QUESTIONING THE RHETORIC OF BRITISH BORSTAL REFORM IN THE 1930s

Abstract

In 1938, the Reverend Digby Bliss Kittermaster, who became chaplain at Rochester Borstal after retiring as a housemaster at Harrow public school, started a diary in which he recorded everyday interactions with inmates and staff. The reputation of the borstal system was at its height in the 1930s owing to Alexander Paterson's reforms, based on the structures and character-building ethos of British public schools. Young people's voices were rarely heard in this progressive discourse of borstal reform and Kittermaster is unusual for articulating them, recording what he heard, teasing out the contradictions of Paterson's reforming aspirations and the reality of humiliation and intimidation that borstal boys often experienced. Kittermaster's public school background made him well placed to question the rhetoric of the public school reform model. His complex personal perspective suggests how humane emphasis on individual potential was subverted at Rochester by coercive structures of traditional prison improvement. Kittermaster's growing frustration at his own powerlessness supports a more nuanced interpretation of how the borstal system has usually been depicted in the Paterson era of reform, especially in relation to damaging mental and emotional costs to inmates and staff, which have been largely neglected in the scholarship of borstal in the 1930s.

Suicides of Boy Prisoners; The Portland Borstal Institution; The Delinquent Child After the War

“…The prison, like other parts of the justice system, operated with a significant dollop of discretion and so the idealistic goals of reform in borstals may have run into opposition or misinterpretation from prison officers. Melanie Tebbutt's recent work on the diaries of the Reverend Digby Bliss Kittermaster, chaplain at Rochester Borstal in the 1930s, shows that he certainly thought so, and his diaries reveal a much harsher disciplinary regime, challenging the dominance of Paterson's idealised view of the interwar borstal (Tebbutt 2020). Tebbutt (2020) writes: 'Institutional and peer bullying exacerbated depression and mental health problems among vulnerable inmates.…”

“…Melanie Tebbutt's recent work on the diaries of the Reverend Digby Bliss Kittermaster, chaplain at Rochester Borstal in the 1930s, shows that he certainly thought so, and his diaries reveal a much harsher disciplinary regime, challenging the dominance of Paterson's idealised view of the interwar borstal (Tebbutt 2020). Tebbutt (2020) writes: 'Institutional and peer bullying exacerbated depression and mental health problems among vulnerable inmates. At high risk of self-mutilation and suicide, they were more likely to be regarded as manipulative and needing discipline than vulnerable.…”

“…In the post-war period, new life was breathed into the borstal system, and the interwar period would later be remembered as somewhat of a 'golden age' (Soothill 2007, p.42). While this view has been challenged recently (Tebbutt 2020), it remains the pervasive narrative of the interwar borstal among criminologists and former borstal staff (although, of course, none survive from this period). This was the era of Sir Alexander Paterson, the reforming Prison Commissioner, and architect of the post-war borstal system.…”