Anthony Chenevix-Trench

Anthony Chenevix-Trench (10 May 1919 – 21 June 1979) is best known as the Headmaster of Eton College from 1964–1970.

Family and education

He was the son of Charles Godfrey Chenevix Trench (1877–1964) and Margaret May Blakesley. His grandfather was Richard Chenevix Trench (1807– 1886), Archbishop of Dublin.

He was educated at Shrewsbury School and Christ Church, Oxford. He fought in the Second World War and attained the rank of Captain in 1939 in the Royal Artillery. At the fall of Singapore in 1942, he was taken prisoner and remained a POW for three and a half years at Changi Prison and working on the Burma Railway. He graduated from Oxford in 1948 and became an assistant master at Shrewsbury, where he was a housemaster between 1952 and 1955. He was Headmaster of Bradfield College between 1955 and 1964 and, whilst there, he held the office of Justice of the Peace (J.P.) for Berkshire in 1960.

He was Headmaster of Eton College between 1964 and 1970 and, under his Headship, Eton was reformed with the introduction of sciences in the junior years, the end of corporal punishment administered by senior boys, and a reformed curriculum. In 1970, he was appointed Headmaster of Fettes College, Edinburgh, and died, in office, in 1979 shortly before the end of the summer term, when he was to retire.

Abuse allegations

Paul Foot, the journalist, had Chenevix-Trench as his housemaster at Shrewsbury. In adult life, Foot exposed the ritual beatings that Chenevix-Trench had given. As Nick Cohen wrote in his obituary of Foot in The Observer:

“

Even by the standards of England's public schools, Anthony Chenevix-Trench, his housemaster at Shrewsbury, was a flagellomaniac. Foot recalled: 'He would offer his culprit an alternative: four strokes with the cane, which hurt; or six with the strap, with trousers down, which didn't. Sensible boys always chose the strap, despite the humiliation, and Trench, quite unable to control his glee, led the way to an upstairs room, which he locked, before hauling down the miscreant's trousers, lying him face down on a couch and lashing out with a belt.' Naturally, Chenevix-Trench was promoted and became a headmaster, first of Eton, then of Fettes. Exposing him in Private Eye was one of Foot's happiest days in journalism. He received hundreds of congratulatory letters from the child abuser's old pupils, many of whom were now prominent in British life.

”

Nick Fraser, in his book The Importance of Being Eton: Inside the World's Most Powerful School, describes his own experiences of Chenevix-Trench at Eton. Reviewing the book, The Sunday Times said that he "was subjected to a furtive sexual assault by the headmaster, Anthony Chenevix-Trench, whose proclivities in this area were not made public until after his death, and it damaged him, he says, 'more than I could ever have brought myself to express'".

Eventually, his fondness for beating boys and his drinking became so embarrassing that he was forced to resign from Eton. The Independent on Sunday reported in 1994:

“

It is not recorded whether Anthony Chenevix-Trench, the former Eton headmaster, quoted Proverbs 13:24 to the boys he flogged, but glowing testimonies from them following allegations that he was a brute and an alcoholic suggest the essence of the quotation sank home. Chenevix-Trench was headmaster from 1963 to 1970. Claims that he became too ready with the lash and too fond of the bottle will be published this month in Eton Renewed, an authorised history of the school by Tim Card, its vice-provost.

”

Mr Card writes that staff at the school were embarrassed by Chenevix-Trench's drinking and that he "regarded corporal punishment not as a last resort, but almost as the first". He claims the head was forced to resign eventually and that the matter was hushed up."

However, Christopher Hourmouzios reminisced to The Times: "He once flogged the living daylights out of me with a strap on my bare backside, and my brother tells me that the "headman", as we called Trench, once beat him and a whole divinity class of more than twenty boys one afternoon!" But, he went on: (he) "was the same man who abolished boxing at Bradfield, and later at Eton; who was a fine teacher who taught me Latin, just as he had his fellow PoWs after being captured by the Japanese in the Second World War; and who launched a modern, progressive appeal for new college buildings and facilities."

Publications

• George II (1973)
• Charley Gordon: An Eminent Victorian Reassessed (1978)

See also

• Physical abuse

Further reading

• Card, Tim Eton Renewed (John Murray, London, 1994) ISBN 0719553091
• Fraser, Nick The Importance of Being Eton: Inside the World's Most Powerful School (Short Books, London, 2006) ISBN 1904977537
• Ingrams, Richard My Friend Footy (Private Eye Productions Ltd., London, 2005) ISBN 1901784428
• Peel, Mark The land of lost content: the biography of Anthony Chenevix-Trench (Pentland Press, Edinburgh 1996.) ISBN 1858214009

Academic offices
Preceded by Robert Birley	Head master of Eton College 1964-1970	Succeeded by Michael McCrum