Instances of the misbehaviour of boys sixty years ago are recorded in disciplinary records in the archive and must be considered in their historical context. The offences are more William Brown than Che Guevara. “Caught smoking” was recorded as an offence on more than one occasion, though at a time when many masters smoked it is possible that being caught was more serious than the act itself. Things got rather more serious when a flicked cigarette butt accidently landed on a teacher's head, prompting harsh disciplinary action, rapid escalation and unfortunate national headlines. This infamous mutiny resides in the memories of a generation of OPs but not so much in official archive records.

Happily this seems to have been an exceptional event. Taking 1968 as an example – the year that shook the world with youthful rebellion against American Imperialism in general and the war in Vietnam in particular – PGS pupils couldn’t make up their mind whether to engage in “dumb insolence” or “persistent talking”. Nascent arsonists played with matches, and potential revolutionaries honed their skills by “squirting water pistols”. One schoolboy terrorist was apprehended after an incident with a “stink bomb at Hilsea”. And what the boy who was caught “fooling with physics apparatus” was up to is not known, but there was widespread global concern about the splitting of the atom. 

“Throwing a beer mat” is recorded divorced from any context, as is the presumably unrelated offence of “deliberate evasion”. One trainee vandal was caught “damaging a master’s chair”. Whether this was a sawing-through of a leg in an act of sabotage, or perhaps the carving of something rude or political, is not mentioned. “Swearing at a prefect” was an offence recorded more than once, though whether there was a scale of offensiveness depending on the swear word, or any dispute about what constituted a swear word, is not known.  

There was one odd incident possibly inspired by the old Ealing film, “A Canterbury Tale - “putting a sweet in another boy’s hair”. Another was “hair pulling in Cathedral”, the location of the offence clearly adding to the gravity of the offence. More sinister was “organised desk shuffling”, worrying because, if left unchecked, it could potentially escalate to more serious collective action. Fortunately, this was all nipped in the bud, and one imagines that all miscreants, offenders and potential revolutionaries are now captains of industry, solid pillars of society, or respected members of the political elite. Or not.