Burnley Grammar School

Just in and before I forget this I'm just going to add it here for you.

Did you know that there is something called the Communal Shower Association. No, me neither. It is based in the United States. I have no idea if there is a UK equivalent. They also have something going called a School Shower Study. I came across it during the weekend whilst I was doing some looking into the issue after having received a bit of a hard time on here.

Somebody (sorry I tried to find the post to name you) a few weeks ago asked about the history of such things. Well there is a very interesting explanation on this website that I think some of you might find fascinating even if it does come from an American perspective. It suggests the first communal shower appeared in 1900, and that they really took off in the 1920's with very widespread use from the 1940's to the 1990's in particular and notes 1995 as a watershed year. Very specific I thought.

Now I had no idea about any of this but found that my own general ideas matched quite closely with the timelines suggested here.

There is some very good reading if you follow the links. I'm sure it will provoke some further comments.

https://www.communalshowerassociation.com/school-shower-study

Comment by: Mike on 16th October 2023 at 23:04
We must get away from this overwhelming desire to rewrite the past in the image of the present.

Surely we don't want the generation of the 2070's and 2080's rewriting our present in their present in another half century from now.


This depends, Mike, on not giving school students from today and the future, the grounds for feeling angry or aggreived at being treated like cattle, or worse, doesn't it?. No boy or girl should have had to endure being taught by paedophiles whether that was the 1940s, to certainly the 1990s, as we have seen in numerous court cases, especially not in situations like PE where the teacher has seemingly unlimited access to those pupils in changing rooms and showers.

Some teachers treated the pupils they had under their control abominably. You can't rewrite history to accomodate perverts, however "nice" you want to be, and understanding their times. A predator remains a predator whether it was 1950. 1970 or 1990 and should be dealt with in the same way through the courts.

Comment by: Steven on 16th October 2023 at 18:59


You write in part......

"Where do we learn about our personal hygiene, well it's at home isn't it, and that's the right place for it to be, nowhere else and from nobody else than the family, or maybe a medical professional in some situations quite possibly.

The rigorous implementation of school showers always seemed strangely obsessive to me at school and actually quite draconian. I used to see boys at school who were never any bother to anyone around school find themselves getting a roasting from the PE teacher because of showering after PE.

I would actually go further and suggest that the real issue was not the actual showering itself but the manner it was done by many schools and the practices such as close checking you were wet enough on exiting and things like having to lift your arms up to check armpits and all that nonsense we put up with. "

I agree with everything you write here, Steven - especially the final paragraph. Some teachers took it upon themselves at playing at being corporals or square bashing sergeants. This was absurd since nobody has been forced to join the military now for 60 years or more. There was, and is, no need to treat every lad as if he were a potential squaddie, or the inmate of a borstal. . Didn't Shakespeare have it? "dressed in a little brief authority".

Some of them were pathetic little men, probably hen-pecked at home, possibly in unhappy marriages, and their only way of feeling "big" was to make their pupils feel small. Perhaps they acted that way because, psychologically they knew themselves to be failures? - after all - "those who can, - do. Those who can't teach" Still doesn't excuse their conduct though.

Simply - I completely agree with Mike.

We must get away from this overwhelming desire to rewrite the past in the image of the present.

Surely we don't want the generation of the 2070's and 2080's rewriting our present in their present in another half century from now.

Do you think that was an abuse of sorts William, looking back now, as you said you never gave it a second thought until a lot later.

Anthony - 'you filed towards them like sheep shorn of their fleeces.'

Nice turn of phrase that one. I liked that analogy.


Where do we learn about our personal hygiene, well it's at home isn't it, and that's the right place for it to be, nowhere else and from nobody else than the family, or maybe a medical professional in some situations quite possibly.

The rigorous implementation of school showers always seemed strangely obsessive to me at school and actually quite draconian. I used to see boys at school who were never any bother to anyone around school find themselves getting a roasting from the PE teacher because of showering after PE.

I would actually go further and suggest that the real issue was not the actual showering itself but the manner it was done by many schools and the practices such as close checking you were wet enough on exiting and things like having to lift your arms up to check armpits and all that nonsense we put up with. Steven

It all makes you wonder why they didn't teach this personal hygiene to us all at school when we were 12 in front of the showers, if school is where we are meant to learn! They just set the water going and you filed towards them like sheep shorn of their fleeces.

Rob can speak for himself. but perhaps he preferred to rely on the first-hand experience of someone who was taught by Mr Parry than on Alan's gloomy speculation.
I was "blacked" aged 15 as a first time cadet at summer camp. Our sergeant told us it would happen and said "just go along with it, it's nothing and happens to everyone." I can confirm that the worst part is removing shoe polish from pubic hair. We were two cadets to a room and both of us had to spend ages at the wash basin to make sure our pants weren't marked. I took the sergeant's advice and never gave it a second thought until decades later I read that former cadets who felt they had been abused were suing the MoD.
The first episode of the current television series "Soldier" shows young infantry recruits being instructed on personal hygiene.

Rob: Unless you were in Parry's mind how do you know my interpretation of his behaviour is erroneous?

Paul R: I didn't disbelieve Charlton - nothing surprises me of what goes on in some institutions, but I agree with Tanya, no normal young man, who has passed all the intelligence tests to getting into the Army needs to be taught such intimate matters Most of us know by ten or eleven at the oldest what we are supposed to do regarding personal hygiene.

James: Again not surprised, even though it is disgusting. The football clubs should be in the dock charged with facilitating sexual abuse, not just assault. Not a professional player, but during and after my schooldays I had a mate who was a keen amateur player, and sworn to secrecy, he told me of something that happened to him while at school, not just once either and, I am sad to say, that R was the instigator. given his behaviour in public, his private shenanigans were of no surprise. This was the best part of forty years ago now. As I have said before, we like to think these disgraceful events are a thing of the past - but are they?. Instituitions like the FA and Army seem to have inherited Nelson's bad eye.

The marine looked like he was enjoying his hygiene instruction far too much.

Of course grown men don't need to be told how to wash themselves. Kids often do though, but that's the parents job, I wouldn't suggest they do that in school. Infact my school showers were nothing but slightly warm water, so not exactly a lesson in proper hygiene if you ask me.

What the hell was it about the 1970's and 1980's.

This article ends with - "You Couldn't Be Shy Or You'd Be Crucified"

This is in professional football at the time.


Even in such a macho sport as football, the punishment ritual inflicted on apprentices who were judged to have failed in their work at one top First Division club in the early 1980s was an extraordinary one. The word or a nod would be given and the victim would be ordered to walk to the shower room beside the naked team captain, holding that individual’s genitals.

Other players from the 1970s and 1980s era will respond with a shudder to the word “blacking” – the pinning down of young apprentices while their testicles were daubed with black boot polish. “It took you three weeks to get it off,” says one former Liverpool player, whose account of those days reveals the damage done to those who failed football’s survival of fittest test. “I remember one player was left with a stutter,” he says. “Others never played football again. It was mental and physical abuse on a daily basis.”

All of that pales in comparison to the testimony given at Preston County Court in the past two weeks by George Blackstock, the former Stoke City apprentice claiming damages for allegedly being subjected to a ritual known as the “The Glove” and “The Finger”, in which goalkeeper Peter Fox allegedly daubed his glove in Raljex and inserted it up the 16-year-old’s backside while he was pinned to the treatment bench. Several witnesses have testified to Blackstock getting “The Teapot” – in which the hot receptacle was held to his backside. Blackstock’s transgressions included serving lukewarm tea and making a line decision against a first-team player in a training game. Stoke and Fox deny the allegations.

Football awaits with trepidation Judge Philip Butler’s decision, due in the New Year, on whether to give Blackstock leave to sue Stoke and Fox for an estimated £5,000 damages. The court heard from Stoke defence barrister Nicholas Fewtrell on Tuesday that other players are “waiting in the wings” for possible legal action and the Independent on Sunday understands that several other ex-Stoke apprentices have consulted no-win, no-fee lawyers about “blacking” incidents.

The Professional Footballers’ Association chief executive, Gordon Taylor, declined to discuss the case ahead of the judge’s ruling, but there is a sense of dismay in the game that 1980s practices might provoke a spate of litigation. The Blackstock claims are grim – the court heard that former players George Berry, Carl Saunders and Steve Parkin allegedly held down the Northern Irishman while Fox applied the glove, though the alleged incident is far removed from the kind of sexual abuse from that period which the Jimmy Savile case brought to light, and which also led to the former Celtic Boys Club manager, Jim Torbett, being jailed for 30 months in 1998. Torbett was convicted of shameless indecency for abusing boys, including the future Scotland international Alan Brazil, between 1968 and 1974.

At Stoke, Berry, Saunders, Parkin all deny the allegations and Judge Butler’s response has so far revealed reservations about the quality of some of the evidence.

One of the witnesses to Blackstock receiving “The Glove”, former apprentice and now serving Staffordshire Police officer Justin Edwards, was heavily censured in court by the judge for testifying in one statement that he himself had been abused, whilst not mentioning this in another statement during the force’s 2008 investigation into the allegations. Edwards was asked to explain why he did not inform his force of the abuse when he became a serving officer, if he knew of it. Edwards felt at the time that it wasn’t something worthy of a criminal investigation.

The decision of Blackstock to go to The Sun with his story, after it allegedly became clear that Stoke were unwilling to pay compensation, has led to a financial motive being discussed at length in court. “They go to Stoke with the allegations, who deny it. So they go to The Sun,” Fox’s barrister John McNeill said this week. Judge Butler seemed to acknowledge that the case had significance beyond football, in sports where punishments come with the territory.


“If you have got a university rugby team on their way home from a match, you may say they are all consenting adults,” he said. “The victim may go along with the idea that if they have ‘failed’ with a pass, he might have to take [punishment].”

Even in recent years, the apprentice footballer’s environment has remained forbidding. A player at one leading Premier League club had his nose broken when a towel was flicked at him because he refused to cooperate with the initiation ceremony of standing on a chair to sing.

But the brutality of the punishment culture began tapering off in the mid-1990s. “It began to change with the Academy systems, the arrival of foreign players and maybe the recognition that these were not much more than children. It changed with the change in attitudes,” said one Academy coach.

“It’s a lot different,” a 20-year-old Liverpool player told the Independent on Sunday. “Standing up and singing in front of Jamie Carragher, which I had to do at my first Christmas party, was a challenge. But it was just sharp banter and that’s good for those of us coming in.”

But the Stoke case does raise the question of how many young talents fell by the wayside because they could not run this gauntlet of abuse. “It helped if you were tough in the first place,” said one witness to events at the time. “You couldn’t be shy or you’d be crucified.”

The Independent - 15th December 2013.

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news/grime-and-punishment-dark-tales-of-ritual-abuse-in-bootrooms-could-spark-a-wave-of-legal-claims-against-clubs-9005494.html

I can't believe that any young man needs another man to tell him how to wash himself thoroughly, especially his prize asset.

Comment by: Jim on 13th October 2023 at 00:48
Based on the exchange between Alan and Charlton I felt sure I'd once seen what Charlton described on one of those reality fly on the wall shows but haven't found anything.


Comment by: Charlton on 12th October 2023 at 01:18
We used to get 20 minutes each morning for what they called a sh*t, shower and a shave. That is not very long when sharing with a lot of others. They even show new privates how to wash their privates in the army, well they did in the eighties when I joined.


FOUND IT!

It looks like I have found what you might have been looking for Jim and what Charlton described in the 1980s. Looks like it was still happening 20 years later. This was 2007 according to the end credit.

https://youtu.be/dYF-qDopam0?feature=shared&t=646

Yet another assumption from Alan proved incorrect and rectified by Burnley boy Rupert here.

I liked the final line of your post Dean, so much more positive.

Comment by: Steve on 14th October 2023 at 21:29


You have clearly led a very sheltered life Steve and clearly never had a Mr R. watching you, or any of the recently convicted or named men who behaved with conduct unbecoming.

I am very happy for you. However, I bet that Nathan as a teacher in 2023 would not conduct himself in the way Parry did. He has a lock on his school shower door.

Daz1970 and William.

Correct on all counts in my opinion.

I remember being at Glastonbury in June 1997 and seeing some groups of naked men just sitting around chilling out in one of the far areas of the venue. It was the year of the big washout and a lot of mud and rain and there was a lot of that kind of thing going on and some naked men and topless women with knickers making fun in the mud sliding and kicking about in it, possibly loosened up with drink or drugs. This sticks with me as much as seeing Sting, Van Morrison, Prodigy and Ray Davies of the Kinks that year.

When I was at school group nudity was simply unavoidable. As a non consenting child it was all the while but as a consenting adult I have never again been in a position where I have been naked among a group of others.

Whether the net effect of being thrown into communal nudity and school showering was a positive or negative is anybody's guess. I don't think there is anything wrong with it but weighing it up I think I prefer such things to be consensual rather than by mandate.

What can be better in life though than if you are completely comfortable in your own skin and unabashed. I'm not quite there but it's worth aiming for.

I wish to comment on this Alan quote below.

"Rupert: Could Parry not have conducted his little homilies when you were all dressed?"


This take on things literally amazed me and left me open mouthed with the implied insinuation against the teacher.

Daz1970, That's an interesting point in your last paragraph (13th Oct at 21.31) about non-sexual male nudity. It may well be a bonding experience - to a small degree it was at school between the more confident boys but more so in institutions such as sports teams and the armed forces. In newspapers in the 1960s there used to be photographs of professional footballers celebrating a win in the team bath. The photos were discreet but no-one imagined they were wearing swimming trunks. And the Imperial War Museum archive has photographs of nude servicemen relaxing (swimming in the sea off Gallipoli, for example) and generally larking about away from the front line,

Time never flew when we were at school during the day though did it. It could really drag. But it did fly when we were on school holidays. You missed the creme eggs for Easter that go on sale the day after Christmas too by the way, although I used to think they sold those things all year around until about five years back.

I stopped off at a petrol station shop today while filling up and saw mince pies piled high in festive boxes all dated best before Hallowe'en on 31st of this month, so you can't stock up on them early because they'll be out of date by two months by Christmas anyway. If you're scoffing mince pies and other festive goodies in October where's the treat a couple of months from now?

All that indulgence will take a lot of physical exercise to work off. We probably all used to come back to school in early January having put a couple of pounds on after all those selection boxes had been devoured.

Thankyou Peter for your comment. It appeared quite prominently just by typing the school name into the internet. It must be more than 20 years since I'd last done that.

Concluding gym Mr Parry would sometimes speak with us while we were dressed. He'd hold us back to chat after we'd changed in most instances. Quite frankly I would not have cared either way. Nothing inappropriate ever happened thankyou very much. I only have many happy and rather good memories of him and others from a time in school when discipline, respect and hard work went without question and were not seen as something to look down on.

The photograph could not be a more perfect presentation of how school PE used to be for me and I'm sure so many others.

Hi Mike. thanks for your comment. It is just happenstance. I don't live in the same borough now and I very rarely have to venture there (if I do it sonly for work purposes), but I haven't been there now in about 7 years. The dump was pulled down many years ago now, and for once in my life I was glad to see Tesco's. I I'ie in a neighbouring borough because when I started my business it was convenient and relatively cheap, and had commitments. Like nearly everybody these days, business has never really recovered from Covid and all it bought with it. For choice if I had to live in this country it would be the West Country - another country - somewhere warm.

While we are having a friendly conversation a few days ago somebody mentioned why it was time seems to go quicker these days. I think there are two reasons - it does seem to happen after you get to 35, and also it is the way people wish time away. In August the supermarkets were getting out the Halloween stuff, in September the Xmas stuff and now the 2024diaries and calendars form the main display in W.H. Smith.

Thanks again Mike - I think some people just can't believe there were such bad and poor schools before education became quite as politicised as it is now.

Alan - I don't think anybody actually doubts that what you have said about your school is true. Your accounts strike me as deeply authentic, although I will not pretend to agree with everything you say with your wider opinions.

I think I would have chosen to leave an area that I held such negative feelings about. You sound like you remain close by to this day.

Good to see another old Burnley Grammar boy appear here.

How did you discover this place out of interest?

Mark: I can assure you I went to a secondary school when I was 11, it happened to be, in a VERY run down area in East London, and though, the EA naturally allocated resources to bigger - and frankly, better -schools, with more gifted pupils, we were, as I have said, quite small - we were a sort of overspill school (and I can assure those who don't like me, it was not an approved school!. As far as I am aware only one of my ex school attendees went to prison, that for GBH when he was 21).
Despite the grandiose claims of politcians the GLC wasn't all about "Nuclear Free Zones" (which I am sure China or Russia would have strictly observed!) or the North Islington Lesbians Street Theatre for Peace Group. There were (and indeed, are still) run down areas in parts of London which have not yet been gentrified with luxury flats and gated communities. It was a very rough area - and still is.

I wish other men who had been to schools like mine would write on here.I assure you what I have told you is true.

As regards all this gung -ho talk of nudity I am reminded of some lines in "Carry On Camping"where Sid James takes his girlfriend Joan Sims to the cinema to see a film about a naturist camp:

Joan: It's disgusting!

Sid: What do yo mean disgusting? - it's perfectly natural and healthy - you wouldn't think anything of it if we went round like that all the time

Joan: Oh, yes - I suppose you'd rather we all sat here stark naked?

Sid: It wouldn't bother me

Joan: It would if your ice lolly felli in your lap.


Rupert: Could Parry not have conducted his little homilies when you were all dressed?

I think Mr Parry would be well into his mid or upper 90s in age by now if he were still with us, maybe more, which is possible based on a guess of his age which I do not know. I'm not good at guessing ages but he might have been around the age of 40 when I went to Burnley Grammar.

There was nothing sordid about him in any way. I do take great exception to such throwaway comments like that. When I used the term hands on as a description it was to describe his keen interest and direct approach to us all. But teachers like Mr Parry were always comfortable handling us in PE, look at the picture holding the young lad in place for his handstand as an example of this. I do wonder if any PE teacher is allowed or feels able to ever touch a child nowadays in the name of PE instruction and if not then maybe that is in part due to the paranoia of those such as the gentleman on here who considers Mr Parry's behaviour sordid. I was as unconcerned about a teacher sharing a shower as he was. It could not have been more innocent I can assure you.

I cannot remember at this length of time too much detail on what the little chats we used to have involved suffice to say that they were always amicable, friendly and full of good advice.

A few names from those days I shared school and the gym with, they might just catch this someday - Christopher Jeffs, Bobby Darrell, Richard Marlowe, Robert Pacey, Henry Gresham and Giles Morton.

I very much hope and would expect that each of them would say something very similar to me given the chance to do so. We would be 66 and 67 years young now.

Adding to Derek on the army shower Sgt video.

How self defeating was that video. If you're going to make a video whose main point is that nobody cares about what you look like naked then surely that video has got to show you...naked! Not go all fig leaf on his groin and start hiding him.

I also don't think I agree with the basic premise of that video either, that nobody cares what you look like naked. People are always interested in what others look like, no more so than in a communal shower situation if you are all thrown together into it. You just don't exactly shout about it too loudly. Look, I'm perfectly straight but when I was in the showers at school I was always keen to compare what others stacked down below and knew damn well they were probably checking me out in judgement too. It's what boys and men do in such places so why pretend otherwise.

Another point rarely allowed to be said is that a lot of straight men do actually enjoy communal nudity with each other as well or would do if a situation allowed it for them anywhere.

Jim's showering boot camp You Tube clip.

Sgt Volkin says 'Just to prove getting naked is no big deal I'm going to take my pants off'

Cue the big blackout on screen. Proving male nudity is a big deal!

Classic.


But he did well to acknowledge that even those wanting to join up and serve actually have fears and hang ups about sharing the showers with each other, and these are young adult men choosing that life.

Jim, your comments:
"Nobody cares what you look like naked in the military he says in the video. Takes his pants right off and says there you go. While a big black box covers him up. Censored! So somebody did care (YT rules of course we know that) but the irony of the video was unintentionally amusing."
I certainly agree. Surely the new recruits were present so would see everything. So why make a video?

So how many people went to your secondary school exactly Alan? You make it sound more like a primary in your description.

At my secondary there was a main school hall and a separate gymnasium plus another sport building too. We never took PE in the main hall at secondary, whereas most who go to middle schools probably did as that was likely the only large part of the building to do such things.


Interesting comments from Rupert there. It would be good to hear some more as you are one of the few that have actually gone to the school named in the title here.

Although Alan tries to make his suggestions sound reasonable it is clear that they are based on the aggrieved experience of one individual rather than on any practical analysis. To have all gym and games lessons at the end of the day would be impracticable: the numbers would be too great and the gym master would be redundant for most of the day. As for showers at home, if boys have played rugby in wet weather and are covered in mud are they supposed to put their outdoor clothes on their muddy bodies so that they can shower at home, thus making their uniform and home shower filthy? Wouldn't most parents ask why on earth they had not used the showers at school?
Army education on hygiene has nothing to do with humiliation. The Army knows that not every youth of 17 or 18 has fully grasped that bodily hygiene means more than spraying on deodorant. It is too important to be left to chance.
I hardly wanted to enter this debate but I cannot be the only one who is fed up with Alan's opinionated assertions which are based on an experience that most of us have not had. I did not hate gym, the gym master or communal showers and I question the value of someone who did telling the rest of us why he is always right and the rest of us wrong. No doubt I will be told that I am "obtuse" or worse.
May I say to Matthew S that there was much at school that I liked. But since this conversation is about gym I would single out "pirates" at the end of term. We loved it.