It was never a typical school. No uniform. Vegetarian. Origins in eastern mysticism. No “Sir” nor “Miss”, with teachers referred to by their first names.
For bohemian London parents who wanted to send their children off to board, this alternative culture was precisely the appeal of St Christopher’s School ever since its founding more than 100 years ago.
Yet for decades, beneath the alluring sheen of “progressive” education, rampant predators were free to roam its 25-acre campus. It was a “hunting ground” to target children.
Now, after a seven-month investigation by The Telegraph, the disturbing sexual, psychological and physical abuse endured by pupils at the school, in Letchworth, Herts, can finally be revealed.
I’ll spare you the Agatah Christie working it out thing.
It was the staff. Or some perhaps.
How unlike progressives, eh?
“St Christopher’s origins lie in Theosophy – a niche, mystical philosophy founded in the late 19th century that seeks to understand the nature of divinity and spiritual enlightenment. It also has roots in Quakerism. Both continue to shape the school today.”
OK, not the Quakers, but a philosophy with roots in Quakerism.
Fucking Quakers. Why is it that every time I read about something dodgy or crap about left wing thought the Quakers are never far from it?
Nixon was raised as a Quaker.
Nixon was a “programmed Quaker” whose religious practices are more similar to mainline Protestant denominations (Methodists, Lutheran, Episcopalians, Presbyterians). “Programmed” in the sense of having an organised church service with hymns and a sermon, rather than traditional ideas of a Quaker meeting (waiting in silence until someone is called to speak). That’s because his Californian Quaker community had roots in the Midwest where Quakerism had become more evangelical in character, rather than the more mystical Quaker tradition of the Northeast. It’s been written about eg https://readingreligion.org/9780826220424/nixons-first-cover-up/
On the subject of Quakerism in America’s eastern seaboard, Moby Dick features a lot of Quakers as the Pequod is based in Nantucket, one of their strongholds. Quakers include the owners Captains Bildad and Peleg, the chief mate Starbuck, and Captain Ahab himself. Ahab is surely the most famous fictional Quaker, and though his religious affiliation is often neglected you can see traces of it in the archaic way he speaks. (Programmed Quakers like Nixon would not have been brought up in the “plain speech” tradition either.)
Yeah, when I read up on American Quakerism, with the splits and schisms and fallings-out, it reminds me of UK left-wing politics. From our tradition we’d ask: how on earth can you “programme” Quakerism? They’ve descended to the heresy of STRUCTURE!
Doesn’t Murphy claim to be a Quaker?
I feel sorry for the poor souls in his meeting house. There isn’t going to be any “waiting in silence until someone is called to speak”; they’d never be able to shut him up.
And they won’t take their hats off to me.
They might as well have called it Nonce Towers. Pedos love to go on about ‘freeing’ children from parental
protectionoppression and societal rules. Only rich London lefties would be thick enough to fall for it.Only rich London lefties would be thick enough to fall for it.
Indeed. Like Patricia Hewitt and Harriet Harman, who have both argued that paedophilia is liberating…
“might as well have called it Nonce Towers”
Beaugearham Hall is more traditional. Or, as the groundsman pronounces it …
So unlike our own dear Downside.
Quite, abortions weren’t a thing there….
No, not at an all boys school. Now that would have been a sign of divine intervention.
That’s all because you can’t get a drink in Letchworth.
Letchworth hasn’t been a dry town for a number of years. Thirsty types with any sense or taste bimble off to Hitchin though.
All that and they can’t even use johnnies.
Wasn’t there (isn’t there) another similar school? Run very informally. Past girlfriend was at it in the 60s. I can remember she told me about it & how much she enjoyed it. But I’m sure it wasn’t St Christopher’s.
Erm, Sunningdale? No, Summerhill. And Bedales
Summerhill rings a bell. Didn’t seem to do her any harm. She went to RADA & subsequently wrote a TV show. Parents were luvvies, of course…
Dartington Hall
Mornington Crescent!
I recently wrote an essay on an author who went to Bedales. He loved it there ( this was the 1920s ).
He was sent to Bedales after running away from his previous public school ( he was later captured by the school leopard ).
It’s always the ones you most expect:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2kkrxdpndo
I’m well aware that I’ve often been lucky in life. One of my great strokes of luck was not being sent to a boarding school.
As David Niven put it in “The Moon’s a Balloon” – ‘only the English and the Chinese send their sons away at the age when they are most in need of a loving family’
Makes a change to read about child abuse by rampant home-grown predators.
This is more evidence for the view that self-proclaimed “progressives” are really, really gullible. They define themselves by their politics and their politics is based on wishful thinking, so they can be easily manipulated by anybody who knows how to deploy the right buzzwords. In this case, it’s sexual predators tricking them into sending their children to an institution where they won’t learn and will be abused. More commonly, it’s tyrants and terrorists treating them as useful idiots for barbaric causes. The one constant is that progressives are utter fools who get conned over and over again by people who despise them.