Old Boy slang

Follow @aclumsyguy A glossary of schoolboy slang from Bancroft's, a private school on the eastern edge of London. Canings in the 1950s were called "beats", consisting of up to six strokes "administered to the rear of a boy bending over and holding his knees for stability". They could be meted out by a monitor ("Mon beats"), a housemaster ("House beats") or the Headmaster ("Sid beats", named after Mr Sidney Adams, a former HM). "Dorm beats" were given in the dormitory (pictured right). At an earlier period, a good thrashing was called a "lamming".

Slang-Term	Translation	Current
All in	The call to meals given by a School house monitor by shouting “all in” with a single lung full while walking from the entrance next to the main porch along the corridors to the dining room	1910s - 60s
Assy	Asphalt – Big assy - North of the Chapel before the Great Hall was built	1910s - 30s
	Small/little assy - see below, Jack’s assy	1910s - 30s
	Chapel assy - between Great Hall & Chapel	1930s - 60s
	Main assy - behind Science block, now encorporated in new buildings	1950s
	Gym assy - by the old gym, now squash courts
	Jack’s assy - between quad & Chapel (next to Jack Kershaw’s classroom
Assy football	Soccer played with a tennis ball on the assy between the bogs and the science lab.	1930s - 60s
Bags	To claim or reserve a right to something - the top of a boiled egg, for example	1910s - 40s
Bath lot	Organised swimming group under the supervision of a qualified lifesaver	1940s - 50s
B bags	Swimming trunks	1910s - 20s
Beats	Corporal punishment administered with a cane (2-6 strokes) to the rear of a boy bending over and holding his knees for stability.	1950s
	Mon beat - administered by a monitor
	House beat “ “ House Master
	Sid beat “ “ Head Master after Sidney Adams
Beauty Parade	Inspection by Nurse of all boarder new boys for their first three weeks or longer if they were not properly washed	1930s - 50s
Berlin wall	The barrier of lockers placed across the walkway in the locker room to divide ‘juniors’ from ‘seniors,’ thus reducing or preventing bullying	1960s - 70s
Binning	Putting a member of a ‘foreign house’, who had strayed into the wrong locker room, into a dustbin, tying him in and depositing him in the quad – see also muckering	1970s – 80s
Black hole	Space under the stairs up to Houston’s room (the lecture theatre, now full of computers) into which small boys were stuffed	1940s
Blags	Blackguards. Boys from Woodford who attempted to invade Big assy which resulted in Blag fights.	1910s - 20s
Blig	A local boy (not a Bancroftian)	1930s - 40s
Bliggo	Ditto	1920s - 30s
Blood	A comic strip magazine	1930s - 50s
Boarder bug	A boarder	1930s - 40s
Bodger’s Buns	A delicacy sometimes fed to boarders on a Thursday at tea	1940s – 50s
Body	Breakfast sausage	1930s - 40s
Boothole	Basement room off the main porch, an ante room to the armoury, where boys shoes were cleaned – in the 1950s also the depository for boxes	1930s - 60s
Bog	Lavatory, or use of same	1930s - 60s
Box	A cabin trunk	1930s
(also)	A tuck box (kept in the boothole	1950s
Bradshaw sidestep	A rugby manoeuvre whereby a player ran straight through an opponent – the term arose from an incident in a School v. Old Boys match in which an old boy (and current Art Teacher), Bradshaw, was running with the ball towards a School player when a boy shouted from the touch line “side step him Brad.” at which point ‘Brad.’, who was not a small man, flattened’ his opponent; probably died when the last of the witnesses left school	1950s
Branding	Holding a boy’s hand firmly to a very hot radiator	1940s - 50s
Bring down Luke	When those in the bunkers got bored they sought relief by creating a noise under the room of R.S.Lucas, usually by lifting and dropping one of the heavy tables - so ‘ bring down Luke.’	1910s - 20s
Bumfreezer	Eton jacket – still extant though rare by 1925	Up to 1920s
Bunkers	Cubicles in the first floor dorm 20 senior boys of School House (usually 6th formers) slept (one to a cubicle)	1910s – 60s
Burning off	A fiendish trick whereby a mass of burning paper was floated along the central channel of the outside lavatories causing occupants of the stalls to leap for their lives	1920s
Buster	A slice of bread and butter or margarine; in 1887 a buster was simply a crust of bread	1910s – 40s
Buster Sludge	Bread and butter pudding	1930s – 50s
Caley bonkers	Favoured sweet sold in the Tuckshop. One source states this not to be so, and that these sweets were only obtainable at one of the schools (?Parmenter’s) against which Bancroft’s played football. Hence the demand on members of XIs to bring back supplies.	1910s - 20s
Camel dung and floorboards	Apricot tart, a term coined in the early fifties but in use for only a few years	1950s
Cave	Look out!	1880s – 50s
Cheese cut	Beating with a downward stroke instead of the conventional stroke across the backside – so cheese cutting, - perfected in the fifties, for ad hoc corporal punishment in the junior dayroom and dorm, with the use of a tie straightener in one notorious case and more commonly with a table tennis back	1930s – 50s
Chiggers	Chigwell School	1910s - 20s
Colts	Under 15s (years old) sports teams	1950s
CR	Boarder monitors room - short for Committee Room. It was located immediately above the main entrance	Up to 1970s
Cross country definitions	Round the Owl. A run which started at Rigg’s, went through the forest almost to the Owl PH, then back to Rigg’s.	1930s - 50s
	Great Triangle - via Ranger’s Road	1950s
	Large Triangle - via Brook Road	1950s
	Small Triangle - via Whitehall Lane	1950s
	Competition Hill - Rigg’s to the Royal Forest Hotel	1950s
Dabday	A pernicious custom which permitted boarders of 4 or more terms to inflict physical chastisement on fags of 3 or fewer terms on the last day of term.	1910s - 20s
Dabs	A delicacy obtained by dipping sardines into a tin of condensed milk. In 1887 “dab” meant “good.”	1910s
Daybug	A dayboy. According to N.C.Suckling, 1915-22, the term daybug was a retort to dayboys dubbing boarders as bugs.	1910s - 60s
Dob Cricket	A favourite game for the younger members of the Boarders (the junior dayroom); each letter of the alphabet represented a score or a dismissal, teams of famous players were chosen and their scores arrived at by conning an extract from a newspaper or by ‘dobbing the letters in a book	1920s – 50s
Dorm	Dormitory – e.g senior dorm	1930s – 60s
Dorm beats	Corporal punishment meted out in the dormitory using a cane, or a lam stick (1-6 strokes)	1950s
Draper’s half	Half day holiday granted at the request of Governors on Visitation Day. When Vis Day was at the end of term requests would be made by the Head Monitor on the Francis Bancroft anniversary, and on Empire Day ( May 24th.). Not always granted!	1930s – 40s
	By the 1950’s this had become a whole day and was requested by the visiting ‘celebrity’ speaker	1950s
Driers	Room off the main porch (up a short flight of steps) filled with frames of hot water pipes, where sports kit was left to dry	1950s – 60s
Duty	Fagging for the CR	1930s - 60s
Fag	See “kid”	1930s - 60s
Feast	Organised (i.e. a group) illicit meal consumed after lights out	1950s
Fingernail pie	Apple pie (the fibrous pieces of apple core were considered to resemble fingernails)	1960s
Flick leave	Occasional official permission for boarders to visit a cinema	1950s
Gating	Punishment for boarder – confinement to school premises	1930s - 60s
Ghost night	Halloween – when traditionally ghosts appeared in the junior dorm. Actually older boys, dressed for the part	1930s - 50s
Goldfish bowl	Boarders prep. room near the Great Hall	1970s – 80s
Grove, The	West Grove playing fields	1950s - 60s
Heaven	A sweet consisting of blancmange surmounted by pineapple slices in jelly. Served only to those players in the one day matches between the 1st XI and Essex Club and Ground, Brentwood, and the Old Bancroftians. The special lunch was cold steak and kidney pie (delicious) with new potatoes and salad, followed by Heaven.	1930s
Hockey dice	A team game played similar to ice hockey in the junior dayroom (usually in the break between two periods of prep.); benches were turned on their side to form a rink and short, homemade wooden bats were use to propel a wooden puck at high speed	1950s
Hole	A cellar entered through a door in below the stairs to the dormitories where a secretive club, also known as The Hole, conducted its clandestine activities	1950s
Hot piping	A ‘punishment’ handed out to younger boys in the 1960s built locker room where bare heating pipes ran at low level along one wall. One was forced to sit upon the pipe for as long as humanly possible, to the amusement of one’s seniors	1960s - 70s
Hollybushing	The practice of abducting a small boy (usually a kid) by a group of ‘not so small’ boys to Reed’s Forest where he would be thrown, debagged or not, into a holly bush; frequently carried out on a cold day when the mortifying effect on the flesh was greater	1960s
Impot	An imposition- a punishment involving writing a line of text repeatedly; given out as two sides, or four sides or more depending on the heinousness of the crime committed; in the fifties pre-printed impositions were introduced which required the copying of a line in ‘copperplate’ script. The texts were about such weighty matters as the origin of resin or the properties of attar of roses.	1910s - 60s
Jibber	Gravy	1920s - 30s
Johnson	Meat served, from ‘Johnson,’ the horse used to pull the mowers on rollers before the advent of motor mowers	1930s
Kid	A new boy with less than one year at the School; a monitor in School House would also select a kid to act as his personal servant, unpaid but subject to sporadic tipping, hence ‘so and so’s kid’	1880s - 1960s
Kid duties	Duties to be carried out by all School House kids, on a rota basis, for their monitors – four kids to clear up the monitors room before breakfast (by getting up early), two at lunchtime, two after afternoon periods or rollcall and two after tea.	1930 - 50’s
Kid hunt	‘Open season’ (during the season of darkness) on kids during the half hour between the end of ‘Quiet Hour’ and cocoa on Sundays; a type of ‘hide and seek’ in which the penalty for being found ran from debagging to boot-blacking the genitals	1950s
Lam stick	Piece of a broken wooden chair used by Boarder Monitors for ad hoc corporal punishment, particularly in the dorm	1930s - 40s
Lamming	A beating. In 1887 a “lambing” (sic) was a “good thrashing.”	1910s - 30s
Leper’s arm	Suet roll encrusted with dates; the term was sometimes applied to the dish more usually known as ‘Rubber from Malaya.’ Also ‘Dead man’s leg,’ ‘Cannonball’ or ‘Dog.’	1960s
Lockers	Locker room	1930s - 60s
Ma P	Mrs.Pepper - School Matron	1930s - 50s
Man’s room	First room on the left off the quad, used by the four boarder monitors	1910s - 20s
Mon hole	Dayboy monitors room	1930s - 60s
More	A second helping at meals	1930s - 50s
More more	A third helping at meals	1930s - 50s
Mucker	A dustbin or wastepaper basket	1930s - 60s
Muckering	See ‘binning’ – also placing an item in a mucker (e.g. a small boy would be given rubbish and told to mucker it	1960s
Newbug	A new boy who was not also a kid	1930s - 50s
Pa Brown’s	A small general stores at Woodford Wells, where ‘Pa Brown’ sold rather disgusting cakes, among other things	1930s - 40s
Palace	New lavatories which replaced the outside facilities	1930s
Pav pitch	The pitch nearest to the pavilion which was used for House matches	1930s - 40s
People	Parents	1930s - 40s
Period	A lesson	1920s - 90s
Pink Death	Pink blancmange	1930s - 50s
(also)	pink sauce on fishcakes	1940s - 50s
Po pud	Boiled suet pudding (jam or beef) served in an enamel basin which bore a similarity to a bedroom utensil	1930s - 40s
Prep	Work set by teachers to be prepared outside normal school hours – also the sessions when boarders were supervised to do the work; junior boarders did one and a quarter hours prep. per day, senior boarders did two hours (except Sunday -one hour). Before 1927 fifty minutes prep. was done before breakfast)	1900s - 60s
Prompters	Lower 4ths responsible for supervision and discipline of the Removes and 3rd formers - ie mini mons	1950s
Putty and varnish	Treacle pudding served invariably on Fridays	1920s - 30s
Quad	The main quadrangle around which the School was originally built	1900s 80s
Quad walk	A punishment requiring a boy to walk around the quad at a brisk pace for a specified time	1930s - 60s
Quis	A cry indicating either “whose is this?” or “who wants this?” to which the correct response was “ego” – indicating mine or me	1920s - 60s
Report	Exeat for boarders on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, i.e. excused attendance at 16.00 roll call. Usually only granted when accompanied by parents	1930s - 50s
(also)	A form of monitoring whereby a boy carried a form to be completed by each teacher to indicate that he was performing adequately in class: a failure to improve resulted in a beating	1930s - 50s
Rigg’s	A very rough rugby pitch down Whitehall Lane	1930s - 40s
Rubber from Malaya	Suet roll encrusted with sultanas	1960s
Sea scouts	Parts of the original Troop room were known as the “Bridge,” Ward Room” and “Stores.”	1940s - 60s
Schooly	Basic jam served to boarders at tea	1940s - 60s
Scrape	Supposedly butter - spread on bread before applying Schooly (q.v.)	1940s - 60s
Shifter	A mixture of three dried fruits stewed together – apricots, figs, and prunes	1940s
Sickers	Sanatorium (sick rooms)	1910s - 60s
Sides	More usual expression for Impot (q.v.)	1930s - 70s
Six	Six junior boys at table who formed a group to share jam and other goodies from home; a strict rule being that egg tops had to be auctioned with the cry of “quis” and awarded to the first response of “ego”.	1920s - 30s
Six feast	Held at the end of term	1920s - 30s
Skilly	Porridge	1930s - 50s
Skiv/skivvy	Maid who served in the dining room	1920s - 40s
Slosh	Tea. In 1887 it was a mixture of coffee and bread.	1920s - 30s
Slosh pot	A mug	1920s - 30s
Smally boy	A younger boy befriended by an older boy	1940s - 50s
Sneak	A teller of tales	1880s - 1960s
Soup	The word shouted by the players of assy football when the tennis ball was skied over the lavatory wall and landed in the open channel bog	1920s
Stiff Dick	Jam turnover	1930s
Swappers	Changing rooms for gym or sports	1930s - 60s
Swag	Sausage	1930s - 40s
Swag roll	Sausage roll	1930s - 50s
Thames mud	Chocolate semolina	1940s - 50s
Toe jam	The muck that collected on the floor of the swimming pool towards the end of the summer term	1920s
Trick	Very (i.e. terrifically) as in “trick good”	1930s - 50s
Trick gangs deadly super lusty	Yes, all five words combined – something really excellent	1930s - 40s
Trinder	A haircut – named after Mr. Trinder, the barber from the Ville who came to cut the boys hair between 7 and 8a.m, i.e. before the first roll call.	1930s - 40s
Tuck	Food from home (mainly confectionery) or bought from the tuck shop, of course	1950s
Ville	Area around the Castle Public House	1930s - 50s
Washers	Wash room, e.g. bunkers wash rooms	1930s - 60s
Wog	To steal, e.g. who’s wogged my ruler	1970s - 80s
Yearer	One who had survived the rigours of a whole year as a ‘kid’ and then had smaller fry to persecute; likewise ‘two yearer’	1930s - 60s

Compiled by Geoff Crome (1939-47) join @aclumsyguy