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News > OP updates > "Strutting about in a dignified manner"

"Strutting about in a dignified manner"

A glimpse into the life of an Edwardian prefect
11 Oct 2024
Written by John Sadden
OP updates
believed to be the first PGS Prefects c 1910
believed to be the first PGS Prefects c 1910

Long gone are the days when prefects meted out slipperings and cruel impositions like reciting the Lord's Prayer backwards. Headmaster James Carpenter Nicol introduced the prefect system in 1910 to "maintain the high tone which has distinguished the school in the past" and "to increase its vitality in the future". Today, prefects continue to contribute to the smooth running of the school, their duties helping to develop confidence, leadership qualities, teamwork and a sense of shared responsibility in the school community. 

Not long after its introduction, an anonymous member of the prefect team (and possibly the editor of the Portmuthian) described "a day in the life of a prefect": 

There are doubtless many who imagine that the duties of those amateur policemen, generally known as prefects consist solely in strutting about in a dignified manner and gorgeous head wear, and uttering sepulchral warnings to miscreants. Perhaps, therefore, in endeavouring to explode this erroneous idea, I. may be doing a service to an honourable, painstaking, and earnest body of patriots. After the perusal of this account of the daily life of a prefect perhaps fewer will think the office a sinecure. 
My day begins, then, at about 8.15am ,when, after a brilliant innings of about three hundred made in my slumbers, I awake to the realization that I have three quarters of an hour in which to arrive at School. Reaching the bathroom after having fallen over my boots and slipped downstairs, I hurriedly perform my ablutions, incidentally taking a premier dejeuner of soap and tooth powder, and retire to my room to enjoy the daily stud-hunt, which lasts on an average fifteen minutes. My stud having been found, at the expense of many contusions and all my patience, I proceed to dress and partake of breakfast. This finished, I exhaust my vocabulary over a punctured bicycle-tyre, and chase a distant tram in vain. I then settle down to a steady trot, and eventually arrive at School in a bath of perspiration and a limp collar just after the bell has stopped ringing. Nor is my heated frame cooled even by the satirical greeting accorded me by my 
companion on duty, who has obtained the keys and opened the class-room doors in our corridor. I return the keys, and proceed to patrol the passage, hearing at intervals stage whispers relative to "Prefects being perfect" and such-like atrocities. Having secured silence, I deepen my official frown and continue patrolling until masters arrive, when I retire to my studies until 10.30am. After the interval, I unlock the doors in my passage and stop a fight, amid ironical applause. After more patrolling, I resume my studies until noon, when morning school ends. In the afternoon, I somehow manage to arrive punctually at five minutes to two, this fact providing food for my colleague's irony. I express my unbounded surprise at his being punctual for once, when I am confronted with a flying youth, who supplies me with 
the interesting information that " Blank is a cad," that gentleman having, it seems, opposed with missiles his entrance into the class-room. I hear evidence, and adjudicate in favour of the expelled one, in spite of strenuous denials on the part of " Blank." From about 2.10 till 3 I am occupied with my scholastic labours, and again patrol with my colleague after the afternoon interval, until the arrival of masters for the last lesson of the day. 
While on duty, I am roused from a reverie by a strange noise, of a weird and shrill nature, proceeding from one of the classrooms. 
I proceed to the room in question, to find a dishevelled youth with a frightfully contorted visage standing upon a form in an 
attitude of intense agony, intended perhaps to represent poetic fervour, and, in the intervals of gurgling, informing his convulsed and delighted comrades that he is "Crewso." Not staying to ascertain whether his meaning is " Crusoe " or " Caruso," I impose severe punishment both upon him and upon his accompanist, who has been rocking to and fro with a ghastly instrument which he calls a mouth-organ, though the sounds emanating therefrom bear a greater resemblance to rusty brakes being applied to equally rusty wheels, than to anything else. The master's arrival puts an end to pleas for the remission of their sentences, and I retire to the mysteries of a Greek play for the rest of the afternoon, after which I proceed to my domicile to indulge, after tea, in four hours' preparation, [In the intervals of 
tennis ?—Ed.] and at length to slumber the slumber of the just, and probably to perform further wonders—in my sleep. 
This brief account of the average day in a Prefect's life may perhaps show that those painstaking and orderly officials are not merely walking ornaments whose heads are adorned with resplendent caps; at least it will occupy a few pages of the" Portmuthian," and help to relieve the anxious mind of that worthy and overworked philosopher, the Editor. 

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