Boy Prefects: “They were exempt from corporal punishment. They entered the Study Hall last (after ‘interviewing offenders in line’). They could communicate ‘sparingly in study, and leave free periods and Chapel without the permission of the master in charge, and go to the head of lines for leaves and confessions.

The charter was ‘natural’, no doubt even proper and inoffensive. It was also highly preparatory. It showed the ways we construct the world we live in, the small rituals that act out status and privilege and the given nature of the world. Authority needed dignity. Being strapped was undignified. Prefects were exempt from corporal punishment.”