It was the height of Victorian industrial expansion in Britain. To travel from London to Oxford in our parent’s time had taken two days of uncomfortable jostling in a stage coach – now it took a matter of hours on the smooth tracks of the railway. New advances were happening every day in medicine, science and engineering: chloroform, steam power, the electric telegraph, gas lighting: the country was humming with enthusiasm for the future – surely every problem known to man could be solved by the appropriate application of scientific principles.

Dr. Brownlow’s used this expectation to promote its services. The regime in the college was founded on the latest scientific principles and anxious parents were assured that they would not recognise the behaviour of their reformed sons when they emerged.

There were, of course, reformatory schools for the youth of the era who had fallen into trouble with the law. Mostly these housed the offspring of the poor, the unemployed or unemployable. These were sordid places of brutality and squalor. When the young people of the wealthy got into trouble, a different solution was called for: they were sent to Dr. Brownlow’s. If the offspring of a wealthy person came to the attention of the law, and a term of reformatory punishment was expected, the parents’ legal representative would often plead to the Magistrate or Judge that they proposed submitting the boy to the regime of Dr. Brownlow’s, and this would be accepted. Many of the inmates, but certainly not all, had entered by this route. In some cases, parents merely felt that the boy was out of their control and that Dr. Brownlow’s would remedy the matter. Sometimes, the boy had been expelled from his public school and that no other would take him.

Often the problem was around sexual misdemeanours. Young boys were fully expected to experiment with servant girls, but if a lad compromised the reputation of a girl of his own class, then extreme measures were called for.

Based on the principles of the British Public School, (which was, of course, always a private, fee-paying school), Dr. Brownlow’s differed in only a few significant respects: the high wall around the estate, topped with spiked iron railings; the locked gate with its watchmen; the lack of vacations or visits to the nearby town.

The regime of a typical public school of the time was harsh – that of Dr. Brownlow’s even more so. Each morning, the boys, ranging in age from fourteen to twenty-one, would rise at half past five and do a lengthy session of callisthenics in the gymnasium – outside in the summer time. At intervals during this session, each boy would be called out in turn to do a three-mile run around the grounds. They were set of at carefully timed intervals, ten seconds apart, the fastest boys first, the slowest last. The corners of the course were carefully monitored at ensure that each boy ran the complete circuit. Each was timed as he left and times as he arrived, and the difference compared with his previous times. An improvement earned a few bonus points, which he had to accumulate towards his eventual release. Any slacking was rewarded by deduction of points and a sound flogging.

After the callisthenics, there was a cold-water bath and then breakfast – some gruel, bread-and-dripping, and some water. Then a half hour was spent in daily devotions to the Almighty before lessons commenced. Lessons worked on the same principle as the morning run: individual improvement was the key issue – not how a boy performed in comparison to his peers. If he slacked, he was flogged and hard-earned points were liberally deducted – if he improved, a few points were added to his accumulated total.

The afternoons had a games period, cricket in the summer, rugby football in the winter, and then more lessons. After supper there was preparation time before bed at nine. Every minute of every hour of the day was timetabled for productive activities; the only recreation time was on a Sunday between morning and afternoon worship.

At all times the boys were carefully monitored and every aspect of behaviour was the subject of scrutiny. Points could also be deducted for bad behaviour, such as impoliteness to another boy, running indoors, shouting or raising the voice, mishandling books, or even giving the wrong facial expression. More serious misbehaviour, such as impoliteness to a teacher or bad language, lost more points and would include a flogging.

When I started as the medical officer at Dr. Brownlow’s, (and no, my name is not “Brownlow”), I was appalled at the poor moral climate in the school. I spent a few days in quiet observation. There was a veritable epidemic of onanism. Boys would abuse themselves in bed at night, in the toilets, in the backs of classrooms whilst the teacher was not watching, and even in the school chapel. I determined that I had to stamp out this vile abuse, and the matter was discussed in full at the next staff meeting. All agreed wholeheartedly with my proposals, and a substantial sum of money was set aside for the necessary work.

First I had to bring some extra people to help with the monitoring that would be needed. These were all carefully trained to recognise the signs and symptoms of self-gratification in young boys – the facial grimaces, the clenching of the hands, the unnatural movements, the grunting sounds, and the accompanying smells and stains.

Also I had to have some modifications done to the school. Fortunately the school building was an old stately home in which the servants had their own separate set of stairs and corridors so that they could move around without being seen by the occupants. Using these, I was able to provide secret spy holes into each of the dormitories. I also had the bolts connecting the parts of the iron bed-frames slackened so that the beds would rattle with any rhythmic movement. Finally, we provided nightlights in every dormitory – a small gas-flame kept burning through the night.

It was a simple matter to get the wooden partitions around the lavatory cubicles removed – from now on, the boys would have sit on a row of toilets, fully visible to the supervising staff-member. The classrooms were not a problem, by having an extra assistant in the room observing the boys, the teacher could turn his back with impunity. The chapel was the biggest problem as the pew backs were high and obscured most viewpoints. I solved this problem by having a staff member sit at the end of every pew, instead of in the stalls at the front.

Whilst these measures were being put into place, I compiled a ledger with a page for each of the boys in the school. I made careful but secret observations of each one, noting the frequency and manner of their onanistic practices. Only five boys amongst nearly two hundred seemed to be entirely free from the habit; several were practicing it as much as three times a day. As I instituted my regime, I made certain that there would not be one minute, neither by day nor by night, when any boy was not under constant surveillance.

Onanism was, of course, already against the school rules, but I started my campaign with a stern lecture on the evils of the secret vice. I warned that the penalties for discovery would be severe and that I would not hesitate to employ surgical operations to further discourage and prevent the habit if I thought it necessary. I warned against touching the member at all, except as needed for bathing and cleaning.

That first night, many beds started to rattle for a few seconds, then abruptly stopped. Some twenty-three boys managed to get close to the critical point, but kept a good enough lookout to observe my assistants creeping up on them, and stopped. The next day I lined them up and lectured them sternly but awarded no punishment. The second night, there was a further dozen lined up, but again they received no punishment.

By the third day it was noticeable that some of the older boys were becoming a little irritable and easily roused to anger. This resulted in a few minor punishments and lost points. During the day, increasing numbers of boys were seen to surreptitiously press their erect members through their trousers against the rear edge of the school desk they were sitting in. One of my classroom observers would simply walk up and stand close beside the desk looking pointedly at the boy: “Sit up straight in your desk, please,” was enough to stop them.

That night, however, two boys were dragged from their beds in two different dormitories after slowly and quietly procuring the venereal spasm. The trick was to creep up and pull back the bedclothes at the critical moment when the sticky fluid began to spurt uncontrollably from their loins. Then there could be no denial, no excuse.

Each, in turn, was brought to my office by my assistants, his rapidly diminishing member still flagrantly tenting his nightshirt, a spreading fluid stain clearly visible on the coarse fabric. The confrontation in both cases was very similar.

“What have you to say for yourself?”

“Nothing, Sir.”

“Do you deny that you were abusing yourself?”

“No, Sir.”

“Did you not hear my lecture on this very subject just three days ago?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Did you not believe me when I said that you would be caught and punished?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Then why?”

“I don’t know, Sir.”

Andrew Johnston aged nineteen was the first to be caught. He had been sent here after expulsion from his public school. He had imposed himself sexually on several much younger boys. Normally this would have been hushed up – it was regarded as a normal part of the experience of a young boy at a public school – but one of the boys had died after being ruptured internally, and another had suffered serious internal injuries requiring hospital treatment.

Randolph Fleming aged eighteen was the other miscreant. He was at Dr. Brownlow’s because of taking the virginity of a girl of his own class. Normally, such a girl would take all of the blame, but in this case, the girl had been only nine years old and had been knocked unconscious during the assault and had suffered serious vaginal injuries. I made an appointment for them to visit my office in the morning for a flogging – spending a night anticipating the punishment would do them no harm.

They had to rise at five the next morning, half an hour earlier than usual. The cold of the morning, the lack of sleep, the early hour, all would combine to make the punishment a salutary one. “Twelve or eighteen” was what I offered them. The practice in the school was to give the boy the choice of being secured to the bench, but take half as much punishment again than if he used his own will-power to hold himself in place. If he chose the latter option and then moved, kicked out, got up, held his buttocks or in any way impeded the punishment, then he would be secured and the punishment would begin again. They both chose to be secured.

The college used a reformatory cane, heavier than the standard senior cane. The rule at the college was never to draw blood, but I raised a few blood-blisters on their bottoms. That would slow them down on their runs this morning, and so they would probably be flogged again.

“This time you only lose twenty-five points, if you do it again, it will be fifty.” They gasped at this – twenty-five is a lot, it would take weeks of exemplary behaviour and effort to recoup them. They were given out in ones or twos, in exceptional cases five.

I also examined their private parts, ostensibly to see if there were any problems – irritations or worms – to cause their need to abuse themselves. I rolled back the foreskin, exposing the glans. “If you do it again, I will cut off all of this loose skin, and this bulb at the end will be permanently exposed. There will be no excess skin to rub up and down. It is called circumcision. Now go away and don’t do it again!”

News of all that I had said spread quickly around the boys. Some looked very afraid – these would be the ones that felt totally unable to control their urges. I looked forward to meeting them. At chapel that morning, after the service had finished, I stood in the pulpit and announced: “Just three days ago I lectured you on the importance of avoiding self-pollution, but last night, two boys failed to heed what I said. They were caught in the very act of committing this disgusting sin. This morning, they were punished with a ‘twelve or eighteen’ and lost twenty-five points. You should be aware that if you perform this act you will be caught and you will be punished. And the punishment will increase in severity for subsequent offences. You have been warned. Dismiss!”

That night, these two boys found that their sleeping places had been moved. I was concentrating the masturbators in one particular dormitory as it was provided with several night-lights and several observation points so that I could easily observe everything that went on.

Over the next few days it was noticeable that several boys sported bulges in their trousers indicating persistent and prolonged erections. I had some buckets of iced water prepared in the bathroom, and called several of them in there during the morning break between lessons.

“It is most unseemly to go around like that, so I shall teach you how to deal with it. Remove your trousers and underwear!” They did so letting their rampant organs spring forward. “Now squat over the buckets and immerse everything in the water.” There were not enough buckets to go around all of them, so I said: “Whilst they are cooling their parts, I will show you another way. Start running on the spot, knees right up to your waist, quickly, now, one – two – three – four – come on, higher, faster! Put some energy into it!” Soon everybody present had shrunk to more respectable proportions.

“I shall make sure that buckets of iced water are kept here day and night. And you do not need to come in here to do a few minutes of vigorous exercise. Erections do occur in boys from time to time, but if you allow them to persist beyond a reasonable duration, you will be punished. Pass the word around to others that are affected in this way!”

Wet dreams had been occurring sporadically amongst the continent pupils before my new regime was instituted, however, with it I had given strict instructions that each one should be reported to me. This was so that I could monitor them for frequency and other health issues. Too frequent or too infrequent would require some sort of intervention; also if there were blood present or hard lumps in the fluid, I would need to know so that the appropriate corrective action could be taken. Now I often had twenty boys queuing at my office door each morning, nightshirt in hand. I would look at the stain and record the event in my ledger, checking the interval since the last.

Over the first six weeks, some sixteen boys were caught masturbating for the first time – each was given the same punishment and warning. All but six boys had either masturbated or had experienced a wet dream. I was aware that five of them had not yet reached puberty – their voices were as yet unbroken. The remaining boy was called into my office for investigation.

James Smart was a healthy-looking eighteen-year-old whom I had previously observed masturbating several times.

“Before this regime started, how often did you abuse yourself?”

“I never . . .”

“Don’t deny it, I observed you on several occasions. You will not be punished for past mistakes. I need to know.”

“Once, twice, maybe three times a week, Sir.”

“And how much fluid was produced on each occasion?”

“I, er, I used to stop it coming out so that I would not be caught.”

“And how did you stop it?”

“By squeezing here,” he said, pointing to the base of his penis.

“And you did this every time?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“I see. This may have done some internal damage. I will need to do an internal examination.” I had him go on all fours so that I could palpate his prostate gland and the adjacent seminal vesicles. These seemed perfectly healthy and well filled, so I asked him to produce a specimen of urine; this was clear.

Every morning, I need you to pass your first water of the day into a glass vessel in my office so that I can examine it.

After five days, his urine was cloudy with ejaculate. It was clear that retrograde ejaculation was occurring.

“Did you wake from an unusual dream in the night?”

“Yes, Sir. It was as if I had done, in my dream, that which I am not allowed to do.”

“You have done yourself internal damage through your self-abuse and the steps that you took to hide it. Your seminal fluid is going back into your bladder instead of exiting by the normal route. It may correct itself with time, but it could affect your ability to father children. I want you to come to my office each time you experience such a dream and provide me with a sample of your first water of the day, understood?”

“Yes, Sir!”

Eighteen boys were experiencing wet dreams too often in my opinion. Anything more often than once in ten days is indicative of spermattorrhoea. I provided each of them with a “Timely warning” device – a toothed ring to wear around the member at night to wake the sleeper in the event of an erection, which invariably preceded a wet dream. They were to wear it each night until the tenth night, and if awoken, to go at once to one of the buckets of iced water in the bathroom, and there to cool the parts until they had once more regained a quiescent state.

It was some six weeks before we had our first repeat offence. It was one of the first boys that I had caught – Andrew Fleming.

“Have you anything to say for yourself?”

“No, Sir.”

“Do you admit that you were abusing yourself?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Why?”

“Don’t know, Sir.”

“Do you remember what I told you the last time you were caught?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Go on!”

“My p-punishment would be doubled, Sir, and you would c-c-circumcise me.”

“That’s right. I cannot give more than twelve-or-eighteen in one session, so you will receive two sessions a week apart – the first will be tomorrow morning at five. Also you lose fifty points. At this rate you will never get out of here. Also, you will report to my office tomorrow afternoon at five for your operation. You are to have no food tomorrow before your operation – no breakfast and no lunch. You may drink water, nothing else, until noon. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Dismiss!”

The flogging in the morning was no different from any of the others. He chose the eighteen, and yelled a lot, and struggled fruitlessly against the straps that bound him. Afterwards, his behind was well blistered and for several days would be seriously uncomfortable to sit on.

I was really looking forward to performing my first punitive circumcision at Dr. Brownlow’s that afternoon.

The shame-faced boy reported promptly to my office at five o’clock. To do otherwise would have been to invite more punishment – something that he could ill afford to do. The incentive was a simple but effective one: boys who had failed to accumulate sufficient points to earn release from the College by the age of twenty-one were committed to the local lunatic asylum. Every three months, a group of boys was taken on a visit to this establishment, just three miles away. The group consisted of all new boys who had been admitted to Dr. Brownlow’s since the last visit, plus those older boys who were showing the poorest progress towards their release. On the visit, previous inmates of Dr. Brownlow’s would be pointed out. Indeed some of the older boys would recognise their former colleagues. The asylum was not a pretty place, the sounds of ranting and wailing, the smells of the filthy clothes and soiled bedding, the squalor and depravity of the inmates and the gloomy and forbidding atmosphere of the building combined to have a powerful effect on the obedience and efforts of the boys. The message was made abundantly clear: work harder and obey or you will be there in a few years time. It is hardly surprising that every boy took immense efforts to obey the command of a member of staff, no matter what the cost to himself.

“I need you to undress completely from the waist down and to lie down on the operating table.” He was shaking and sweating, and clearly reluctant, but did as I bade. As he got onto the table, it was clear that more stripes now adorned his bottom than I had placed there. Perhaps the anticipation of the operation had affected his concentration in class.

Modern operating tables, manufactured since the use of chloroform became commonplace, do not have the extensive straps and other means of securing the victim that the older ones possess. Fortunately the one provided by the school was somewhat old. I strapped him in place: arms, legs, hips and chest, all were tightly secured to the table.

A wooden bit covered in soft kid leather would go between his teeth, but as I approached with it, he started to speak, or rather to stammer: “P-please, Sir?”

“Yes?”

“C-c-c-chloroform, Sir?”

“It will not be necessary in this case. It is a very minor operation and will not take many minutes. The brief pain will be a reminder to you should you ever contemplate performing this self-abuse again.” I placed the bit between his teeth and strapped it in place. It would prevent him biting his tongue or lips.

“First I need to mark precisely where to cut, and for this I need to have the member hard,” I told him as I squeezed the bulb of his penis a few times. Despite his anxiety, the member soon hardened. I pulled the foreskin tight over the end, and used an indelible marker pencil, similar to a laundry marker, to trace a line around the skin just beneath the rim of the glans.

First I used scissors to cut a dorsal slit, length-wise from the edge of the foreskin to the line I had marked, then I cut the outer skin right around following the line that I had marked. The boy shouted and screamed, but I ignored him. The foreskin is remarkably tough and slippery, and it requires some skill to make the cut clean and precise. From time to time, I picked up a rod that was heating in a spirit flame to cauterise a heavily bleeding blood vessel. Once I had gone the whole way around, I slid the skin down the shaft of his penis and started on the inner skin.

Here I was cutting close to the corona of the glans, leaving just enough skin to suture. When I reached close to the fraenum, I started on the other side, eventually leaving the whole of the foreskin attached by the fraenum to the penis. I wanted to be sure to remove as much of the sensitive fraenum as possible so pulled hard on the foreskin and used a scalpel to cut away the fraenum tightly to the glans-rim. This produced copious bleeding, as there is a large blood vessel at that point so I held the hot iron to this area for a few seconds to seal the wound and further desensitise this part.

Now all that remained was to suture the wound, and for this I used fine oiled silk. I started at the fraenum, placing the sutures at intervals of about 1/8 inch alternately each side. When I reached the upper side, there was a little excess outer skin so I used the scissors to take out a short V-shaped dart, which I then closed with a couple more stitches.

By this time, the boy had stopped screaming and shouting and was just moaning in a dispirited way. I wrapped the penis in an oiled dressing and reminded him to come to my office twice a day for the dressing to be changed. He was excused all exercise and baths for the next two weeks, and I let him rest for the rest of the evening. I gave him a bromide to reduce his erections – they tend to be intense and prolonged after a circumcision, perhaps instinct making sure that the organ has enough room to expand.

The next day he duly attended my office for his dressings to be changed. There was the normal swelling and bruising, but little infection. The swelling went down after the first week, and I only once had to apply a hot compress to alleviate an infection in one of the stitches. I had to delay his second flogging for a few days, because the blood-blisters from the first had not healed sufficiently. After two weeks, I took out the stitches and told him that he could fully resume his normal life in the college. I warned him that if he repeated the offence, he would be punished further – flogged four times, 100 points lost and a further operation that would totally prevent him abusing himself.

I saw him again after about six weeks. Almost every night there were a few boys who would start to interfere with themselves and then stop. Each morning, they would be called out and lectured, but would not be punished. We wanted them to know that there was no possibility of not being found out. That morning, he was one of those called out. I asked him how it felt trying to do that again.

“Uncomfortable, Sir, and not easy. Trying quickly made me sore.”

“That is the intention. It is a reminder to behave. It would still be possible for you, however, given time. If you were to do it again, the operation I would then perform would make it totally impossible for you. Remember that!”

Over the next six months, I performed another fourteen such circumcisions. In each case, the miscreant was warned in the same way about the consequences of further self-abuse. By this time, I had filled two dormitories with onanistic miscreants – nearly fifty boys of the almost two hundred in the college had been punished at least once for committing the secret vice. And then, for the first time I had a boy caught committing a third offence.

Mark Chapman was a weak-minded boy of eighteen, and was visibly quaking as he was dragged into my office in the middle of the night having been caught, as usual, in flagrante. I examined his rapidly diminishing organ, still oozing fluid. The tight circumcision scar was still somewhat livid as his circumcision had only happened a matter of three months before. The bulging head was scarlet and somewhat abraded where he had been rubbing without a satisfactory lubricant – presumably he had used saliva.

“I’m sorry, Sir, so sorry.”

“So you should be. However, that was the last time. Your operation tomorrow will make it totally impossible for you to commit this offence.

“You know the procedure: five a.m. tomorrow, in here for your first flogging and then five p.m. for your operation. Go away and get some sleep!”

I could hardly sleep for dreaming about the procedure. I had read about it but never actually performed it, although I had seen its results on some inmate in a home for the feeble-minded.

In the morning, the flogging proceeded as usual. I blistered his bottom thoroughly without actually drawing blood or breaking the skin.

In the afternoon, the boy returned to my office, by now a nervous wreck.

“Have you anything to say?”

“Please, Sir, can you use the chloroform this time?”

I had intended to, as this is a lengthier procedure than before, but did not let this show. “All right, as you have asked so nicely, I will.”

I bade him undress and lie on the table. I did not strap him down but instead put the mask over his face and started dripping the chloroform onto it. Once he was under, I started work.

First I shaved off his copious growth of pubic hair, for it would get in the way of what I needed to do. Then I started cutting, a circular cut right around the base of his penis. Then I drew the shaft-sin forward over the head of his penis. Under the skin is a thin white slippery membrane attached to the skin, another slippery membrane is attached to the shaft of the penis itself. These I stripped away, a slow and tedious procedure, revealing the bare and bloody underside of the shaft skin and of the shaft itself. In healing, these would grow together, making the skin totally immobile and fully adherent to the shaft.

Next, I examined the top surface of the penis. He was starting to wake up, so I put on a couple more drops of chloroform. Here, where the two halves of the corpora cavernosa met, were a thick vein with a smaller artery on each side, between them, carrying the blood supply to the head of the penis. Tucked between the vein and each artery were a pair of nerves: the dorsal nerves of the penis. I used a small blunt probe to gently lift the nerve on the left away from the blood vessels, so that a short loop of nerve stood out. I hooked the probe under the nerve, carrying the separation as far as I could towards his body. With scissors, I snipped through the nerve, and, taking the cut end in a pair of forceps, pulled it downwards fully an inch before cutting it again. Removing a full inch makes sure that the nerve ends cannot rejoin and grow back together. I did the same with the nerve at the other side. Now his penis would be completely numb forever. Also, the fact that the skin had been cut right around both top and bottom would mean that the outer skin was also totally numb.

I finished by sewing the shaft skin tightly back in place and covering it with the usual oiled dressing to prevent it sticking. I removed the mask and let him wake up.

I kept him in the office overnight to recover and put him on “light duties” for the next two weeks. After taking the stitches out, I returned him to normal activities.

A further three flogging sessions awaited him. I was now doing these at ten day intervals as a week had proved not enough for the blood blisters to heal properly. When he cam in for his last flogging, I asked him:

“Have you tried to abuse yourself again?”

“There is no point, Sir, it is all totally numb. I cannot do anything. I cannot feel anything.

“Please, Sir?” he went on.

“Yes?”

“If . . . When I am released from here . . “

“If you are released, and based on your past conduct, there is no certainty of that. I feel that it is almost certainly the lunatic asylum for you. But, go on!”

“How would I . . W-will I be able to beget children, if I should marry, Sir?”

“After your first operation, marriage and the begetting of children would be no problem. Since your second operation, you have had more than one wet dream, have you not?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“In marriage, you must just wait until a wet dream occurs, and immediately put as much as possible of the fluid that you emit into the proper part of your wife. With luck, she may conceive, though it is by no means certain. You have only yourself to blame!

“You may pass the word around about what has happened to you so that others are warned about what awaits them if they do not behave. Now undress and get over the flogging bench!”