Contemporary studies suggest that such arrangements were by no means confined to a single school.
Graham Kalton’s The Public Schools and Royston Lambert’s The Hothouse Society both discussed the considerable authority once exercised by prefects.
Former pupils have also recalled similar traditions at a number of well-known establishments, although individual accounts should naturally be distinguished from official school records.
What emerges is not a single national system but a patchwork of customs.
Every school had its traditions.
In one establishment a prefect’s principal weapon might have been a stern word. Elsewhere there were lines, detention, reports to the Housemaster or Headmaster and, at the more traditional schools, corporal punishment.
