The beatings were brutal and sadistic... many of us left school with demons ... trends now
Maidwell's headmaster, John Porch – whom we nicknamed Jack – enjoyed beating us with a slipper for the most trivial of offences, such as talking after lights out.
Soon after arriving I learned that the school never had a victimless day. After tea, at least half a dozen of us disappeared into the dimly-lit corridor that led to Jack's study.
While you stood outside, the sound of Jack's blows punched through the closed door, in a terrible warning of what you were about to suffer. Stomachs gurgled, throats dried, and buttocks tightened, as terror increased its grip.
One of my friends was so distressed that he lost control of both bladder and stomach. On hearing of this Jack burst out of his study and asked, 'What's going on?'
The child replied: 'I've spilt something, sir.'
'Wet yourself, rather!' Jack fumed. 'You grubby little boy!', before furiously sending him back up the corridor to get himself clean.
Earl Spencer in his Maidwell 'Sunday best' suit
When your time finally came, you were ushered forward by the deputy head boy. Shuffling into the gloomy study, your eyes acclimatised to find Jack seated, devoid of compassion, ready to dispense physical pain.
He listened with evident disappointment as your misdemeanour was read out by the head boy, then issued a short denunciation of your conduct, before flicking a slipper from foot to hand and beckoning you towards him.
He was expert at the next part, pulling you down so your stomach pivoted on his scrawny knees, before flicking up the vent of your jacket so he could take unobstructed aim at your bottom.
The strikes were delivered swiftly and sharply, with the full force of his sinewy arm, before he pushed you away disgustedly. You made for the study door while your head swam with shock and pain, biting your lip and blinking hard.
If the schoolboy offence reached beyond the bounds of the headmaster's slipper, there were two canes, so renowned that they had been given their own names – 'The Flick' and 'The Swish'.
The head boy would be told to leave the room. Jack would tell the pupil to drop his trousers and underpants before administering the strokes in private.
The Flick was a thin, malicious instrument, administered with such force that it had a pistol crack, and it cut the skin, leaving blood oozing from tight lines.
Particularly serious misdeeds saw him reaching for The Swish – a sturdier, knotted, piece that packed a heavier punch.
When in the mood for something a little more exotic than these two old faithfuls, the headmaster would stroll down to the edge of the school's lake and use a pocketknife to cut down a stalk of bamboo that he would use as a 'one-off' on a specific victim.
A Maidwell friend of mine, who died a few years ago, spoke of how, during a caning in the study, Jack reached down with his hand to cup the boy's scrotum.
Another former pupil told me how while being caned, he caught sight of a large bulge in the front of Jack's cavalry twills. The headmaster slapped this boy's face hard and shouted: 'How dare you turn round? Look to the front!,' before completing the thrashing with added force.
One of my Maidwell colleagues was summoned to the study with a pupil who had cut a sapling in the school grounds. 'He caned [the other boy] in front of me. It was so hard.'
He then turned to my friend and whipped his buttocks so severely that the cotton of his underpants became enmeshed in his torn flesh when the blood dried. My friend was only able to separate his clothing from his cuts that night after the matron soaked him in the bath, and the underwear came free from his wounds.
Jack's chief henchman was the Latin master, the Honourable Henry Cornwallis Maude, a vicious sadist with a powder-keg temper. In later life, he became High Sheriff of Kent.
Charcoal drawing of the earl aged eleven by Robert Tollast
His stock-in-trade was to throw chalk and board markers at us during lessons. He also cuffed us hard about the head and yanked us by the ear as he twisted it round, enjoying the screams of agonised protest.
As he prowled the classroom during a Latin test, one of my contemporaries, Thomas Scott, tried to cover his paper. He was thumped on his head from behind and fell unconscious on his desk.
Outside the classroom, Maude was in charge of swimming. On Sunday mornings, he'd take the best swimmers among the senior boys for a secret naked swim.
As we pre-pubescents peeled off our underpants, Maude would do likewise, his member springing up expectantly. One of my closest friends wasn't allowed into the water except via what the master termed 'the human slide'. This was Maude, naked, leaning against a tree, with an erection.
My main memory of him involves an unprovoked attack when I was ten or 11.
Catching me alone in the boys' boot room after a cricket match, he sat down next to me, threw me over his knees and beat me hard with one of my cricket boots, its metal spikes puncturing the
