Burnley Grammar School

I can remember having a couple of school medicals during my time at secondary school in the 1970s.These took place in the school medical room with our school nurse and a visiting doctor.

The first one was during my first year at Secondary School when I was about 11 and a half.
I can remember having to strip down to my vest and knickers and having my height and weight checked by the school nurse. She also checked my hands for warts and feet for verrucas. The doctor then asked me to lift my vest to so he could check my heart and lungs with the stereoscope.

The second medical was when I was about 15. In many ways it was similar to the first, except that by that time I was wearing a bra. I had to unhook it and partially remove it so the doctor could do a quick visual examination of my breasts. I didn't have to remove my knickers, but the nurse did have a quick peek down there and ask if my periods were regular.

We also had visits from time to time by 'Nitty Nora as well as the dreaded BCG injections.

Whilst not from the UK but Ireland this brings me back to my school days. We had to do PE bare chested all through the year and since it was boarding school we had an annual medical inspection which most of us hated.

We had school medical exams right the way from primary school until leaving at eighteen, I think they were every year but certainly at least every two years. At primary school it was in a room with a doctor and a nurse. There was a screen down the middle of the room and on one side you undressed down to underpants and saw the nurse and then when ready and the lad before you had gone went round the screen to the doctor, I can't remember exactly what happened but underpants were certainly down and testicles felt.

At grammar school it was referred to as a medical inspection and they took place in the gym. We went in class by class and lined up. We were told to undress and I can remember the first time we were told that any 'little boys' in the class could keep their underpants on but men should take them off. By that time we were used to taking off underpants for PE and having communal showers at the end and as no one wanted to be seen as a 'little boy' underpants came off. The doctor was an old navy doctor who was brusque and stood no nonsense. We had to line up and he moved his way along the line checking one part of each body at a time so ears, mouths and so on. Testicles were last and everyone had to take a turn to cough. In the last couple of years we also had to bend over and be checked internally by a rough and probing finger.

I am fairly certain we did have physical exams by a travelling school doctor in our secondary (grammar) school. Individually in an office, if I remember correctly, with a queue formed outside the door.
Can't really remember what they checked!
We certainly were checked by the "nit-nurse" in primary school but I am not sure if that carried on into secondary school.

In response to Curious, I am not aware of physical examinations taking place in any British secondary schools: we certainly did not have them. They did take place in our primary school - individually in the staff room, by a doctor working for the County Council. A member of staff was present although parents could attend if they wanted to. They hardly ever did.

I lately watched this documentary on the British Royal Marines and I was surprised to learn that recruits actually have to sleep naked. No boxer shorts or socks allowed and definitely no pyjamas,from 10:20 onward:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGzXJ3pRLQY

What were your school's physical exams like?
Where they done in groups or in privacy?
Were there chaperones, like parents or teachers, present?

I was born in 1946 and raised in central Illinois in the US, so that is my experience.

Our schools did not have pools. We did have PE every day in grades 7-12. We had to wear shorts. and t-shirts. Boys often divided up into teams of "skins" (no shirt) and "shirts." We thought nothing of it and never questioned it.

We learned to swim at the YMCA. In those days Y's were either all men or YWCA's which were all female. Suits were simply NOT allowed in the pool. You had to shower and go through a short hall with access to the pool. This hall had nozzles in the base of the walls to wash your feet and between your legs. Then you went through a final foot bath.

All swimming and lessons were nude. The life guards were mostly high school and college boys and they too wore no suits. Your first day you might have had a little apprehension, but it went away quickly. A pool filled with 30 naked boys of all ages and their dads was considered totally normal.

Some of my fondest memories are of one of our parents dropping a car load of us boys off at the Y on Saturday morning with nothing more than a towel and a dollar for lunch and snacks. We would stay the better part of the day in the pool or gym after our swim lesson.

I can also mention that in school, we were REQUIRED to take a full shower after every PE class. If you got caught skipping your shower you got detention. In those days boys learned to relax in the the presence of other naked boys of all shapes and sizes and thought little of it. You were only really in a rush if you had already dawdled and had to get to class.

Our fathers and other male family members had mostly served in the military during World War II so they fully accepted communal male nudity.

Also, many families had moved from farms in to the city for jobs after the war. My grandparents lived on a small farm in southern Illinois. The cousins, uncles and dads ALWAYS swam in the pond or creek nude. If you had suggested you were going to spend money on clothes to get wet they would have thought you addled. Now the schools don't require communal showering or nude swimming. The result is boys taking "selfies" of their bodies and posting them on the internet.

I think we were more accepting of not only our own bodies but those of others before they merged the Y's and became slightly hysterical bout body parts.

One last note. I have several friends who were raised the same time in Chicago and attended both Catholic and/or public schools. Large schools that had indoor pools. They have all confirmed that nude swimming for males was NOT a matter of choice. No suits, period unless you were on the seim team and in a competiton.

With reference to Curious and his questions about compulsory nude swimming, research I have done suggests that this practice was at one time almost universal, gradually becoming less frequent from the 1960's, and disappearing completely only in the early 1980's, but by then it was very rare indeed.

Winston Churchill records in his autobiography that he and all other boys swam naked at Harrow. At Bedford School nude swimming was compulsory up to the early 1960's but had ended by the time I went there in the 1970's, although I myself saw an old copy of the swimming pool rules which stated that the wearing of swimming trunks was a privilege restricted to sixth formers.

I have friends who are a few years younger than me who swam naked at their respective schools: Newcastle Royal Grammar and Berkhamstead, though both told me the practice was discontinued during their time there. One of them left Berkhamstead in about 1986 and it seems that compulsory nude swimming persisted into the early 1980's, which is unusually late. I think at Berkhamstead it was compulsory for boys of all ages but at Newcastle, as at Bedford in an earlier period, it was only compulsory for junior boys.

I have a friend who attended a Blue Coat school (I think Cheshunt or somewhere like that) who said nude swimming was compulsory for all boys of all ages, but he was there in the 1950's. He told me that no-one thought there was anything odd or unusual about it, and he cannot remember anyone being teased, or being in any way embarrassed; but this was not the experience of my friends in the 1970's and 1980's, for by then they were conscious that they were participating in an archaic tradition.

Manchester Royal Grammar had compulsory nude swimming to quite a late period as well - I think into the early 1980's - so it may have been the last school to abandon what was, 100 years ago, a near universal practice. Summerhill is I think a special case, being an ultra trendy alternative sort of school where nude swimming was (and technically still is) optional, never compulsory, and also mixed - a very different type of place to all the others I have mentioned.

Military school in Asia

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vCP4nmq7mO4

1:45

To "Curious", I did not attend such a school but here is a named reference to a school where it was practiced.

http://www.blokeinthenorth.com/2011/06/i-want-more-dinner-right-now.html

Edward and Matthew, can you name the schools which you were in which had this practice?
I don't think this would be a problem since it was so long ago and thousands of pupils must have gone to those schools.
When did this practice stop, if it did?
Can you produce some document or verification from your school or its website, or any other school official website, to confirm that this was the rule at the time?

Another poster gave a link to the old pupils site of the school he went to where he claims that both boys and girls swam nude together as normal. There is all mention of every trivial thing that happened there in their days by these old pupils, but none mention anything about nude swimming.

So if it was so widespread as some claim why is there no verifiable mention of it anywhere, at least that I know of?

To 'Curious". I would suspect that in the case of schools where naked swimming was the practice, maybe the uniform lists didn't mention trunks. It is also quite possible that new intake pupils were aware of what to expect from having friends or family already at the school.

Matthew,doing PE in only shorts is one thing, but made to swim nude as school rules is quite another.

Are there any documents which show in the school rules that boys must swim in the nude?

Such rules would obviously be public, since parents and prospective parents would have to be notified about it, among the other rules concerning uniform and others, and thus nothing secret about it.

In reply to 'curious' concerning nude swimming which was mandatory. As Matthew said, if a boy defiantly wore trunks, he would be ridiculed by his classmates, as I was, and so I joined the others naked, as vehemently instructed by the PE master. One did as one was told in the 1950's. I would have been disciplined had I not complied. Everyone just had to get on with it, like it or not.

To "Curious", the lack of newspaper articles is no doubt due to the fact that the practice was fairly widespread and those who were subjected to it had to just accept it.
If any boy got his parents to insist that he had to wear trunks and the school agreed to it, that boy would have been ridiculed by his peers. In my school, PE was done wearing only shorts. I remember that a boy wore a vest one day and it appeared that his parents had insisted that he should wear one. He was subjected to such an amount of mockery that he soon ditched the vest.

In my school gym every piece of apparatus seemed specifically designed to offer the maximum degree of hazard. I was terrified of climbing those ropes and having to risk breaking my neck somersaulting over the vaulting horse, yet I had to do it.

The teacher was a humourless bully, and any hesitation in following his commands, or failure to perform to his expectations, was painfully punished.

Adding in the perishing cold of the place and our scant clothing, the school gym was nothing more than a torture chamber so far as I was concerned. The dank changing rooms and communal, often freezing showers afterwards, contributed the final touch of misery.

Years of this experience three times a week, put me off any kind of sport in later life.

Are there any pictures or reliable newspaper articles which show the evidence of nude swimming in British schools?
The only evidence I have seen from reliable newspaper articles, though without any pictures, are about Manchester Grammar school and Summerhill, which was a unique liberal school.
There are many such accounts on blogs and forums, where one can say what they like, so not that much reliable.

If this practice of nude swimming in schools was so widespread, as many claim here, why are there no reliable articles or mention of it during that time?

Another memory from that picture......the climbing ropes.
For the first few sessions on the gym I was terrified of the ropes. Everyone else seemed to be able to climb them, I couldn't get more than a foot off the ground! We had to do circuits of the equipment....I couldn't do the ropes.
One day when, for some reason there were very few of us in the gym and little pressure, I decided to give it my best shot. Suddenly I got the knack, up I went to the top and then froze. They had to send helpers up the wall bars to coax me down! I never managed it again.

"Surely there is no nude swimming in schools these days."

Matthew, I am also curious about this, though seems unlikely.
But mandatory group showers still seem to be a rule in some schools.

About Rick's post, I find it plausible that some schools had mandatory nude swimming, but I never heard of mandatory chastity belts for boys in schools that he mentions. He must have gone to a very special school if that was the case.

I doubt it very much, or there would be a lot of court cases etc.
I certainly remember the woollen trunks at the sea side in my earlier years.
Starting off ok when dry but uncontrollably droopy when wet.

Matthew I agree with your last comments,implausible.

Edawrd, interesting reference to woollen swimming trunks. I remember them all itchy & scratchy. On summer holidays I used to be envious of boys I saw wearing the synthetic material trunks and was so happy when woollen ones were no longer available and I got a pair of "speedo type" tunks, which in turn seem to have gone out of fashion with youngsters opting for board shorts that cling to the legs.

Surely there is no nude swimming in schools these days.

My comment "Implausible" posted on 7th February, referred to Rick's posting.

Following upon my earlier comments about swimming at school. In the early 1950's, I attended a devoutly Christian boy's school in southern England.

At assembly, the Headmaster,an ex Naval officer, announced 'No one will wear bathing suits this term', which created much murmuring amongst the boys. I was appalled, since the first swim session was only two weeks away. In fact, I was extremely apprehensive. Needless to say, this bombshell was not greeted with much enthusiasm, and most boys said that they would continue to wear woollen trunks.

The swimming class soon came around and I perversely resolved to keep my trunks on, whilst all the other 15 or so boys in the class capitulated. Obviously, I was the one soon noticed by the supervising master, before I had even entered the water. He shouted at me to take my trunks off, and reluctantly I had to remove them. I was now unashamedly nude, along with my fellow classmates. Trunks would never be worn again by any boy for normal school swim classes.

On that first day of this new swimming regime, I walked to the footbath, then back to wait dutifully in line, to be told when and where to enter the pool. It felt strange, wearing nothing at all, and decidely airy, with the whole class displaying their bareness. No place for shyness here. It was not on the agenda.

I entered the water. Since I was unable to swim, I stayed at the shallow end. My lack of ability soon became evident, and subsequently, I was put in a swimming class of three. One afternoon, myself, and the other two non swimmers went to the indoor pool, where the instructor was waiting, wearing swimming shorts. We boys stripped at the poolside, and stood there in our birthday suits, rather self consciously. I was the first to be directed to balance precariously, face down, upon a wooden contraption, in order to practice breast strokes. This was humiliating, since I was trying to protect myself, whilst unavoidably exposing my backside. The other two boys laughed at my predicament. Soon it would be their turn. Later, I put on a harness of sorts, which was to be supported by the instructor, and having started at the deep end, I somehow managed to swim to the other end. I have been able to swim, albeit poorly, ever since. The regular swim sessions were followed by showering in open stalls.

Even after many such swims, it still seemed odd, I suppose that I eventually became used to it, and I rather enjoyed the feeling of freedom it gave. No excused would have been contemplated anyway.

It seems that the practice of naked swimming was quite widespread in boy's private schools in the 1950's. Why this was so, I do not know ?

Implausible.

i was sent to an exclusive boys boarding school where there were only 3 years 14-16 with only 12 boys in each year.
the new years intake the 14 yr olds had to assemble in the canteen and strip naked and put our folded clothes in front of us.we were taken 3 at a time into an adjoining room which was set up like a hospital room with 3 beds and 3 nurses present.we each had to lie on a bed where a nurse would shave our pubes off. we were then each fitted with a chastity device,these were taken off once a week for cleaning and any new shaving.
we were told that our parents had agreed to this,and we found this to be true,because when we went home at holiday times we were sent home with them on and being told that a key had been posted home to our parents.
it was humiliating being controlled like this,both at school and at home.

PE stripped to the waist, naked swimming, communal showers, brutal punishments - there is ample evidence on this site that some if not all of these formed part of our experience in school days. However, I find Bob's account implausible.

Having read the many comments re PE and shorts, it is apparent that generally there was a uniformity expected about pe kit in most schools. Furthermore, I expect most schools had a unifrom and strictly enforced it. But did any school go as far as mine whereby,boys were told "not to wear" the string type singlets that were fashionable in the 60s/70s because they were visible underneath our white shirts. No mention was made of course about wearing string briefs because they obviously were not visible.

Was this type of underwear generally worn?

I went to a Northern School in the 60's. Early on in my secondary shool days I remember one unpleasant day for me.
One day due to emergency repairs being required, all our year's three classes had to be sent out of the building.
We were sent across the road to a neighbouring secondary school. The gym (or hall?) had no windows that could be looked through from outside. Of course many of the boys had no PE kit with them as they were not expecting this event.
We were told that in this school it was the norm for boys to do PE naked. Perhaps this was true, I do not know. On this day we were to be combined with pupils from the other school, so there was a large number of us. I saw with alarm that some of the more extrovert boys from our school had dashed naked across the street to the school opposite. Reluctantly, a group of us went and joined them as instructed wearing just our PE shorts. On entering the hall I was horrified to be told that we were to take off our shorts and leave them in a neat pile by the door, which we did. We were informed that this was to make everyone appear the same, regardless of wether they had the correct kit or not. I recall there was an hour or two of excercises, mostly sitting or lying on the hard wooden floor, and sometimes dashing about the hall, still naked. When we were eventually allowed back into our own building, we had to sort through the pile of white PE shorts to find our own pair before returning over the road. I do not think activity happened more than once or twice, thankfully.

Yes. Cold house was the norm.
My parents managed to rent a house with two sitting rooms when i was about one year old when they left their first flat which was over a shop.
They had no money to furnish the front room and it stayed completely empty for a number of years. Every Sunday their two arm chairs, a small square table and the mains table radio were moved into that room and after Sunday lunch and we spent the afternoon and evening in there. After I went to bed, the furniture and the "wirless" were moved back to the back room and we spent the rest of the week there.
This was still going on when I was about seven and they got their first tv. That was moved into the front room on Sundays but they had managed to buy a there piece suite by then.
We had a coal fire in one room only (front room on Sundays!) and the paraffin heater in the hall. It had to heat the hall, stairs bathroom and three bedrooms! Ice on the windows and no loft insulation. My bedside table was a wooden orange crate.
One memorable event was the purchase of a single bar electric fire which went on the landing on really cold nights and in the bathroom with a long taped-up flex and a big two-pin plug (!!!!) on bath night to stop the icicles forming!
(I know this belongs in the house and home section, but previous comments here brought it all to mind. I might copy it across.)