Another unfortunate English childhood

I was reading a review of a new book about Charles Dickens by the (extremely prolific) writer AN Wilson, and was struck by this part near the end:

In his final chapter, he remembers first encountering episodes from Dickens at the age of eight or nine at his private school, which was “in effect a concentration camp run by sexual perverts”. The teacher who introduced him to Dickens was himself utterly sinister and Dickensian, the skill with which he impersonated Fagin and Squeers “all too convincing”. The shards of Dickens sustained his spirits among the privations and abuse visited on him by the paedophile headmaster and his monstrous wife, uninhibited sadists in Wilson’s vivid, detailed account.

Wilson is 10 years older than me, so we are talking of a dire schooling situation in the 1950's, not from earlier in the 20th century.

I see that Wilson wrote a column in 2011 in the Guardian about what the headmaster and his wife did, and how he escaped.  It was appalling treatment, but it sounds as if he was not one of the boys sexually touched, even if tormented in other ways.

As Wilson came out of the experience to have a very successful life, is it OK to say that I find it blackly amusing to hear, once again, of the terrible reputation of what went on in British private schooling in the first half 20th century.   I am reminded of the startling passage in Evelyn Waugh's autobiography about the brazen teacher who made an open statement of what he did with a student, only to leave the school shortly thereafter to continue a career of bouncing from school to school with sudden departures after preying on boys.    (That's one thing the internet has, to its credit, help prevent.)

Why was this such a British thing?   And one which the well-to-do were seemingly prepared to risk exposing their kids to by packing them off to boarding school?   Well look here, it seems someone has written a whole book about that:  Stiff Upper Lip: Secrets, Crimes and the Schooling of a Ruling Class.   The Google preview of the book (I found it by googling Evelyn Waugh and pedophile teacher) contains this provocative explanation by his son Auberon written in the Spectator in 1977 (and one which I suspect his editor would not let him write today):

Well, good for Auberon, I guess.   But I'm rather glad I was born here and not in an English family wealthy enough to consider boarding school.

Update:  because I feel a bit guilty about this post, I'll add a link to another article at The Guardian about some anti-boarding school campaigning (not only for its poor reputation for sexual assault, but its general psychological harm to do with a feeling of parental abandonment) from 2014.