Tommy’s social ostracism at Hailsham

Tommy’s social ostracism at Hailsham was a long-running cycle in which ridicule of his artwork, exclusion by other students, and his own angry reactions reinforced one another. Kathy’s recollections show not only the cruelty directed at him but also how classmates, including those who felt uneasy about it, watched, rationalized, or did nothing. The persecution eventually subsided when Tommy stopped giving his tormentors the outbursts they expected, although his standing as an artist remained unchanged.

Origins in Art and Reputation

Tommy later traced the beginning of his troubles to an art lesson with Miss Geraldine. He had previously enjoyed painting, but one day he made a watercolour of an elephant standing in tall grass. He described it as a joke, though Kathy suspected that, like many childhood provocations, it had no fully formed reason behind it. After class, Tommy overheard students discussing the picture. Miss Geraldine had tried to protect him by praising aspects of his work, but her intervention seems to have sharpened the resentment rather than dispelled it.

Kathy’s account suggests that Tommy already feared his art was falling behind that of younger students. He had tried to cover this insecurity by making deliberately childish pictures. The elephant painting exposed the issue to his classmates, who began watching to see what he would produce next. When he made a genuine effort, sneers and giggles made the work seem more ridiculous to him; he retreated again into childish-looking pictures that signalled he did not care. That defensive pose then became part of the cycle: poor work drew derision, while apparent indifference gave others another reason to dismiss him.

Escalation into Exclusion

The ridicule did not remain confined to art lessons. Tommy was left out of games, boys refused to sit beside him at dinner, and dormmates sometimes acted as though they had not heard him speak after lights-out. The hostility could lapse for months, leading him to think it had passed, and then resume after something he or one of his enemies did. Kathy recalls that Arthur H. was among those who could reignite it. By the summer of Senior 2, when the students were thirteen, the persecution had reached its height.

His temper tantrums intensified the conflict, though the beginning of the outbursts is uncertain. Kathy remembered Tommy as having a temper even in the Infants; Tommy told her that the tantrums began only after the teasing became severe. Either way, the outbursts gave the group a visible spectacle and helped turn his exclusion into a shared routine. One reported incident involved Tommy heaving two desks over in Room 14 while classmates escaped onto the landing and barricaded the door. During football practice, Mr. Christopher had to pin Tommy’s arms to prevent him attacking Reggie D. On the Senior 2 fields run, Tommy was the only boy without a running partner. He was a good runner and would quickly get ten or fifteen yards ahead, perhaps hoping speed might disguise the fact that nobody wanted to run with him.

The pranks ranged from putting strange things in his bed or a worm in his cereal to a particularly degrading act: someone cleaned a toilet with his toothbrush and left it smeared with filth. His size, strength, and temper may have deterred direct physical bullying, but they did not protect him from sustained humiliation. Kathy expected someone to object that the treatment had gone too far; for at least a couple of months, nobody did.

The Group as Audience and Accomplice

The other students’ conduct was not limited to the boys who devised the pranks. When Tommy was lured back into a football game, Kathy and the others watched from the windows, curious about the latest plot. Tommy, delighted to be accepted back into the game, ran at full speed in a light-blue polo shirt he prized. Kathy noticed the danger of ruining it, but the group was laughing at Laura mimicking his expressions. The moment captures the distance between Tommy’s hope of belonging and the spectators’ awareness that he was being set up again.

After the game, the boys’ plot gave way to another tantrum. Tommy raved at the sky, wind, and a fence post, stamping and flinging his limbs about while the girls watched from the room. They joked about his movements and tried briefly to talk about something else, but returned to the windows. Ruth acknowledged that the boys were cruel to keep winding him up, then blamed Tommy for failing to control himself. Hannah countered that Graham K. also had a bad temper but was treated more cautiously; she attributed the different treatment to the belief that Tommy was lazy. The discussion turned to his lack of creative work and failure to submit anything for the Spring Exchange. Although the group had not planned this particular provocation, its members had taken what Kathy called ringside seats and then supplied reasons why Tommy deserved the treatment. They wished a guardian would intervene, yet no one went to fetch one.

Ruth’s response in the dorm after lights-out further illustrates how the group explained the situation to itself. Kathy raised the unfairness of Tommy’s treatment, but Ruth argued that he would have to change his attitude and pointed again to his lack of work for the Spring Exchange. Kathy later recognized that this view—that Tommy had brought his problems on himself—was widespread. The silence after she spoke, while the others waited for Ruth to answer, shows how strongly Ruth’s judgment shaped the group’s response to an uncomfortable subject.

The Persecution Ends

The change came gradually, not through an improvement in Tommy’s artistic reputation. For a month or perhaps longer, pranks continued, but Tommy did not lose his temper. Sometimes he seemed close to doing so; at other times he shrugged or behaved as if he had not noticed. His initial refusal to react disappointed some students, but the pranks became half-hearted as the audience lost interest. Eventually Kathy realized that more than a week had passed without one.

Other signs showed that his place in the group was changing. Alexander J. and Peter N. walked with him across the courtyard toward the fields, talking naturally. His name began to be spoken differently. During a football game, Arthur H., once one of his biggest tormentors, mimicked Tommy’s stance behind him as Tommy prepared to take a free kick. The other boys did not join in. Tommy kicked the ball, play continued, and Arthur did not try again. The smallness of the incident matters: the former pattern was available, but the group no longer treated it as an invitation.

Kathy remained puzzled because Tommy’s work had not improved and his reputation for creativity was still poor. She thought his calmer manner, the way he met people’s eyes, and his open, good-natured way of speaking had changed how others responded to him. The account does not identify a single cause for that shift. It does, however, distinguish the end of the ostracism from any vindication of Tommy as an artist: the social atmosphere changed while the judgment of his work did not.

Memory and Significance

Kathy’s recollection moves between what she saw, what others reported, and what Tommy told her years later. That layered account leaves some details unsettled, especially whether his temper preceded the harassment or followed it, while making the duration and repetition of the exclusion unmistakable. Her recognition that the idea of Tommy deliberately not trying had circulated since the Juniors reframes the bullying: what looked to classmates like a response to recent behaviour had, from Tommy’s perspective, become a years-long condition.

The episode also exposes the way collective cruelty can survive without every student actively planning it. Tommy’s classmates supplied explanations for his exclusion, treated his distress as entertainment, and waited for someone else to intervene. Kathy’s own memory includes both a moment of concern about his prized shirt and the group’s watching and laughter; she does not cast herself outside that audience. Later, as a carer, she says that choosing people from Hailsham helped her get close again to Ruth and Tommy. The memory of his ostracism therefore belongs both to their shared past and to Kathy’s adult effort to recover connections formed there.