Borstals were a form of reformatory for wayward youths which existed in the United Kingdom from the 19th Century until the early 1980’s, where boys and young men who had broken the law, were sent for “training” and certainly for much of the time various forms of discipline involving corporal punishment were widely practiced.

In My Borstal Days we follow the experiences of a number of bad boys including Charlie Fox and Phillip Stevens (played by Brett and James) are sentenced to eighteen strokes of the birch and two years training at Rainsford Borstal.