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[edit] On the prevalence of this sin

Upon the condemnation of Oscar Wilde, "If all persons guilty of Oscar Wilde's offences were to be clapped into gaol, there would be a very surprising exodus from Eton and Harrow, Rugby and Winchester to Pentonville and Holloway." W. T. Stead^[1]

At the same time, a letter to Reynold's Newspaper from Christopher Sclater Millard: "Why does not the Crown prosecute every boy at a public or private school, or half the men in the Universities?"

And a much later comment by Allen Ginsberg in his "One nation won the world by reading Greek for this, and lost it when Wilde was gaoled for his Bellboy's kiss." (Old Love Story)

In 1541, Nicholas Udall, Headmaster of Eton College, was the first to be charged for violation of the Buggery Act 1533 alone, having confessed to pederasty with a pupil, Thomas Cheyney.[2].[3] The scandal involved his relations with two Eton schoolboys and one of his own servants. Formerly he had been notorious for the whippings which he was wont to administer to his pupils.^[2] In his case a death sentence was commuted to imprisonment, and he was released after a few months due to his connections at court. On conviction, he had been dismissed by Eton, but in 1554 he became headmaster of Westminster School. In another such incident, William Johnson Cory, renowned house master and Uranian poet, resigned from his position in 1872 under a cloud of suspicion for improper relations with boys, to one of whom he had dedicated Ionica, a book of pederastic poetry.^[3] He was shortly followed by another master, Oscar Browning, who was dismissed in 1875 over his "overly amorous"^[4] (but purportedly chaste) relationship with a pupil, George Curzon.^[5][6] More recently, according to radio broadcaster Lionel Fielden, an Old Etonian, "When I was at Eton, homosexuality was not only common, it was a general rule."^[7]

Eton played a role in the flowering of pederastic pedagogy in Victorian England, a current of thought that began with the Greeks and was reborn in the Renaissance with Ficino ... Its history there is inseparable from the Oxbridge pederastic and homosexual circles inspired by Pater and Wilde, and it is inseparable from the Uranian movement, which is the foundation of the re-entry of same-sex relations into civilized society. It is the best of teachers loving intelligent pupils who become influential men.

"That homosexuality was equally prevalent at Eton was attested to by the cases of two masters who were dismissed at this period. Both were able and distinguished men, fellows of the same Cambridge college (King's) and both were unquestionable benefactors of the school in their achievements and influence on their pupils, with whom they were deseredly popular. They were William Johnson, who later changed his name to Cory, and Oscar Browning." ^[8]

Higher education in England "still rests on the study of Greek and Latin classics, a literature impregnated with paiderastia. It is carried on at public schools, where young men are kept apart from females, and where homosexual vices are frequent. The best minds of our youth are therefore exposed to the influence of a paiderastic literature, at the same time that they acquire the knowledge and experience of unnatural practices."^[9]\

From Lytton Strachey's letters: It starts with Strachey in his early twenties, circulating stories like the one about the school tart, who locked himself in the lavatory as the school train left the station so as to receive visits from every boy in the carriage before they all got out at Eton. (review in the Telegraph [4]The Letters of Lytton Strachey by Paul Levy)

The sex interests of the post WWI generation in England were such that young women felt obligated to flatten their chests and cut their hair short in an "Eton crop" to compete with the "pansies." (Hyde, 197)

[edit] Notes