Burnley Grammar School

Paul, I assume that you were taken to the pool and supervised there by teachers. Were there ever female teachers or staff supervising the nude boys at the pool?

I recently read in a local paper of men complaining that they could not use the council pool changing and shower room during school lessons because there were female teachers supervising the boys in the male changing/shower room.
The school boys swam in suits but they were supervised by female teachers in the changing/shower room.
The teachers replied that they had strict instructions that they must not leave the boys out of their sight, including in the showers, for safety reasons.

Frank
My experience too! Public school, late 60s early 70s. Boys in senior school not so much advised to wear a genital support but increasingly did so as they got older. I have to say that once my friend had one I wanted one as well. An almost 'becoming of age' ritual! Obviously we all wore a box for cricket but who wouldn't when batting!

Adrian, I agree , never heard PE teachers make any mention of athletic supports growing up, but yes always wore a box when batting in cricket!

Adrian

Strange! Just shows how schools can differ from each other despite our going to the same type of school and in the same time period.

Frank - I don't remember anyone wearing a support; only so-called 'boxes' for cricket.

Jeff, I don’t recall any lad feeling embarrassed from having to swim naked. We all had to do it and we just got on with it. In fact I feel that more boys were more ashamed about having to run around in bare feet!

This happened whoen I was about 12/13 and was at a pre set time which had already been arranged and we had exclusive use of the pool.

Adrian
Surely at the age of 16 you were allowed / if not encouraged to wear an athletic support! I went to public school in the 70s and we did.

I went to a public school in the 1970s. Our PE kit was white plimsols, white socks, white shorts, white T-shirts. No underwear for hygiene reasons. If you forgot any piece of kit, you had to do the lesson without it. I forgot my plimsols on one occasion when I was about 15 or 16 and therefore had to do the lesson barefoot (socks alone were not allowed because of the risk of slipping). I still remember how cold the gym floor was.

We also had shirts -v- skins in many lessons, including this one and I ended up a skin. At the end of the lesson we were sent for a run around the playing fields. It was actually very refreshing, but I recall the sixth form girls staring at me and felt self-conscious in front of them as the only one in our group wearing just one item of ccothing. Interestingly I still prefer to walk and run barefoot and shirtless to this day, and wonder if that experience had an influence on me.

Paul, sounds interesting and unusual being taken to the local council pool to swim naked.
Did any of the boys find it embarrassing and who was there to watch you?

I presume that these were arranged times when no one else from the public was using the pool. At what ages were you made to do this and was it compulsary?

Hi, Roy. Yes, maybe. But it happened a lot of years ago. Anyway you accepted it at the beginning of the school, so it was normal for us this kind of punishment. It was quite normal that someone broke the rules in some way and was punished. You were a target for 15 minutes and the teacher wasn’t there during the punishment. So, after taking off your shirt and being tied, you were alone with other 20 boys who did whatever they wanted. It means everything ahah, but we accepted it, it was like a challenge, sometimes our chest became red for punches but we showed that we could resist to this

If what Jason describes happened today it would quite rightly be regarded as a form of child abuse and probably a criminal offence as well!

Hi guys, just to talk about Pe punishment at school. I read a message of a boy who was tied to a bar and punched, and I suddenly remembered hat happened to me at school. I went to a military school where rules were very strict and punishment very tough. One time I forgot my kit and my teacher got so angry he decided to apply what he called “worst punishment”. It consisted in taking off shirt and in being placed with arms tied with a rope behind the head. At that point the other boys could do whatever they want on you for 10/15 minutes. In my case, the other boy tortured me, not only kicking and punching on my chest like I read in the other post, but they also put on my bare chest whatever they found, like dirty water, mud and dirt. At the end of the punishment I was very tired and dirty, and due to the fact they have also ripped my shirt, I stayed the entire day with my bare dirty chest. That’s military school

Hello Tony, When we went swimming this like you was down the local council pool which was a 10 minute walk away from my school. Once a week all the boys from my year walked in a line down to the pool. I think it was Tuesday afternoon and the girls did the same on a Thursday.

For us it seemed quite normal to remove our clothes and swim naked. So all we really needed was a towel.

Paul, you refer to swimming naked at the local pool. Was it one class or age group at a time or a mix of age groups? At least when we went to our council pool we wore swimming trunks which in our era were the briefs type.

Reading all these comments really did bring back memories for me. Our indoor kit was like so many white nylon shorts only with no underwear, shirts, socks or plimsolls despite the “official” PE kit listing white tee, ankle socks and plimsolls for indoor lessons we all learned in the first lesson that was obviously a misprint and we were all told to remove our shirts, underpants, socks and shoes. Some of us didn’t care and got on with it some of us grumbled but we knew if we didn’t do as we were told we’d get a size 12 plimsoll across our backside.
Anyone who forgot their shorts simply had to go without, yes that meant run around the sports hall naked which wasn’t a huge deal as we were all accustomed to swimming nude for our practice lessons at the local pool.

Outdoor PE during the summer pretty much mirrored the indoor kit shirtless, shorts and bare feet. Which was great if the sun was out!

Outdoor PE in winter saw us wearing a rugby shirt!!! With our white shorts and barefoot which wasn’t all that bad except was cold underfoot especially if we were sent out on a snowy field.

If you forgot your kit then it was underpants only but these couldn’t then be worn for the rest of the school day because of hygiene.

Hi John, yes bare chested was fine for indoors PE. The only one negative time i can recall was a fire alarm practice when we all had to assemble outside in the school playground and it wasnt a particularly nice day....cold brr.
It was also a good job that no boys that lesson had forgotten their kit a couple of the PE teachers made boys do it naked if they forgot - it was boys only school i should add.

Stuart,
We also played the game you described and yes it did hurt slightly being barechested whilst being hit by a ball. Given the choice between being stripped to the waist or being made to wear vests or shirts I’d choose to do PE shirtless every time. After being in a hot classroom it was great to be able to get shirtless and put on a pair of shorts and pumps, it was a sensible rule for lads and I don’t understand why schools have made lads wear shirts for indoor PE.

TonyH yes th same at my prep school in Surrey and Grammar school in Hampshire, the plimsoll was definitely the weapon of choice by PE masters. That stung through thin shorts and nothing else. Any boy caught with pants on underneath was told to take them off there and then and before putting shorts back on the plimsoll was applied to the bare bottom. I can recall the sound it made as it echoed round the gym.
The worse thing about pe without shirts was the game where it started with one boy with a ball and all the others had to run around until hit and then joined his side, a different take on british bulldog. A ball thrown fast hitting bare skin hurt.

With regards to being caned on the backside in thin shorts and no pants would have been very painful. Our PE teacher was not quite so bad. He used a large Plimsoll. It was vary rarely used. Mainly it was used on lads who came out of the changing rooms still wearing pants.

However, there was one occasion when I saw the whole class waked with the slipper. I was on prefect duty in the corridor keeping another class in order and the PE teacher had left a class to sit in the Gym and were waiting for him to return. In his absence some of the class became very noisy. So on his return (irrespective of who had misbehaved and who had not) he lined up the whole class and made them bend over and touch their toes and he went along the line and gave every single lad a whack on the behind. An injustice for those who had not misbehaved, but in those days that was hard luck.

Alan, I enjoyed doing PE shirtless and think that was a completely sensible rule for boys but I think that footwear should have been allowed especially outside. Lads could have ended up with pieces of glass or other sharp objects embedded in the soles of their feet whilst on cross country runs.

Hi John and Ross.
Yes, stripped to the waist, too.
As far as I can remember (it was a very, very, long time ago...)shoes just weren't mentioned in the kit list for PE and cross country, and when we asked about it we were told the rule was no footwear.

Steve, I don’t think that there was anything wrong with your PE kit rule, but it was completely wrong that the cane was used at all. That was an abusive environment.

I went to a English boys only grammar school in the 70's.

First PE lesson, and first cross country run, we all had to line up before we changed, and were told what kit was allowed. This was just shorts inside, plus plimsolls outside, always stripped to the waist.

We were also shown the cane, and told it would be used to "encourage" us in cross country - and it was. Boys who finished in the last 5 or so (from around 60 lads), got warned once, then if they finished in the same position again they were into the gym to be caned. 6 hard strokes, stripped to only a thin pair of shorts hurt !

Alan,

Interesting that you had a barefoot rule for all indoor and outdoor PE. How was this told to you? Was it written in the school handbook or was it just a PE teachers ruling?

I was in school in the 00s and we did indoor PE barefoot and went barefoot outside if we didn’t have our trainers.

My Ex told me that when their PE teacher talked to them about jockstraps in the early 1970s he advised them to ask for a 'litesome supporter' at the local sports shop.

Chris G and Gavin A, I really only think there were Litesome jockstraps in the 60s and 70s

Hi Alan, as well as having to go barefooted, did you do PE stripped to the waist like the lads in the photo?

Seeing the latest posts on this thread takes me back to my time at a mixed English Grammar School in the late 1960s and early 70s.
There was a no footwear rule for both indoor and outdoor PE, for boys and girls. This included all track and field events, and cross country. The only exceptions were for rugby and cricket.

Hi Bernard, I’m my opinion, being bare chested could be also a way to save shirts ahah. I mean, for example when I had to fix the car, my chest was greasy but if I had had a short, I would have thrown it. I think that in all the situations where you can dirty your shirt, it is better to go without it. One time we went to an abandoned house to do softair, and in order to hide myself, I went inside a sewage tunnel which was terribly muddy and full of a dirty liquid. I had a new shirt which I had paid £ 90 so it was a pity to destroy it. I thought “ok nick, take it off” and so I did. I was barechested and my chest and abs became dirty due to liquid inside tunnel, but I managed to save my shirt. At the end i played for another hour with my dirty chest but personally I didn’t care ahah. Do you agree?

Nick - it sounds as though the only sensible option was to run home without a shirt. It might have been better if you had started the original run without it.
Running in the hailstorm wasn't too bad as it didn't last long - a wet shirt would have made it more miserable.
As others have pointed out being sent out on a cross country run shirtless in rain is very practical and more comfortable than with a shirt. Similarly, running barefoot was practical and sensible as the alternative would have been wearing plimsolls which would have got stuck in the mud and probably come off our feet.