In the last half of the nineteenth century, masturbation, or, rather, a fear of masturbation, became close to a national obsession. Boys were considered to be most at risk from this ‘evil’ and in need of education and protection. Fathers, mothers, doctors, religious leaders and schoolmasters were all pressed into service to teach adolescents the inherent dangers of the vice and to instruct them in how to develop the necessary defences of self-control to resist its temptations.
