Circumcision for boarding school or public school in the UK?

I went to boarding school from the 1970s and during my first medical at the age of 7, the doctor recommended I should be circumcised. After a second opinion was sought by my mother, it wasn’t done. Does anyone know if, say before the 1980s, some public schools and boarding schools were promoting or recommending circumcision for boys at their school?

I've not experienced it personally, but as the same generation as you, and at an independent school from 12 in the 1980s, I did notice a higher proportion of boys who had been circumcised for non-religious reasons. Very small sample obviously, but I now suspect that there could have been a few 'prep school' boys who had been circumcised because their school 'recommended' it.

Quite probably a 'class' thing I guess - circumcision among nobility and royalty well known as being routine back then and now, so some deluded parents thought it was 'right'. Sad and wrong 😢

Well done to your mother for resisting the 'peer pressure'!

I was at school in the 70's and also had my first school medical at 7.

I did have severe phimosis at the time but there did seem to be a general trend among the school doctors to recommend circumcision if the foreskin showed any sign of tightness during the examination .

During my medical the doctor said I definitely needed to be cut and a follow up meeting was arranged at my GP within a few days.

When I visited the GP I was expecting a hospital appointment to be arranged but to my surprise the GP said to wait a bit longer and try stretching, which did eventually work.

I bet quite a few guys lost their foreskins unnecessarily as a result of those school medicals.

I do not have first-hand knowledge, but there have been numerous reports of the practice being quite common across many private schools in the UK from the 1930s to the 1970s. As far as I know, the timing for performing the procedure varied. Some schools required boys to start at the school already circumcised, so their parents had to arrange for the procedure to be performed by a private physician. Other schools arranged for boys to be circumcised after they were admitted. Oftentimes, parents were informed that the procedure would be performed after their child was admitted, but there were occasions when parents were surprised to learn that their son had the procedure performed when he returned home for Christmas holidays.

Prophylaxis and hygiene were the most common reasons. Because it was often difficult to supervise a large group of boys retracting the foreskin when bathing or urinating, most schools thought that circumcising everyone upon admission was the easier task. Reducing masturbation was another reason. The result was often as expected because Vaseline wasn't marketed as a masturbatory aid, and KY was often prescribed for vaginal dryness rather than male masturbation.

There were also accounts of mass circumcisions and tonsillectomies performed on orphan boys before they were sent by the Crown to colonial territories, particularly in Australia and Canada. Before male orphans were shipped overseas, English doctors made sure to remove the boys' foreskins and tonsils for prophylactic reasons. Years later, men who arrived there when they were boys revealed that circumcisions and tonsillectomies were mandatory for boys who were sent by the Crown overseas.

I don’t see the foreskin as vital or particularly beneficial—certainly not something that must be preserved at all costs when it’s clearly too tight. Unlike the tonsils or appendix, the foreskin doesn’t serve a critical function. If it’s causing hygiene issues due to tightness, removing it is a straightforward solution with no significant consequences.

Of course, if parents choose to wait and see if the condition improves over time, that’s a reasonable approach too. However, this means subjecting the child to ongoing discomfort and inconvenience, which may not be necessary.

@kulemh Mmmh. Some circumcised men (it probably depends on how it was done, how tight the result is, position of the scar…) experience discomfort or even minor injuries during masturbation or intercourse, because of fragile scars and exposure of parts that normally should not be exposed to friction. It of course depends on whether you consider this significant.

Interesting. I graduated from an American boarding school in the early 70’s, and the subject was never mentioned.

Interesting. I graduated from an American boarding school in the early 70’s, and the subject was never mentioned.

@JJM It was maybe not necessary to mention this subject because most boys were probably circumcised. Or were you not circumcised and and no one saw it or talked to you about it?

I think I read in Prince Harry's memoir, Spare, that in boarding school boys joked about "roundheads" (circumcised boys, such as the prince and his brother, the current heir apparent) and "cavaliers" (uncircumcised boys). This means that circumcision in the British upper classes was still quite a thing when they were born.