Sex education started in earnest about 1920, when the government was worried about soldiers returning from the war with Venereal Disease* and passing it on. So schoolboys began to be taught a bit of basic anatomy, peppered with what must have been deeply confusing stuff about rabbits and pollinating flowers, all wrapped up in dire warnings about VD and moral disgrace if they actually did it.
Girls fared even worse. My mother had a hilarious book on puberty, called The Hygiene Book for Girls, part of a series of schoolbooks, published by The Irish National Schoolboard. (Other gripping titles in the series included 'Management of the Sick' and 'Duties of Female Servants'.) Any adolescent girl looking for real information would have been sorely disappointed. The book did however contain the following 'essential' advice:
Try to get a good bath at least once a week. Otherwise use a sponge and HOT water to wash in all the places that matter. Remember! Odour offends.
Do NOT eat between meals. (This point was driven home by a picture of a fat girl standing next to a clock which read 11am, while she surreptitiously munched a large piece of pie. A thick black line was crossed through the entire page along with the word 'NO', lest you remained unconvinced of the gravity of this moral failing.)
After travelling in a Second Class train carriage, always brush your hair over a large piece of white paper to catch any lice.
But what if you wanted some hard facts about fertilisation? Not to worry. According to the book, 'Your eggs will not be fertilised until you are quite grown up and have a husband.'
My husband is American and way before he was fertilising my eggs, he can vividly remember scare films at high school, again about VD. They usually featured a young boy who 'goes' with a loose woman and catches VD as a result. Naturally, while the catheter is inserted up his penis by a Camel smoking doctor, the poor boy vows never again to have premarital sex, especially with a girl who looks like she might enjoy it. Strangely enough this did not put my husband off sex and he lost his virginity in Germany with a beautiful girl in a bathtub. But what of those dire warnings?
"I wanted to get laid."
* now known as Sexually Transmitted Diseases, or STD.