their welfare as their uppermost concern.

    While the subject is nominally British boarding schools, I think it fair to say that the abuses catalogued here are ubiquitous throughout the West and is not limited to educational institutions. Your discussion of “old school” abuses places the modern day practices you condemn firmly into a historical context so that we can see that the medical and psychiatric malpractice inflicted on sexually confused children to be only the latest in a long line of indignities. It is, however, the worst of them all since it creates both emotional and physical scars and results in the victim being sterlized.

    But also adding to the horror is reognition of the fact that misdiagnoses and the imposition of wrongful and uinnecessary gender transitions (what a bland way of describing the Island of Dr. Moreau) has not replaced all of the old abuses but merely supplements them. Further add to the horror the fact that a generation of gay children has been wiped out by a deeply homophobic gender theory which assumes that effeminate boys are really girls waiting to be freed of their male prisons; and that tomboy girls are really boys trapped in girlie form. Transgender ideology has, I believe, destroyed more gay men than AIDS ever did.

    Adult dereliction of duty is as ubiquitous as it is horrifying and must be addressed either with criminal or civil action on both sides of the Pond. Adult imposition of gender ideologies onto impressionable children is unforgivable.

    Reply

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