Educating Ealing II: Church of England Primary in the 1920s
An inquisitive four-year old of the 1920s, growing up in the district around the Grove, Ealing, at the Ealing Green end, would ask about a golden angel, blowing a long golden trumpet, that could be seen standing on a short spire just above the surrounding roofs. That one child would be told the angel was calling children to school, which it did for all reaching the age of five. Another would get a reply implying disquiet about what went on in the place beneath the angel, hidden from sight.
A majority of the four-year-olds of the time and place were being brought up in a house run by their mother, their father coming home in the evenings, providing protection and the necessities of life. Most of these families viewed living in a flat as sacrificing privacy. There were half a dozen or so roads of terrace cottages in the neighbourhood, dating from around 1840. Each cottage had a slightly different appearance from the next one, by the set of the front door for instance. Also, the little front gardens enabled the occupants to put their personal stamp on them. A number of these cottages were owned by a local undertaker who charged a weekly rent while his tenants were alive, but accommodated them permanently for one final down payment, about £5 at the time, when they were dead.
Detached and semi-detached nineteenth century houses nearby had formerly housed elegantly dressed Victorian and Edwardian ladies and gentlemen, the gentlemen in frock coat and top hat leaving every morning to take the steam train to the City. In the 1920s it was not always clear who lived in these houses, but the general premise for all roads was that the houses in them were where other people lived – with whom one should not get too friendly.
Most children had brothers and sisters, enabling them not only to get over the first hurdles of coping with other individuals but also to present a united front to outsiders.
Less advantaged were the “only” children, whose parents had, for economic purposes, planned to have only one child. These tended to be cossetted and were liable to suffer hard knocks when school time arrived. A mistake child, whose parents had intended no children, was recognisable by his fumbling attempts to establish relationships with others, often achieving only greater isolation in the endeavour.
An extra local category were children from Smith’s Homes. Mr R. T. Smith, a native of Gloucester, had founded his “Homes for Motherless Children” in Ealing. The children lived an orderly life in gender-separate houses but not as in a Union Workhouse or “Charity” institution for orphans; they went out to school in the normal way. Parents were subject to a number of social pressures, aftermaths of the 1914-18 war living on into the 1920s. A little wooden war memorial had been fixed to a wall at the corner of one of the roads. It contained a crucifix, a rack for flowers, and a short list of men’s names, in thanksgiving for the safe return of those men from the trenches to that road.
Wage-earning men had returned to hard times, housing shortages, bare subsistence incomes and minimal support if sickness or unemployment struck. It was essential to budget on a week by week basis and save something “for a rainy day.” Also essential was a responsible and determined mother who made the money go round, put up regular meals after judicious shopping and, if necessary, made do and mended. She created a home to which her husband and children were glad to return. These women were realists, preserving civilized values.
For some parents the approach of school age meant they would get their children out from under foot for part of the day and they would be taught some discipline into the bargain. Some took steps to prepare their children for learning. The cheapest and most effective pre-school device that educated, entertained and lightly taught social niceties was “Chick’s Own Weekly.” Superior to a “comic,” “Chick’s Own” ran picture stories in colour under which the narrative could be read in easy words, hyphenated where thought necessary. The hero, Chick, who was a chick, solved social problems of the sort that estranged people by the application of straightforward logic. When Jack Sprat, who would eat no fat, sat glowering at his wife who would eat no lean, Chick solved the situation to their delight by simply changing their plates round. Given the absence of artificial distractions, no radio, no television, evenings early indoors and a little help from an adult, “Chick’s Own” readers could become quite literate by their fifth birthday. They would need Chick’s diplomacy as well, for they stood to attract jealousy from both the less clever and the willing ignorant. All were going to school to learn, however.
Schooltime
People who could afford it, or intended to make afford it, took their offspring to a private primary school. They would be fitted out with a uniform that identified them with the school, gave them status, feelings of esprit de corps and, up to a point, levelled them off in class. Others took their children to the Infants Department of a Council Elementary school which might bear the uninspiring name of “Bloggs Road Elementary,” given to it by insensitive Council officials. The children of residents in the neighbourhood of the Grove stood to become pupils of St Saviour’s Church of England Infants’ school (non-fee paying). The mysteriously hidden St Saviour’s church was the one on whose short spire the golden angel stood with upraised golden trumpet, but no St Saviour’s pupils had to attend the church unless they wanted to. Few will have come from families who attended any church and some were Jewish anyway. In school, basic prayers and the Creed would be taught in the elegant language of the Anglican Prayer Book as a national cultural subject rather than as articles of faith to be believed,
On the first day, children were taken along the Grove, passing a medieval looking building with a large arch, dark underneath, to an ordinary building nearby where they first smelled the special smell of school. There, they waited in various states of emotion according to the image of school on which they had been nurtured. Eventually, they all had to be left to their fate. Not all mothers got away without protest from fearful offspring though, in general, children of the time were not inclined to appear as “namby-pambies” or “crybabies,” and “showing up parents in front of other people” was a heinous sin to commit.
The children were led into a room where a table was laid out with coloured plasticine and pictures of what could be made with it. Aimed at settling children in, this also served as an indicator of how individuals might turn out as pupils. A child making a good copy of an object selected could feel pride in achievement, especially if noticed by a teacher.
The next stage was when each child got a desk at which to sit in a classroom, all facing forward to where a teacher stood with blackboard and chalk. Attention was required, talking had to wait until playtime. Classes were for learning Reading, Writing, Arithmetic and, using cardboard coins, Money – the English system. The average child would not handle more than one penny occasionally, a silver sixpence on a birthday or at Christmas, but early preparation for the day when they would discover that absolutely everything had to be paid for was essential.
P. T. (Physical Training) took place in an upstairs hall reached by narrow steps as it was in a part of the medieval looking building, though the windows and frontage of that part had been modernised. The children marched round doing exercises with wooden dumbbells, standing, or sitting to perform together on “forms,” a sort of long low stool.
New Every Morning
The morning began with “Hands together, eyes closed,” to say the Lord’s Prayer:
“Our Father,
Which art in Heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name ...”
It will be objected that the prayer being taught virtually by rote, young children would not only repeat it parrot fashion but also fail to appreciate either its religious or literary style. “Which art,” for instance, was not heard in ordinary speech, and “Hallowed” sounded like the “hallo” with which people greeted each other. On the positive side, rote learning got the prayer implanted in the memory such that it might be of value to the recipient, if not at the time, then later. Some children, influenced by the strong anti-religious opinions of their parents, viewed prayer-time as a joke. There was a boy who always repeated:
“Our Father,
Peanuts in Heaven,
Peanuts be Thy name ... “
He was never caught by a teacher.
In the Creed, taken from the Anglican Prayer Book, came the phrase: “I believe in the Holy Catholic Church ...” This could be perplexing to certain children because parents would use the term “catholic” in a way that had the effect of scaring them. Father Buckell, who was the priest of St Saviour’s church, which many children would never enter, was spoken of in this manner. It was said that the inside of the church, hidden from view as it was, was indistinguishable from that of a Catholic church. Indeed, a group of men calling themselves Kensitites once entered St Saviour’s and took the candlesticks from off the altar. Outside they declared that these things had no legal place in a Church of England parish church. Doubtless they objected to Father Buckell himself, who used incense, dressed in Catholic vestments and said Mass. He held a Children’s Mass on Saturdays for any children who liked to come.
A curious child, probably an “only” child of isolated situation, might go one Saturday, not without trepidation, to see what happened there. It was necessary to go under the dark arch to get to the church, but once through the porch of it a child was likely to be impressed by the beauty of the place. It was light and airy. Stained glass windows rose up behind the reredos and the tall crucifix with its attendant candlesticks on the altar. To each side of the chancel, on pillars, pairs of life-size statues of saints stood on pedestals, three pairs on each side, one above the other. The font was in a baptistry guarded by four golden angels like the big one on the spire outside. Waiting children sat on chairs, there being no pews. When Father Buckell came it was to tell them the story of the Prodigal Son from the New Testament: A man had two grownup sons. The younger came and said: “Father, give me the share of your property I will inherit one day – now. I want to go and make a life of my own.” His kind father let him have his own way and the son went off to live a high life in a far land, getting many friends. When his money ran out, however, so did his friends. The prodigal son found himself starving and had to go and live in a pigsty with the pigs. One day he said to himself: “My father’s servants are better off than me, I will go and ask my father to take me back as a servant.” But his father received him with tears of joy. His older, dutiful son did not like it but his father said: “You were always with me but your brother who was lost is found.” Father Buckell told the children God is a loving father, like a good shepherd, always ready to welcome back the sheep who escapes from the fold and has to be rescued from the danger of the wolf. “God is love and many waters cannot quench love,” he said.
Children who were unsure of themselves at home could go away believing they should get unconditional love from their parents. No wolves roamed the district but parents would imply that Children’s Homes and Orphanages were on the look-out for those who would not behave.
In school they would sing in the morning:
“All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small . . . “
Teachers exhorted children to be kind to animals, not to pull dogs’ or cats’ tails, or worse. In Baker’s Lane by the school lived a lady who had a miniature farm. There was a handsome cockerel that chased children if they picked up chicks or baited it, which they would do for amusement. One day the cockerel was seen by the children on a table in an outhouse – dead. Some expressed shock on learning it had been killed to be eaten, others boasted they would have liked to be the ones who “did him in,” suggesting early a dual nature for humankind. Most St Saviour’s children will only have eaten chicken at Christmas and then not connected it with live birds.
In those days the verse:
“The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly
And ordered their estate”
was included.
In the experience of a majority of people the foregoing was merely a statement of self-evident fact. The “poor man at his gate” meant at his own gate, not at the rich man’s. St Saviour’s pupils, living in their houses, were unaware that each was occupied on a weekly tenancy basis only, no reason needing to be given for termination by either party. All the same, there were very long tenancies where the only document of tenure was a rent book, and the expectation on both sides that nothing would intervene to stop the smooth flow of entries into the credit column.
Having sung that the “Lord God made all things well,” a well-ordered Nature for instance, the children were pitched into realistics for survival in a society created by humankind.
Into Number
As humankind seeks to master Nature by creating societies based firmly on number, the children had to learn to count. The average five-year-old would have been happy to use the Tasmanian system in which they counted: “One, two, one-two, a lot.” The Tasmanians were however wiped out by a civilisation that took number much further. St Saviour’s children were starting out on a long journey which would seem to have no end. They graduated quickly to “times tables,” soaked into the memory by communal repetition, to become the frame of a personal mental calculator that would last for life. A playtime would end, not with going back into class, but with lining up in the playground to repeat:
“Once two is two,
Two twos are four... “
up to
“Twelve twelves are
a hundred and forty-four.”
Intellectual stragglers got themselves placed in the back of the rows but detection was unavoidable. Teachers spotted mouths that did not synchronise and the straggler was awarded individual encouragement. His or her “me, Miss?” was followed by the order to repeat a sequence of the tables solo. Albeit frowning and looking hurt at the unfairness of being picked on, the offender usually strove to accomplish the challenge. There was the question of maintaining status, not appearing to be a fool. In the view of the teacher, simple laziness or failure to pay attention were the sole causes of a pupil’s lagging behind. The pupil in question could be heard in the playground later, pointing out that no grownups said “times tables,” unaware that many adults spent large chunks of their lives using them.
Worse was money. Four farthings made one penny, as did two halfpennies (pronounced “ha’pennies”). Twelve pennies (or pence) made one shilling and twenty shillings one pound. A grand looking coin called a florin was the same as two shillings, and an even grander one was two shillings and sixpence or half -a-crown. There were three-penny bits and sixpences, both silver. With the foregoing knowledge, St Saviour’s children going with their mothers to the drapers to buy “materials” to make up curtains, for instance, would not be quite so baffled to hear the assistant declare: “This one runs out at two and eleven three, madam.” The child asking why the price was two shillings and eleven pence three farthings would be told either that it was to make people think they were spending less than three shillings, or that in having to register the sale on the till in order to give change, the assistant could not pocket the cash. This sort of thing however was likely to convince children of a large gap between what was taught at school and how it was applied in “grownup” life.
Writing
Primitive societies evidently achieved considerable stability in some cases without bothering to write. They may have avoided a lot of social complications in not doing so, but St Saviour’s pupils needed the chance to survive in a complicated society.
They were taught the alphabet A. B. C. fashion, that is, naming each of the twenty-six letters in the correct sequence, such that as soon as this was mastered, a child could, in a tight corner, already have earned a wage as a filing clerk. In school, thus armed, they could proceed to learning to write by the straightforward method of copying the alphabet in sequence from printed copperplate type letters, each styled for joining up. They had to be shown how to hold a pencil properly. Most had held a pencil for years and the idea of using the wrist in the manner taught, in order to produce fine rounded letters, seemed impossible of imitation. The order to begin could therefore be unnerving. A child looking up at a ledge on which stood a vase of flowers and a china tiger would be inspired by this combination of natural strength and natural beauty to make the attempt. Then, on discovering that the teacher’s peculiar hand gyrations did indeed lead to a fair copy, could only experience personal success and, further, a flush of satisfaction when a teacher came round to say: “You can write!” Some children thought it necessary to bring their noses in contact with the paper as well as the pencil, but no child was going to admit defeat, however much they might complain afterwards. They were not pressured to achieve copperplate script, just to write a clear hand.
Into Reading
A St Saviour’s pupil of brawny rather than brainy aspect was heard to declare in the playground that to enjoy Charlie Chaplin’s antics in the silent cinema you did not need to be able to read the words they put on the screen. Another, doubtless nurtured on “Chick’s Own,” replied that the words tell you what the people in the pictures are saying and doing. The first speaker, abashed, retorted that the pictures themselves should talk. He may have heard from his parents that they were about to do so (1929), which would make it even more difficult to get children over the first steps into reading. Teachers did not however tell five-year-olds that Charlie Chaplin provided a diversion from real life’s demands, in the face of which non-readers would be at a considerable disadvantage. They taught that C-A-T spelled cat, S-A-T spelled sat and M-A-T spelled mat. Then the children could understand that what happened to the mat was that the cat sat on it. Primitive languages, it is reported, had large vocabularies but little syntax. Merely learning words and not how they work in an advanced language could only lead to retrogression towards primitive forms of expression. The children were led early to cope with proper sentences and texts, each child having to stand and read one out loud solo, right round the class. Here, the “Chick’s Own” reader, if not over-confident, tended to shine, while the lesser endowed, who viewed “Chick’s Own” as a babies’ comic, stumbled over the words. Teachers did not however praise the better performers who would have liked their superiority to be highlighted, but worked to bring all up to a standard. Children were in school to learn. The stimulus they received at home varied. Some homes had no books at all, nor saw the point of having any. These did tend to buy an evening newspaper, from a choice of three titles, brought round the roads every evening. There was a premise however that children should not see newspapers as they ought to be shielded from horse race results, politics and crime reports for as long as possible. Men were given to reading crime novelettes, called “bloods,” for diversion. A super-efficient detective of elegant appearance and bearing the name of Sexton Blake outwitted all malefactors; Edgar Wallace wrote high adventure stuff for easy reading but not by children. Certain households had a book-case in the front room, often lent mystery by having glass doors, which contained a set of Dickens and other classics. These, which to the infant had been an “early memory,” now became to the early reading learner a source of challenge, especially to the “only” child who had to spend much time in that sort of room. One day it would be possible to read them.
The “wireless” was just coming in, families buying a crystal set on which the programmes had to be listened to on earphones. There was a “Children’s Hour,” but the earphones were hot to wear, having sponge covers, and the crystal had to be probed with the “cat’s whisker” to get the programme properly. As diversions, children liked playtimes with others and “nine days’ wonders.”
It was announced for instance that “Alice in Wonderland” was going to be put on as a play at the Town Hall, children from local schools being the actors in it. All children had heard the story told and been shown pictures of the memorable characters. To see them brought to life on a stage would be marvellous, but actually to become one of them would be unforgettable. Who would be picked to be the White Rabbit looking at his watch, who the March Hare? Grownups at the school gates were seen to confer in whispers, however. It looked as though they were opposed to the “Alice” play. The situation was that whether a child would get a part depended upon the parents paying for the costume which had to be of professional standard and of expensive material. There were parents whose little darlings must have the best and who would pay, but that could react on the child, who would come under fire from jealous schoolfellows. Disappointed children learned that the often-repeated question of the expense won the day. The “Alice” play received little support and only went on in a much reduced form.
The reality of “short commons” was behind another incident. The annual Scouts’ Show put on in the church hall was to include children from St Saviour’s school performing a gymnastics display with wooden dumbbells, in unison, while sitting on forms. A team of four boys and four girls was picked and rehearsed. Then they were told that when on stage each boy must wear a white shirt and each girl a white blouse. One girl did not have a white blouse, nor could her family afford to buy her one. They were on short commons. There could be no question of owing, the rent, for instance, to buy a blouse for one night. The girl would have to stand down and allow another to take her place. It was not fair, of course, but one should accept the facts of life as they applied to one with good grace. This girl did not. She went about the roads crying bitterly, “howling” as people called it, “showing up” her parents, for which she deserved dire punishment. Sympathetic people on the other hand could not provide a white blouse as that would hurt the family’s feelings by offering them charity which, out of self-esteem, they could not accept. Nor would it be good for the girl. In the event, however, she did appear in the Scouts’ Show, her eyes red-rimmed from the crying she had done. Her blouse was a very light yellow, appearing almost white in the stage lighting, and was plainly an adult one, doubtless her mother’s, pinned up behind to make it fit. Making a fuss to get your own way was supposed never to pay off!
One day, St Saviour’s children saw men in lorries arrive opposite the school. They laid railway lines in a long alleyway, filled trucks with cement and bricks and pushed these up to where, it was said, they were building a little church for children. Speculation was rife whether it would be so small that only children could get into it, or whether it would be like a dolls’ house in a room where children would play with it. As suddenly as they had come, the men took up the little railway and went away. All that could be seen at the end of the alleyway was a big door in a wall. Any child going up to this saw a stone plaque in the wall over it showing a boy kneeling at a chair saying his prayers, watched over by an angel. Children wondered if the door ever opened, so remote it seemed. For some individuals this question would be answered in a way never to be forgotten. Others. would know nothing of it.
St Saviour’s pupils continued to serve out their school-time at infants’ level, imbibing skills by constant practice, being aimed at the Greek ideal of areti – serviceability, perfection. Although most lived for playtime, some saw the world begin to open out for them. Then, for a given “year of intake,” St Saviour’s “Infants” came to an end. Young children hate change; they would have to go to another school, among strangers, long-standing friendships broken. A number would go to Christ Church, a Church of England primary school (also non fee-paying), where on arriving in the playground their first action would be to look for familiar faces from St Saviour’s. There were happy reunions, though some would never see again friends with whom they had once been in inseparable rapport. Parents of the time, concerned with more pressing matters, told tearful protesters on this score that they would “soon get over it” and find new children to play with.
Christ Church
In contrast to St Saviour’s church, hidden from view, Christ Church with its imposing steeple, designed by the famous architect Sir Gilbert Scott, rises up majestically in the open on Ealing Broadway, Christ Church school being hidden behind it. Again, pupils did not have to attend the church unless they wanted to do so, and the priest there also offered special feature services for children. As at St Saviour’s, boys and girls sat in class together but, unlike St Saviour’s, were segregated at playtime. Boys were evidently considered to be at an age when they became more given to rough games. They indeed developed rival cliques that contested corners of the playground, though their tussles were good-humoured and in no way vicious. They would have “crazes” such as collecting cigarette cards, Million-Mark banknotes bought for a penny each and Yo-Yo for instance. There would be the occasional personal fight, soon over. A wild individual would get his fun from giving smaller boys a thick ear, provided a bigger boy was not nearby to stop him.
At the first Assembly the headmaster of Christ Church was insistent in telling both genders that serious school was now to be their lot, and their overriding goal: to get the Scholarship. He did not spell out the exact significance of the Scholarship to nine-year-olds for whom this must be something belonging to the remote future, living in the present being more in their nature. Few at that age would have fully understood they would be classified for separate development after their eleventh birthday.
The headmaster, Mr Hayles, addressed the new arrivals in a Gothic-style school hall. The Gothic was mid-Victorian imitation which nevertheless suggested antiquity of establishment. If not to be thought of on the same level as the buildings of Eton or Harrow, the medieval aspects of parts of Christ Church school, like those of St Saviour’s clergy house, evidently had their effect. A local boy for whom both were familiar sights grew up to create the fictional but famous Greyfriars School. He presented in restricted literary style the adventures of its pupils, of whom the fat, cowardly, gluttonous Billy Bunter would become even better known than the handsome heroic Harry Wharton. Flint-faced form masters intent on cramming Euclid and Vergil were outwitted by their boy “victims.” Mr Hayles likely disapproved of boys reading this stuff instead of proper literature and did not allow the “Magnet,” in which the Greyfriars stories appeared, to be taken into a classroom. He would also doubtless deplore girls directing their improving reading ability towards little paper books of “romance” stories, called by them “love books.” Children of the time had, all the same, reason to believe that romance and real life were separate entities. Parents went to the then rapidly expanding cinema for romantic diversion but did not hesitate to declare that “real life was not like that.”
The headmaster spoke on a platform in the Gothic style hall. Behind and above him was a gallery on the front of which had been fixed a large, long map of the Canadian Pacific Railway made by final year Christ Church pupils, each station on the route over the Rocky Mountains having a torch-bulb mounted in it that could be lit up. It looked as though there was a romantic element in the teaching curriculum at Christ Church.
Into Class
“Sums” was the generic term used by parents who thought this was the main thing children had to learn at school. They themselves had complained about it and now their children complained about it. In addition to simple number sums and the unavoidable money sums, new arrivals were led into Geometry as well. Geometry, held by academe to be the beginning of mathematics, was for many nine-year-olds the first step into the incomprehensible. They not only had to learn that a point has no magnitude but that one had to do pointless calculations with rectangles, triangles and parallelograms. Enthusiastic mathematics teachers had the habit of taking too much for granted, failing to appreciate that the non-mathematically minded needed painstaking exposition from the ground up. The greatest benefit would arise out of being told what the use of the ability to prove theorems might be, that bisecting a triangle to show symmetry for instance helps to build houses that do not fall down, ships that float and aeroplanes that will fly. Then, all ages and types respond to finding some purpose in what they are expected to do.
A contrast to sums was provided by a Mr Brown who taught a class to sing with poetic appreciation and dramatic effect. He chose John Masefield’s “Cargoes:”
“Quinquireme of Nineveh
from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven
in sunny Palestine . . . “
sung to convey the lyric rise and fall of the banked oars under the blue Mediterranean sky.
“With a cargo of ivory
and apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood
and sweet white wine.”
As the lesson was to put over one of man’s better sensibilities, no mention was made of who had to row the quinquireme. After picturing the
“Stately Spanish galleon
dipping through the tropics . . .
. . . by palm green shores,”
they were brought abruptly up to date with accelerated tempo to sing:
“Dirty British coaster with a
salt-caked smokestack
Butting through the Channel
in the mad March days . . . “
John Masefield was made Poet Laureate at the time as the “Bard of Britain’s maritime heritage.” He had written:
“All I ask is a tall ship and
a star to steer her by ... “
Christ Church pupils, boys at least, were more inclined to be inspired by great ocean liners and marvellous new aeroplanes. The magnificent British airship R101 was about to fly to India, slicing days off the time a sea voyage took to get there. These were wish dream objects: no Christ Church child was likely to cross the Atlantic in the huge four-funnelled Mauretania or fly to India in a matter of hours by airship. Things were not good on the economic front for a great majority of people, but schoolchildren were not taught that. At Christ Church the Economic History lessons were confined to putting over men who had made Britain great. James Watt, for instance, had invented the Steam Engine: a picture in the textbook showed him thoughtfully watching the kettle boil, seeing the steam lifting the lid that gave him the idea. Kay had invented the Flying Shuttle and Stephenson the Railway, each doing it out of the blue, or so it appeared. Pupils would be introduced to a constellation of native individuals, geniuses who had brought about innovations for the betterment of life. Lister had discovered Asepsis, Simpson Anaesthetics, Faraday Electricity. Nine- and ten-year-olds are impressed by heroes and some dreamt of becoming one of the foregoing sort themselves.
Expansion
In the way that time ordains, each new boy and each new girl became a matured Christ Church schoolboy or girl, a paid up member of a form, an individual among other individuals, aware of each other. They moved on to new learning experiences, now writing with pen and ink. The ink lived in little china inkwells sunk into the wood of the desk but spilled itself out to make blots on exercise book pages, stains on fingers and dabs on clothes. There was P. T. and Sports to compensate those not enamoured of the academic side, but for those who could respond, expansion of mental horizons awaited.
Miss Williams was a formidable looking lady who stood for no nonsense but taught her class as if they were her own children. To teach essay writing, the page had to be headed “Scheme...,” followed by words indicating how clarity was to be achieved. In the Art lesson, pupils who failed to appreciate that the luminosity of watercolour is obtained by washes got the contents of their water bottle poured over their work. Miss Williams knew what children felt about money sums for she handed them out as punishments as well as subject material. In the literature period however she became a mistress of her profession. Sitting in front of the class with a book in her hand she caused characters to emerge living from the pages, in their time and background. Her reading and exposition of Louisa M. Alcott’s “Little Women” caused certain children a sleepless night when they had to wait to find out whether “Beth” would survive her life-threatening illness. In the Reading and Comprehension period, when pupils used Readers containing excerpts from a wide gamut of English Literature, the same technique of bringing out the essence of each piece excited the most uninterested to want to read. Beowulf’s fight with Grendel was unforgettable. In true British fair-play style he fought Grendel bare-handed because his opponent was not armed. The deadlier combat, of more doubtful outcome in the telling, between Beowulf and Grendel’s mother at the bottom of the slimy serpent-attended Grendel Pool, was evidently as effective as when originally related in the mead halls of its own time. Christ Church boys gave out that an old rockery-surrounded ornamental pond in a large local park was in fact the Grendel Pool. “If you fall into it you will never be seen again!” They were introduced to Wordsworth’s “wandering lonely as a cloud . . .” but more excited by “Young Lochinvar.” He rode his trusty steed over rocks and through rivers, unarmed, literally to snatch his lady love from being married to another. This poetic hero accomplished his object not with a fight but by guile. As the story was rather nearer to fairy tale than high romance, it was not thought likely to instil adverse social values into children’s heads. They laughed at John Gilpin, who borrowed a horse that ran away with him and cheered up the melancholy Cowper to versify it, and also at the waiter from Dickens who talked a boy out of his glass of porter. They were steered away, however, from any war narrative; the reality of that was still too near.
Together with being led into Literature and the art of becoming themselves literate, Christ Church pupils now had to experience their first meeting with Science. They filed into a classroom to be taught this by a Mr Heatley who, not surprisingly, began with Heat. First, he told them, they must learn how to handle hot glass vessels used in Science. On the bench at which he stood was a narrow-nozzled gas burner from which issued a long yellow flame doing what looked like a snake dance. The attentive class saw Mr Heatley turn a sleeve on the burner which made the flame turn blue and roar, then he pushed it under a tripod on which stood a glass beaker full of water. He showed how a glass test tube must be held by a proper tongs or holder made of paper, and followed this by saying a hot glass vessel must never be put down on a cold surface: the sudden cooling would crack it. Mr Heatley began to outline the sort of thing the class would learn from Science studies. As he was speaking, he noticed that the water in the glass beaker was boiling vigorously and, taking the beaker off the tripod, put it down on the bench. There was an ominous crack and hot water spread over the surface. Mr Heatley frowned heavily and declared: “I have done the very thing I said you should never do!” The shocked class looked on in silence. At a time when the value of things was well in the general consciousness, nobody laughed at an accidental breakage. “At least,” added Mr Heatley, “you have proof of what I said.” Indeed, after that, he impressed the class by appearing to prove what he taught. They were too young to be confused by being told that the imposing experiments he did were actually only evidence supporting theories. One day the class went in to see a remarkable looking apparatus consisting of two round glass flasks mounted one above the other and connected by two glass tubes: in the bottom flask a red liquid, in the top one a colourless liquid. Heat was applied to the side of the bottom flask to show the action of convection currents that made the red liquid change places with the colourless one. The class was told that heat makes atoms, of which everything is supposed to be constructed, move away from each other. They then saw a heated iron bar get longer and turn a needle round to record by how much. Small pulley systems were demonstrated to show that more cannot be got out of a machine than is put into it. This, at least, some boys found difficult to believe and thought up perpetual motion machines. As they could neither make nor try them, they could never know whether they would work and could only dream of being one of the original native innovators of whom they had heard much in school. The class saw Hydrogen made in a test tube and tested by making it go pop on applying a flame to the mouth of the tube. This gas, they were told, in an unimaginably large cubic quantity, lifted the great R101 airship because it was lighter than air. Oxygen was produced and tested by making a glowing splint burst into flame...
One day in the playground children began to shout; teachers ran out; the marvellous silver shape of R101 itself was approaching to fly low right over the playground. A boy said the captain waved down to them. Christ Church pupils saw with their own eyes one of the manifestations of a brave new world. The older generation had gone to war and before that, life was made hard for children; both mothers and fathers spoke of it at times. Now, people were going to do more sensible things through knowledge, throw off the old and bring in the new.
The Christ Church school day also began and ended with prayers. Children repeated requests to be looked after by God who was above people but who also expected certain standards of behaviour. The priest of Christ Church came in to announce he was going to give a set of six short after-school services on giants who needed to be killed. He would talk about each one from the pulpit, ask the children questions, then go down, and after knocking out the giant with a stone, cut off his head with a sword. Then at the end of the series, the child who had shown the most attention and diligence in answering questions would win the Stone and Sword, kneeling at the altar to receive them like a knight of legend. The giants, who represented personal sins like Pride and Sloth, were much less than life size, made of cardboard, and stood before the altar rails, their heads prominent. The stone and sword were evidently of wood but highly realistic and looked like a pair of formidable weapons. The congregation for the first giant was the largest, several children being disappointed on finding the giants were only glorified cardboard pictures, not even very tall, and did not move. The cinema, to which they would be taken by their parents, a practice disapproved of by Miss Williams, could produce scary monsters alive on the silver screen. Those staying the course were attracted to winning the Stone and Sword and those attending a church or chapel Sunday School were capable of doing so. At least, the heads were taken off realistically by the sword and among the remaining heroic fighters for rectitude, excitement rose. By the fifth giant, the priest had already remarked from the pulpit on the performance of certain individuals. As the last giant’s head was held aloft and the priest returned to the pulpit, they waited with bated breath. Then they heard him say he had decided not to award the Stone and Sword but to hang them up in the church in memory of the fights with the giants. They listened to him dumbfounded: they were used to being disappointed by grownups, but priests were supposed to represent prayers answered. He had sounded a bit apologetic but had not given a reason that children could understand.
The reason was that the priest had had second thoughts about putting an effective pair of weapons into the hands of a child. The Stone alone could have stopped the bully who liked to clout smaller children’s ears. permanently very likely, outside of what the Sword could have done to his neck. All grownups disapproved of children having weapons, even toy ones.
Priests and ministers of the district started a club for local boys in general at Christ Church Hall. It was “to keep them off the streets of evenings.” There was a boxing ring with an instructor who taught wrestling as well. They also learned to play chess and do giant jigsaws. The instructor would teach ten-year-olds from Christ Church school elementary boxing techniques but not wrestling. All the same, one boy learned the “Devil’s Handshake” by watching it taught to a bigger boy. Later, at school, when the bully came up, that boy did the Devil’s Handshake on him. The bully went down on the stone floor, winded, and the boy thought he had killed him. He had not, but the bully never bothered that boy again. The boy did not however view himself as a Beowulf; adults always came down on fighting. If the bully had been hurt, the boy it was who would have been blamed.
On the 24th May each year, the Union Jack flew from the flagpole in the playground. It was Empire Day and in the classrooms a large map of the world was draped over the blackboard. A smiling teacher pointed out the vast areas of it that were coloured red, indicating the countries ruled by Britain which, it was implied, was the best rule they could have. All Christ Church children could be proud to be living in the Mother Country of the British Empire on which the sun never set! Kipling’s poems “Recessional” was sung as a hymn:
“God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far flung battle line,
Beneath whose awful hands we hold
Dominion over Palm and Pine . . . “
The poem went on to say people should not forget that empires came and went, but on this day, children were taken out into the playground to march up, two by two, to salute the British flag. Then they could go home for the rest of the day. There were men to be seen in the street wearing a quite large silver badge with the words “For King and Empire” on it. They were men who had been wounded in the war. Children just went off to enjoy the free time, going into parks or playing fields, safe in the best ruled country in the world, provided they did not get into mischief; they had been brought up to behave.
The “bringing up to behave” was accomplished principally by worthy mothers who viewed the well-being of their children through the running of an ordered home as essential. No matter how far children might roam on free days, they had to reappear for meals and other domestic arrangements laid down by their mothers. They were told the limits of what they could “get up to” and for how long. There were plenty of chiming clocks on church towers, and policemen, park-keepers and respectable-looking adults could be “asked the time.” Ten-year-olds went in groups and had little desire to get into trouble. Stories were told of how the restrictions of family life and squabbles between brothers and sisters were one thing, but to be “taken away by the Authorities” or handed over to Barnardos – who broke up families so that children grew up without even knowing of the existence of brothers or sisters – was not lightly risked.
There were parks and playing fields enough in Ealing, providing enjoyment for children on a sunny day. Sums and Scholarship could be put out of mind if not perhaps the influence of Miss Williams’ literature lessons. The recently acquired Gunnersbury Park was full of grottoes, temples and (imitation) ruined monasteries and there was a farm with real sheep as well. Toy boats could be floated on the pond in Walpole Park. All were guarded by uniformed park-keepers, usually ex-servicemen or ex-policemen. Some children might go as far as the Viaduct fields, the countrified Brent River valley above which Brunel had taken the Great Western Railway on high arches. Just beyond the iron girder bridge that spanned the main road, fields were being built over with dozens of brand new houses. Children going to look were allowed to see the Show House and given leaflets to take home to their parents. An ordinary house was £300, a bigger one £400. People borrowed the money, paying £75 down and from about half a crown to seven shillings and sixpence a week (from c. 12p to 37p!) until the price and interest were paid off. Children romped home having seen ‘‘inside’’ toilets, fitted bathrooms and kitchens, things not present in the houses they occupied. Parents reacted in various ways. A family with an income of £2.50 per week and ten to 15 shillings rent per week to pay could not raise £75. A branch manager of a multiple retail firm might have £3-5 a week and a £90 bonus for the year. Being however employed on one week’s notice either way only, many years’ service notwithstanding, and pressured weekly to produce “better trading figures,” he might well hesitate to shoulder the risks of house purchase, preferring to “pay a weekly rent and done with it.”
Mothers coping with old stone sculleries, outside lavatories and tin baths that had to be filled from a kettle, yearned for what their children told of the domestic convenience that a stable safe income could buy. Wise mothers would however continue to yearn rather than chance going into insoluble debt. No worse hell could be imagined than a life being dunned for money week in week out. There was little chance of a dramatic improvement in circumstances for working class people. Sweepstakes and lotteries were illegal in Britain; there was an Irish one if people could get a ticket and go to Ireland to get the money if they won. A chance of winning money was just being introduced, called “Football Pools,” based on forecasting the results of matches, getting over legislation against ready money betting by having the forecasts sent in on credit, with a promise to pay next week, win or lose. Religious authorities spoke against people with small means hazarding their budgets on the chance of sudden affluence, highlighting the impulse to increase the stake “next time,” after a “near miss,” as a feature of the gambler’s road to ruin.
Empire Day being the 24th May, the long summer holiday was not far off. Some Christ Church children’s families would be able to go away for a week at the seaside, perhaps sailing down the Thames to Southend, Ramsgate or Margate on the “Golden Eagle” paddle steamer, or travelling by coach to Southsea and Southampton to “go over” one of the giant liners tied up there. They might see the great German seaplane airliner DOX with its 18 engines taxi down on Southampton Water, or even “go up” for a five-shilling trip over the sea and along the beach in a real aeroplane. Then back to school for the autumn term and what for ten-and-a-half-year-olds were the last six months of being a “primary,” a long time all the same in their eyes.
In class, they could relate experiences of their holidays to Miss Williams. Boys told of wonders of the modern world they had seen with their own eyes. Mr Hayles, the headmaster, went on about getting the Scholarship.
Sundays were quiet, shops shut, parks open but no games allowed, swings tied up. Morning church bells told it was Sunday, shop managers at home would be doing the books, adding up rows of figures by mental arithmetic. Sunday lunch would be late, possibly not until 3 p.m., after which many adults liked to “snooze.” Men said they needed one day on which to relax. Sunday evenings could be very quiet in residential roads.
It was late on a quiet Sunday evening that the extraordinary phenomenon of a man shouting in the street was heard. The man was a bearer of news. R101, on the way to India, had crashed in flames near Beauvais, a town in northern France. 46 people on board had perished, among them important men. The French army lined up the coffins in the town’s market place and saluted them. They were to be brought back to England to lie in state in Westminster Hall. At Christ Church, a grim-faced Mr Heatley said the airship’s hydrogen had been contained in canvas bags: originally it was to have been held in animal skins. Boys had a toy version of R101, made of silver-coloured tin, with a clockwork-driven propeller. Hung up using a piece of thread, it flew round in circles. They found it hard to accept that the real thing – they had seen it with their own eyes and heard its powerful engines – was constructed of canvas stretched over a frame and kept up by gas. They were not encouraged to dwell on the tragedy; it was difficult enough for adults to understand, children could not. Boys would change to wanting a model of the “Golden Arrow,” the fastest car in the world, of “Bluebird II,” the fastest boat, and Britain would win the Schneider Trophy Air Race with the fastest aeroplane, the “Supermarine S. 6.” It did not follow all would get the toy car, boat or aeroplane they would like; children of the time were used to being told they could not have everything they wanted. Woolworth’s “Nothing Over Sixpence” store did its best to meet the demand with a cheap version of the latest “craze” object but a costlier one from a toyshop looked “more real.” Children normally confined to Woolworth’s for satisfaction nursed hopes of getting something of Toyshop quality at Christmas, when the windows of these lit up with extra, albeit temporary brilliance.
At Christmas that year, a child getting the Felix Annual found the then renowned homeless black cat deciding to try his luck on another planet. He used a lightning bolt to take him to Saturn, where he got in the way of a bicycle race round the Rings and was kicked off. He landed on Mars, where they not only didn’t feed him but put him on show as a freak. He escaped and jumped off Mars, gladly to float back to Earth where at least he knew what to expect, that is, “more kicks than ha’pence.” For as an American homeless cat in a human society, Felix was usually ascribed the lower social status of a “bum,” to whom people felt impelled to give the “bum’s rush.” This meant in English that he was viewed as a would-be scrounger, vagrant, beggar or petty pilferer of the sort people preferred not to entertain. Felix attracted sympathy as an “undercat” all the same, especially when he succeeded against all odds now and then. In the same way Charlie Chaplin, in the guise of a “little man underdog,” was shown beating stony-hearted officialdom at times. Children saw it as great fun and adults laughed too, though often with feelings of reserve. Then, just before Christmas, was a time when employers reviewing their “figures” for the year, tended to hand out dismissals in pursuit of “economising.”
After Christmas, Christ Church children reaching the age of eleven were told they were about to be graded for separate development by the “eleven plus” examination, designated the “Scholarship” to give it tone. They would be selected either to go on to the County School, leaving at 16 with the magical “Matric” (School Certificate/Higher School Certificate), or to a Secondary Modern School, leaving with no written evidence of the standard of education reached. As “Matric” was then universally cited by employers as essential for entrance to the “clean” or “better class” jobs, it appeared all should aim to get the “Scholarship” that led to it. It was doubtful whether many Christ Church eleven-year-olds of the time thought seriously about what employment they would be taking up, outside of those having fathers in whose steps they could or were expected to follow. Mr Hayles, the headmaster, had stated forcefully that the Scholarship led to “better jobs” but did not go into details. He also avoided pointing out that going to the County School meant five years’ intensive schoolwork, well beyond what had been experienced hitherto. In a down-to-earth time, he was doubtless aware that parents would ultimately determine their children’s attitude to education at the age of eleven.
Selection was done not by evaluation of schoolwork and interview but by an arbitrary written I. Q. style test, believed to be “sums” oriented. It was most likely designed to assess whether a child would persevere in the effort and discipline of the “Matric” course and fit into the type of employment which for many would follow it. This could mean life commitment to clerical work in the Civil Service or a bank for instance, fortified by prescribed conditions, establishment, the opportunity of getting one of the “all mod. con.” new houses and a pension on retirement over and above what the State paid out. Parents who had never known an income from secure employment will have been expected to urge their children to work for the means to get one, not only for the children’s good, but with an eye to their own future as well. Simple decision making was not normally possible for this class of people at the time, however. A child going to the Grammar School had to be fitted out with the official uniform and other equipment and maintained until the age of 16 as against the Secondary Modern School leaving age of 14, considerations of vital importance to low-income families. It has to be stressed that the start of a Welfare State was some quarter of a century and another world war away from that time, and the very idea of State Income Support would have been viewed as an unrealisable pipe-dream that would never come true. Some parents, from diverse motives, resolved to make considerable personal sacrifices on their children’s behalf. Others in the same position were not sure this was a good thing to do. If the English are very class conscious it has been often for quite practical reasons. The fear was expressed that scholarship children from poor families coming into contact with children from families in “better circumstances,” living in modern semi-detached houses, would come to “look down” on their own parents and get ideas beyond their expectations. There was no question of any child other than those from professional backgrounds and others of considerable means going on beyond Matric/School Certificate into higher education. Also, a lot of people felt that who got the “safe” jobs was “cut and dried,” that is to say, determined at birth by birth.
Some children therefore were urged to go for the Scholarship, some not to do so, and some went to the Test in a spirit of indifference engendered by their parents’ expressed mistrust of “book-learning” in general and the study of “useless” subjects like foreign languages in particular, a form of the anti-intellectualism found at all levels of English society.
Very unfortunate was the capable child whose parents were not in the habit of communicating with him at all. This one went to the Test neither knowing what was wanted of him nor what to do for his own benefit. He was liable to put the fear of losing friends and acquaintances in the place of better judgement.
Most unfortunate was the child at the age of eleven whose family was living on the brink of financial catastrophe, the father, in a managerial position, striving to keep his employment in an old-established firm that had come under terminal threat from a new type of competition. Then, the child being in the higher grade school and doing well, actual disaster struck so that he was obliged to leave it.
It was possible to go on and get “Matric” by private study, maintaining concentration on each of the specified number of subjects that had to be passed together at the one examination, failure in one subject meaning failure to get the certificate.
For the child denied a grammar school place for whatever reason, the urge, resolve and confidence to attempt certificated qualifications anyway will have originated in the quality of Primary teaching experienced. The expository technique used by Miss Williams at Christ Church instilled into pupils a thirst for reading and writing that placed them already more than half way to a “Matric” level pass in English. Mr Heatley’s presentations put them within reach of a General Science pass; it was only necessary to make the transition to meeting the “Matric” syllabus requirements. Any “romantic” or entertaining view of Science had to give way to quantitative treatments and an exact understanding of phenomena shown.
Other subjects not taught at primary level at the time had to be taken. French or German for instance in terms of translating short texts; few English people would have contemplated actually speaking them. It was possible to get a knowledge of the living language from the “valve” wireless sets which were then becoming universal and were capable of receiving Paris and Berlin, though this stood to be thought highly eccentric or even subversive.
For the non-mathematically inclined, the most daunting compulsory subject was Mathematics, for this could not be learned through reading. Its apparent terrors could be overcome by accepting the rules, learning them and doing the exercises, however irksome, in full. It appeared determined rote-learners had an advantage at this level. Really in difficulties with the subject was the child with a sight handicap, especially an astigmatism that made little bits of the numbers on the paper disappear, causing the problem to be misread. As with most minor physical handicaps, this stood to remain undetected or impatiently dismissed and the pupil written off.
All the same, despite the tendency of the times summarily to pigeon-hole people for life, there were individuals who persevered right through to getting an external university degree, taking seven years to do it. This was usually done with some particular end in mind and meant competing with those who had obtained the necessary qualifications internally and therefore with much less effort.
Those being educated are influenced by forces other than those brought to bear by their
educators. What these were at the time in Ealing is worth a study in itself.
Norman Maggs, 1997
A copy of this essay is held in the British Library, shelfmark YK.2001.a.8777
An inquisitive four-year old of the 1920s, growing up in the district around the Grove, Ealing, at the Ealing Green end, would ask about a golden angel, blowing a long golden trumpet, that could be seen standing on a short spire just above the surrounding roofs. That one child would be told the angel was calling children to school, which it did for all reaching the age of five. Another would get a reply implying disquiet about what went on in the place beneath the angel, hidden from sight.
A majority of the four-year-olds of the time and place were being brought up in a house run by their mother, their father coming home in the evenings, providing protection and the necessities of life. Most of these families viewed living in a flat as sacrificing privacy. There were half a dozen or so roads of terrace cottages in the neighbourhood, dating from around 1840. Each cottage had a slightly different appearance from the next one, by the set of the front door for instance. Also, the little front gardens enabled the occupants to put their personal stamp on them. A number of these cottages were owned by a local undertaker who charged a weekly rent while his tenants were alive, but accommodated them permanently for one final down payment, about £5 at the time, when they were dead.
Detached and semi-detached nineteenth century houses nearby had formerly housed elegantly dressed Victorian and Edwardian ladies and gentlemen, the gentlemen in frock coat and top hat leaving every morning to take the steam train to the City. In the 1920s it was not always clear who lived in these houses, but the general premise for all roads was that the houses in them were where other people lived – with whom one should not get too friendly.
Most children had brothers and sisters, enabling them not only to get over the first hurdles of coping with other individuals but also to present a united front to outsiders.
Less advantaged were the “only” children, whose parents had, for economic purposes, planned to have only one child. These tended to be cossetted and were liable to suffer hard knocks when school time arrived. A mistake child, whose parents had intended no children, was recognisable by his fumbling attempts to establish relationships with others, often achieving only greater isolation in the endeavour.
An extra local category were children from Smith’s Homes. Mr R. T. Smith, a native of Gloucester, had founded his “Homes for Motherless Children” in Ealing. The children lived an orderly life in gender-separate houses but not as in a Union Workhouse or “Charity” institution for orphans; they went out to school in the normal way. Parents were subject to a number of social pressures, aftermaths of the 1914-18 war living on into the 1920s. A little wooden war memorial had been fixed to a wall at the corner of one of the roads. It contained a crucifix, a rack for flowers, and a short list of men’s names, in thanksgiving for the safe return of those men from the trenches to that road.
Wage-earning men had returned to hard times, housing shortages, bare subsistence incomes and minimal support if sickness or unemployment struck. It was essential to budget on a week by week basis and save something “for a rainy day.” Also essential was a responsible and determined mother who made the money go round, put up regular meals after judicious shopping and, if necessary, made do and mended. She created a home to which her husband and children were glad to return. These women were realists, preserving civilized values.
For some parents the approach of school age meant they would get their children out from under foot for part of the day and they would be taught some discipline into the bargain. Some took steps to prepare their children for learning. The cheapest and most effective pre-school device that educated, entertained and lightly taught social niceties was “Chick’s Own Weekly.” Superior to a “comic,” “Chick’s Own” ran picture stories in colour under which the narrative could be read in easy words, hyphenated where thought necessary. The hero, Chick, who was a chick, solved social problems of the sort that estranged people by the application of straightforward logic. When Jack Sprat, who would eat no fat, sat glowering at his wife who would eat no lean, Chick solved the situation to their delight by simply changing their plates round. Given the absence of artificial distractions, no radio, no television, evenings early indoors and a little help from an adult, “Chick’s Own” readers could become quite literate by their fifth birthday. They would need Chick’s diplomacy as well, for they stood to attract jealousy from both the less clever and the willing ignorant. All were going to school to learn, however.
Schooltime
People who could afford it, or intended to make afford it, took their offspring to a private primary school. They would be fitted out with a uniform that identified them with the school, gave them status, feelings of esprit de corps and, up to a point, levelled them off in class. Others took their children to the Infants Department of a Council Elementary school which might bear the uninspiring name of “Bloggs Road Elementary,” given to it by insensitive Council officials. The children of residents in the neighbourhood of the Grove stood to become pupils of St Saviour’s Church of England Infants’ school (non-fee paying). The mysteriously hidden St Saviour’s church was the one on whose short spire the golden angel stood with upraised golden trumpet, but no St Saviour’s pupils had to attend the church unless they wanted to. Few will have come from families who attended any church and some were Jewish anyway. In school, basic prayers and the Creed would be taught in the elegant language of the Anglican Prayer Book as a national cultural subject rather than as articles of faith to be believed,
On the first day, children were taken along the Grove, passing a medieval looking building with a large arch, dark underneath, to an ordinary building nearby where they first smelled the special smell of school. There, they waited in various states of emotion according to the image of school on which they had been nurtured. Eventually, they all had to be left to their fate. Not all mothers got away without protest from fearful offspring though, in general, children of the time were not inclined to appear as “namby-pambies” or “crybabies,” and “showing up parents in front of other people” was a heinous sin to commit.
The children were led into a room where a table was laid out with coloured plasticine and pictures of what could be made with it. Aimed at settling children in, this also served as an indicator of how individuals might turn out as pupils. A child making a good copy of an object selected could feel pride in achievement, especially if noticed by a teacher.
The next stage was when each child got a desk at which to sit in a classroom, all facing forward to where a teacher stood with blackboard and chalk. Attention was required, talking had to wait until playtime. Classes were for learning Reading, Writing, Arithmetic and, using cardboard coins, Money – the English system. The average child would not handle more than one penny occasionally, a silver sixpence on a birthday or at Christmas, but early preparation for the day when they would discover that absolutely everything had to be paid for was essential.
P. T. (Physical Training) took place in an upstairs hall reached by narrow steps as it was in a part of the medieval looking building, though the windows and frontage of that part had been modernised. The children marched round doing exercises with wooden dumbbells, standing, or sitting to perform together on “forms,” a sort of long low stool.
New Every Morning
The morning began with “Hands together, eyes closed,” to say the Lord’s Prayer:
“Our Father,
Which art in Heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name ...”
It will be objected that the prayer being taught virtually by rote, young children would not only repeat it parrot fashion but also fail to appreciate either its religious or literary style. “Which art,” for instance, was not heard in ordinary speech, and “Hallowed” sounded like the “hallo” with which people greeted each other. On the positive side, rote learning got the prayer implanted in the memory such that it might be of value to the recipient, if not at the time, then later. Some children, influenced by the strong anti-religious opinions of their parents, viewed prayer-time as a joke. There was a boy who always repeated:
“Our Father,
Peanuts in Heaven,
Peanuts be Thy name ... “
He was never caught by a teacher.
In the Creed, taken from the Anglican Prayer Book, came the phrase: “I believe in the Holy Catholic Church ...” This could be perplexing to certain children because parents would use the term “catholic” in a way that had the effect of scaring them. Father Buckell, who was the priest of St Saviour’s church, which many children would never enter, was spoken of in this manner. It was said that the inside of the church, hidden from view as it was, was indistinguishable from that of a Catholic church. Indeed, a group of men calling themselves Kensitites once entered St Saviour’s and took the candlesticks from off the altar. Outside they declared that these things had no legal place in a Church of England parish church. Doubtless they objected to Father Buckell himself, who used incense, dressed in Catholic vestments and said Mass. He held a Children’s Mass on Saturdays for any children who liked to come.
A curious child, probably an “only” child of isolated situation, might go one Saturday, not without trepidation, to see what happened there. It was necessary to go under the dark arch to get to the church, but once through the porch of it a child was likely to be impressed by the beauty of the place. It was light and airy. Stained glass windows rose up behind the reredos and the tall crucifix with its attendant candlesticks on the altar. To each side of the chancel, on pillars, pairs of life-size statues of saints stood on pedestals, three pairs on each side, one above the other. The font was in a baptistry guarded by four golden angels like the big one on the spire outside. Waiting children sat on chairs, there being no pews. When Father Buckell came it was to tell them the story of the Prodigal Son from the New Testament: A man had two grownup sons. The younger came and said: “Father, give me the share of your property I will inherit one day – now. I want to go and make a life of my own.” His kind father let him have his own way and the son went off to live a high life in a far land, getting many friends. When his money ran out, however, so did his friends. The prodigal son found himself starving and had to go and live in a pigsty with the pigs. One day he said to himself: “My father’s servants are better off than me, I will go and ask my father to take me back as a servant.” But his father received him with tears of joy. His older, dutiful son did not like it but his father said: “You were always with me but your brother who was lost is found.” Father Buckell told the children God is a loving father, like a good shepherd, always ready to welcome back the sheep who escapes from the fold and has to be rescued from the danger of the wolf. “God is love and many waters cannot quench love,” he said.
Children who were unsure of themselves at home could go away believing they should get unconditional love from their parents. No wolves roamed the district but parents would imply that Children’s Homes and Orphanages were on the look-out for those who would not behave.
In school they would sing in the morning:
“All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small . . . “
Teachers exhorted children to be kind to animals, not to pull dogs’ or cats’ tails, or worse. In Baker’s Lane by the school lived a lady who had a miniature farm. There was a handsome cockerel that chased children if they picked up chicks or baited it, which they would do for amusement. One day the cockerel was seen by the children on a table in an outhouse – dead. Some expressed shock on learning it had been killed to be eaten, others boasted they would have liked to be the ones who “did him in,” suggesting early a dual nature for humankind. Most St Saviour’s children will only have eaten chicken at Christmas and then not connected it with live birds.
In those days the verse:
“The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly
And ordered their estate”
was included.
In the experience of a majority of people the foregoing was merely a statement of self-evident fact. The “poor man at his gate” meant at his own gate, not at the rich man’s. St Saviour’s pupils, living in their houses, were unaware that each was occupied on a weekly tenancy basis only, no reason needing to be given for termination by either party. All the same, there were very long tenancies where the only document of tenure was a rent book, and the expectation on both sides that nothing would intervene to stop the smooth flow of entries into the credit column.
Having sung that the “Lord God made all things well,” a well-ordered Nature for instance, the children were pitched into realistics for survival in a society created by humankind.
Into Number
As humankind seeks to master Nature by creating societies based firmly on number, the children had to learn to count. The average five-year-old would have been happy to use the Tasmanian system in which they counted: “One, two, one-two, a lot.” The Tasmanians were however wiped out by a civilisation that took number much further. St Saviour’s children were starting out on a long journey which would seem to have no end. They graduated quickly to “times tables,” soaked into the memory by communal repetition, to become the frame of a personal mental calculator that would last for life. A playtime would end, not with going back into class, but with lining up in the playground to repeat:
“Once two is two,
Two twos are four... “
up to
“Twelve twelves are
a hundred and forty-four.”
Intellectual stragglers got themselves placed in the back of the rows but detection was unavoidable. Teachers spotted mouths that did not synchronise and the straggler was awarded individual encouragement. His or her “me, Miss?” was followed by the order to repeat a sequence of the tables solo. Albeit frowning and looking hurt at the unfairness of being picked on, the offender usually strove to accomplish the challenge. There was the question of maintaining status, not appearing to be a fool. In the view of the teacher, simple laziness or failure to pay attention were the sole causes of a pupil’s lagging behind. The pupil in question could be heard in the playground later, pointing out that no grownups said “times tables,” unaware that many adults spent large chunks of their lives using them.
Worse was money. Four farthings made one penny, as did two halfpennies (pronounced “ha’pennies”). Twelve pennies (or pence) made one shilling and twenty shillings one pound. A grand looking coin called a florin was the same as two shillings, and an even grander one was two shillings and sixpence or half -a-crown. There were three-penny bits and sixpences, both silver. With the foregoing knowledge, St Saviour’s children going with their mothers to the drapers to buy “materials” to make up curtains, for instance, would not be quite so baffled to hear the assistant declare: “This one runs out at two and eleven three, madam.” The child asking why the price was two shillings and eleven pence three farthings would be told either that it was to make people think they were spending less than three shillings, or that in having to register the sale on the till in order to give change, the assistant could not pocket the cash. This sort of thing however was likely to convince children of a large gap between what was taught at school and how it was applied in “grownup” life.
Writing
Primitive societies evidently achieved considerable stability in some cases without bothering to write. They may have avoided a lot of social complications in not doing so, but St Saviour’s pupils needed the chance to survive in a complicated society.
They were taught the alphabet A. B. C. fashion, that is, naming each of the twenty-six letters in the correct sequence, such that as soon as this was mastered, a child could, in a tight corner, already have earned a wage as a filing clerk. In school, thus armed, they could proceed to learning to write by the straightforward method of copying the alphabet in sequence from printed copperplate type letters, each styled for joining up. They had to be shown how to hold a pencil properly. Most had held a pencil for years and the idea of using the wrist in the manner taught, in order to produce fine rounded letters, seemed impossible of imitation. The order to begin could therefore be unnerving. A child looking up at a ledge on which stood a vase of flowers and a china tiger would be inspired by this combination of natural strength and natural beauty to make the attempt. Then, on discovering that the teacher’s peculiar hand gyrations did indeed lead to a fair copy, could only experience personal success and, further, a flush of satisfaction when a teacher came round to say: “You can write!” Some children thought it necessary to bring their noses in contact with the paper as well as the pencil, but no child was going to admit defeat, however much they might complain afterwards. They were not pressured to achieve copperplate script, just to write a clear hand.
Into Reading
A St Saviour’s pupil of brawny rather than brainy aspect was heard to declare in the playground that to enjoy Charlie Chaplin’s antics in the silent cinema you did not need to be able to read the words they put on the screen. Another, doubtless nurtured on “Chick’s Own,” replied that the words tell you what the people in the pictures are saying and doing. The first speaker, abashed, retorted that the pictures themselves should talk. He may have heard from his parents that they were about to do so (1929), which would make it even more difficult to get children over the first steps into reading. Teachers did not however tell five-year-olds that Charlie Chaplin provided a diversion from real life’s demands, in the face of which non-readers would be at a considerable disadvantage. They taught that C-A-T spelled cat, S-A-T spelled sat and M-A-T spelled mat. Then the children could understand that what happened to the mat was that the cat sat on it. Primitive languages, it is reported, had large vocabularies but little syntax. Merely learning words and not how they work in an advanced language could only lead to retrogression towards primitive forms of expression. The children were led early to cope with proper sentences and texts, each child having to stand and read one out loud solo, right round the class. Here, the “Chick’s Own” reader, if not over-confident, tended to shine, while the lesser endowed, who viewed “Chick’s Own” as a babies’ comic, stumbled over the words. Teachers did not however praise the better performers who would have liked their superiority to be highlighted, but worked to bring all up to a standard. Children were in school to learn. The stimulus they received at home varied. Some homes had no books at all, nor saw the point of having any. These did tend to buy an evening newspaper, from a choice of three titles, brought round the roads every evening. There was a premise however that children should not see newspapers as they ought to be shielded from horse race results, politics and crime reports for as long as possible. Men were given to reading crime novelettes, called “bloods,” for diversion. A super-efficient detective of elegant appearance and bearing the name of Sexton Blake outwitted all malefactors; Edgar Wallace wrote high adventure stuff for easy reading but not by children. Certain households had a book-case in the front room, often lent mystery by having glass doors, which contained a set of Dickens and other classics. These, which to the infant had been an “early memory,” now became to the early reading learner a source of challenge, especially to the “only” child who had to spend much time in that sort of room. One day it would be possible to read them.
The “wireless” was just coming in, families buying a crystal set on which the programmes had to be listened to on earphones. There was a “Children’s Hour,” but the earphones were hot to wear, having sponge covers, and the crystal had to be probed with the “cat’s whisker” to get the programme properly. As diversions, children liked playtimes with others and “nine days’ wonders.”
It was announced for instance that “Alice in Wonderland” was going to be put on as a play at the Town Hall, children from local schools being the actors in it. All children had heard the story told and been shown pictures of the memorable characters. To see them brought to life on a stage would be marvellous, but actually to become one of them would be unforgettable. Who would be picked to be the White Rabbit looking at his watch, who the March Hare? Grownups at the school gates were seen to confer in whispers, however. It looked as though they were opposed to the “Alice” play. The situation was that whether a child would get a part depended upon the parents paying for the costume which had to be of professional standard and of expensive material. There were parents whose little darlings must have the best and who would pay, but that could react on the child, who would come under fire from jealous schoolfellows. Disappointed children learned that the often-repeated question of the expense won the day. The “Alice” play received little support and only went on in a much reduced form.
The reality of “short commons” was behind another incident. The annual Scouts’ Show put on in the church hall was to include children from St Saviour’s school performing a gymnastics display with wooden dumbbells, in unison, while sitting on forms. A team of four boys and four girls was picked and rehearsed. Then they were told that when on stage each boy must wear a white shirt and each girl a white blouse. One girl did not have a white blouse, nor could her family afford to buy her one. They were on short commons. There could be no question of owing, the rent, for instance, to buy a blouse for one night. The girl would have to stand down and allow another to take her place. It was not fair, of course, but one should accept the facts of life as they applied to one with good grace. This girl did not. She went about the roads crying bitterly, “howling” as people called it, “showing up” her parents, for which she deserved dire punishment. Sympathetic people on the other hand could not provide a white blouse as that would hurt the family’s feelings by offering them charity which, out of self-esteem, they could not accept. Nor would it be good for the girl. In the event, however, she did appear in the Scouts’ Show, her eyes red-rimmed from the crying she had done. Her blouse was a very light yellow, appearing almost white in the stage lighting, and was plainly an adult one, doubtless her mother’s, pinned up behind to make it fit. Making a fuss to get your own way was supposed never to pay off!
One day, St Saviour’s children saw men in lorries arrive opposite the school. They laid railway lines in a long alleyway, filled trucks with cement and bricks and pushed these up to where, it was said, they were building a little church for children. Speculation was rife whether it would be so small that only children could get into it, or whether it would be like a dolls’ house in a room where children would play with it. As suddenly as they had come, the men took up the little railway and went away. All that could be seen at the end of the alleyway was a big door in a wall. Any child going up to this saw a stone plaque in the wall over it showing a boy kneeling at a chair saying his prayers, watched over by an angel. Children wondered if the door ever opened, so remote it seemed. For some individuals this question would be answered in a way never to be forgotten. Others. would know nothing of it.
St Saviour’s pupils continued to serve out their school-time at infants’ level, imbibing skills by constant practice, being aimed at the Greek ideal of areti – serviceability, perfection. Although most lived for playtime, some saw the world begin to open out for them. Then, for a given “year of intake,” St Saviour’s “Infants” came to an end. Young children hate change; they would have to go to another school, among strangers, long-standing friendships broken. A number would go to Christ Church, a Church of England primary school (also non fee-paying), where on arriving in the playground their first action would be to look for familiar faces from St Saviour’s. There were happy reunions, though some would never see again friends with whom they had once been in inseparable rapport. Parents of the time, concerned with more pressing matters, told tearful protesters on this score that they would “soon get over it” and find new children to play with.
Christ Church
In contrast to St Saviour’s church, hidden from view, Christ Church with its imposing steeple, designed by the famous architect Sir Gilbert Scott, rises up majestically in the open on Ealing Broadway, Christ Church school being hidden behind it. Again, pupils did not have to attend the church unless they wanted to do so, and the priest there also offered special feature services for children. As at St Saviour’s, boys and girls sat in class together but, unlike St Saviour’s, were segregated at playtime. Boys were evidently considered to be at an age when they became more given to rough games. They indeed developed rival cliques that contested corners of the playground, though their tussles were good-humoured and in no way vicious. They would have “crazes” such as collecting cigarette cards, Million-Mark banknotes bought for a penny each and Yo-Yo for instance. There would be the occasional personal fight, soon over. A wild individual would get his fun from giving smaller boys a thick ear, provided a bigger boy was not nearby to stop him.
At the first Assembly the headmaster of Christ Church was insistent in telling both genders that serious school was now to be their lot, and their overriding goal: to get the Scholarship. He did not spell out the exact significance of the Scholarship to nine-year-olds for whom this must be something belonging to the remote future, living in the present being more in their nature. Few at that age would have fully understood they would be classified for separate development after their eleventh birthday.
The headmaster, Mr Hayles, addressed the new arrivals in a Gothic-style school hall. The Gothic was mid-Victorian imitation which nevertheless suggested antiquity of establishment. If not to be thought of on the same level as the buildings of Eton or Harrow, the medieval aspects of parts of Christ Church school, like those of St Saviour’s clergy house, evidently had their effect. A local boy for whom both were familiar sights grew up to create the fictional but famous Greyfriars School. He presented in restricted literary style the adventures of its pupils, of whom the fat, cowardly, gluttonous Billy Bunter would become even better known than the handsome heroic Harry Wharton. Flint-faced form masters intent on cramming Euclid and Vergil were outwitted by their boy “victims.” Mr Hayles likely disapproved of boys reading this stuff instead of proper literature and did not allow the “Magnet,” in which the Greyfriars stories appeared, to be taken into a classroom. He would also doubtless deplore girls directing their improving reading ability towards little paper books of “romance” stories, called by them “love books.” Children of the time had, all the same, reason to believe that romance and real life were separate entities. Parents went to the then rapidly expanding cinema for romantic diversion but did not hesitate to declare that “real life was not like that.”
The headmaster spoke on a platform in the Gothic style hall. Behind and above him was a gallery on the front of which had been fixed a large, long map of the Canadian Pacific Railway made by final year Christ Church pupils, each station on the route over the Rocky Mountains having a torch-bulb mounted in it that could be lit up. It looked as though there was a romantic element in the teaching curriculum at Christ Church.
Into Class
“Sums” was the generic term used by parents who thought this was the main thing children had to learn at school. They themselves had complained about it and now their children complained about it. In addition to simple number sums and the unavoidable money sums, new arrivals were led into Geometry as well. Geometry, held by academe to be the beginning of mathematics, was for many nine-year-olds the first step into the incomprehensible. They not only had to learn that a point has no magnitude but that one had to do pointless calculations with rectangles, triangles and parallelograms. Enthusiastic mathematics teachers had the habit of taking too much for granted, failing to appreciate that the non-mathematically minded needed painstaking exposition from the ground up. The greatest benefit would arise out of being told what the use of the ability to prove theorems might be, that bisecting a triangle to show symmetry for instance helps to build houses that do not fall down, ships that float and aeroplanes that will fly. Then, all ages and types respond to finding some purpose in what they are expected to do.
A contrast to sums was provided by a Mr Brown who taught a class to sing with poetic appreciation and dramatic effect. He chose John Masefield’s “Cargoes:”
“Quinquireme of Nineveh
from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven
in sunny Palestine . . . “
sung to convey the lyric rise and fall of the banked oars under the blue Mediterranean sky.
“With a cargo of ivory
and apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood
and sweet white wine.”
As the lesson was to put over one of man’s better sensibilities, no mention was made of who had to row the quinquireme. After picturing the
“Stately Spanish galleon
dipping through the tropics . . .
. . . by palm green shores,”
they were brought abruptly up to date with accelerated tempo to sing:
“Dirty British coaster with a
salt-caked smokestack
Butting through the Channel
in the mad March days . . . “
John Masefield was made Poet Laureate at the time as the “Bard of Britain’s maritime heritage.” He had written:
“All I ask is a tall ship and
a star to steer her by ... “
Christ Church pupils, boys at least, were more inclined to be inspired by great ocean liners and marvellous new aeroplanes. The magnificent British airship R101 was about to fly to India, slicing days off the time a sea voyage took to get there. These were wish dream objects: no Christ Church child was likely to cross the Atlantic in the huge four-funnelled Mauretania or fly to India in a matter of hours by airship. Things were not good on the economic front for a great majority of people, but schoolchildren were not taught that. At Christ Church the Economic History lessons were confined to putting over men who had made Britain great. James Watt, for instance, had invented the Steam Engine: a picture in the textbook showed him thoughtfully watching the kettle boil, seeing the steam lifting the lid that gave him the idea. Kay had invented the Flying Shuttle and Stephenson the Railway, each doing it out of the blue, or so it appeared. Pupils would be introduced to a constellation of native individuals, geniuses who had brought about innovations for the betterment of life. Lister had discovered Asepsis, Simpson Anaesthetics, Faraday Electricity. Nine- and ten-year-olds are impressed by heroes and some dreamt of becoming one of the foregoing sort themselves.
Expansion
In the way that time ordains, each new boy and each new girl became a matured Christ Church schoolboy or girl, a paid up member of a form, an individual among other individuals, aware of each other. They moved on to new learning experiences, now writing with pen and ink. The ink lived in little china inkwells sunk into the wood of the desk but spilled itself out to make blots on exercise book pages, stains on fingers and dabs on clothes. There was P. T. and Sports to compensate those not enamoured of the academic side, but for those who could respond, expansion of mental horizons awaited.
Miss Williams was a formidable looking lady who stood for no nonsense but taught her class as if they were her own children. To teach essay writing, the page had to be headed “Scheme...,” followed by words indicating how clarity was to be achieved. In the Art lesson, pupils who failed to appreciate that the luminosity of watercolour is obtained by washes got the contents of their water bottle poured over their work. Miss Williams knew what children felt about money sums for she handed them out as punishments as well as subject material. In the literature period however she became a mistress of her profession. Sitting in front of the class with a book in her hand she caused characters to emerge living from the pages, in their time and background. Her reading and exposition of Louisa M. Alcott’s “Little Women” caused certain children a sleepless night when they had to wait to find out whether “Beth” would survive her life-threatening illness. In the Reading and Comprehension period, when pupils used Readers containing excerpts from a wide gamut of English Literature, the same technique of bringing out the essence of each piece excited the most uninterested to want to read. Beowulf’s fight with Grendel was unforgettable. In true British fair-play style he fought Grendel bare-handed because his opponent was not armed. The deadlier combat, of more doubtful outcome in the telling, between Beowulf and Grendel’s mother at the bottom of the slimy serpent-attended Grendel Pool, was evidently as effective as when originally related in the mead halls of its own time. Christ Church boys gave out that an old rockery-surrounded ornamental pond in a large local park was in fact the Grendel Pool. “If you fall into it you will never be seen again!” They were introduced to Wordsworth’s “wandering lonely as a cloud . . .” but more excited by “Young Lochinvar.” He rode his trusty steed over rocks and through rivers, unarmed, literally to snatch his lady love from being married to another. This poetic hero accomplished his object not with a fight but by guile. As the story was rather nearer to fairy tale than high romance, it was not thought likely to instil adverse social values into children’s heads. They laughed at John Gilpin, who borrowed a horse that ran away with him and cheered up the melancholy Cowper to versify it, and also at the waiter from Dickens who talked a boy out of his glass of porter. They were steered away, however, from any war narrative; the reality of that was still too near.
Together with being led into Literature and the art of becoming themselves literate, Christ Church pupils now had to experience their first meeting with Science. They filed into a classroom to be taught this by a Mr Heatley who, not surprisingly, began with Heat. First, he told them, they must learn how to handle hot glass vessels used in Science. On the bench at which he stood was a narrow-nozzled gas burner from which issued a long yellow flame doing what looked like a snake dance. The attentive class saw Mr Heatley turn a sleeve on the burner which made the flame turn blue and roar, then he pushed it under a tripod on which stood a glass beaker full of water. He showed how a glass test tube must be held by a proper tongs or holder made of paper, and followed this by saying a hot glass vessel must never be put down on a cold surface: the sudden cooling would crack it. Mr Heatley began to outline the sort of thing the class would learn from Science studies. As he was speaking, he noticed that the water in the glass beaker was boiling vigorously and, taking the beaker off the tripod, put it down on the bench. There was an ominous crack and hot water spread over the surface. Mr Heatley frowned heavily and declared: “I have done the very thing I said you should never do!” The shocked class looked on in silence. At a time when the value of things was well in the general consciousness, nobody laughed at an accidental breakage. “At least,” added Mr Heatley, “you have proof of what I said.” Indeed, after that, he impressed the class by appearing to prove what he taught. They were too young to be confused by being told that the imposing experiments he did were actually only evidence supporting theories. One day the class went in to see a remarkable looking apparatus consisting of two round glass flasks mounted one above the other and connected by two glass tubes: in the bottom flask a red liquid, in the top one a colourless liquid. Heat was applied to the side of the bottom flask to show the action of convection currents that made the red liquid change places with the colourless one. The class was told that heat makes atoms, of which everything is supposed to be constructed, move away from each other. They then saw a heated iron bar get longer and turn a needle round to record by how much. Small pulley systems were demonstrated to show that more cannot be got out of a machine than is put into it. This, at least, some boys found difficult to believe and thought up perpetual motion machines. As they could neither make nor try them, they could never know whether they would work and could only dream of being one of the original native innovators of whom they had heard much in school. The class saw Hydrogen made in a test tube and tested by making it go pop on applying a flame to the mouth of the tube. This gas, they were told, in an unimaginably large cubic quantity, lifted the great R101 airship because it was lighter than air. Oxygen was produced and tested by making a glowing splint burst into flame...
One day in the playground children began to shout; teachers ran out; the marvellous silver shape of R101 itself was approaching to fly low right over the playground. A boy said the captain waved down to them. Christ Church pupils saw with their own eyes one of the manifestations of a brave new world. The older generation had gone to war and before that, life was made hard for children; both mothers and fathers spoke of it at times. Now, people were going to do more sensible things through knowledge, throw off the old and bring in the new.
The Christ Church school day also began and ended with prayers. Children repeated requests to be looked after by God who was above people but who also expected certain standards of behaviour. The priest of Christ Church came in to announce he was going to give a set of six short after-school services on giants who needed to be killed. He would talk about each one from the pulpit, ask the children questions, then go down, and after knocking out the giant with a stone, cut off his head with a sword. Then at the end of the series, the child who had shown the most attention and diligence in answering questions would win the Stone and Sword, kneeling at the altar to receive them like a knight of legend. The giants, who represented personal sins like Pride and Sloth, were much less than life size, made of cardboard, and stood before the altar rails, their heads prominent. The stone and sword were evidently of wood but highly realistic and looked like a pair of formidable weapons. The congregation for the first giant was the largest, several children being disappointed on finding the giants were only glorified cardboard pictures, not even very tall, and did not move. The cinema, to which they would be taken by their parents, a practice disapproved of by Miss Williams, could produce scary monsters alive on the silver screen. Those staying the course were attracted to winning the Stone and Sword and those attending a church or chapel Sunday School were capable of doing so. At least, the heads were taken off realistically by the sword and among the remaining heroic fighters for rectitude, excitement rose. By the fifth giant, the priest had already remarked from the pulpit on the performance of certain individuals. As the last giant’s head was held aloft and the priest returned to the pulpit, they waited with bated breath. Then they heard him say he had decided not to award the Stone and Sword but to hang them up in the church in memory of the fights with the giants. They listened to him dumbfounded: they were used to being disappointed by grownups, but priests were supposed to represent prayers answered. He had sounded a bit apologetic but had not given a reason that children could understand.
The reason was that the priest had had second thoughts about putting an effective pair of weapons into the hands of a child. The Stone alone could have stopped the bully who liked to clout smaller children’s ears. permanently very likely, outside of what the Sword could have done to his neck. All grownups disapproved of children having weapons, even toy ones.
Priests and ministers of the district started a club for local boys in general at Christ Church Hall. It was “to keep them off the streets of evenings.” There was a boxing ring with an instructor who taught wrestling as well. They also learned to play chess and do giant jigsaws. The instructor would teach ten-year-olds from Christ Church school elementary boxing techniques but not wrestling. All the same, one boy learned the “Devil’s Handshake” by watching it taught to a bigger boy. Later, at school, when the bully came up, that boy did the Devil’s Handshake on him. The bully went down on the stone floor, winded, and the boy thought he had killed him. He had not, but the bully never bothered that boy again. The boy did not however view himself as a Beowulf; adults always came down on fighting. If the bully had been hurt, the boy it was who would have been blamed.
On the 24th May each year, the Union Jack flew from the flagpole in the playground. It was Empire Day and in the classrooms a large map of the world was draped over the blackboard. A smiling teacher pointed out the vast areas of it that were coloured red, indicating the countries ruled by Britain which, it was implied, was the best rule they could have. All Christ Church children could be proud to be living in the Mother Country of the British Empire on which the sun never set! Kipling’s poems “Recessional” was sung as a hymn:
“God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far flung battle line,
Beneath whose awful hands we hold
Dominion over Palm and Pine . . . “
The poem went on to say people should not forget that empires came and went, but on this day, children were taken out into the playground to march up, two by two, to salute the British flag. Then they could go home for the rest of the day. There were men to be seen in the street wearing a quite large silver badge with the words “For King and Empire” on it. They were men who had been wounded in the war. Children just went off to enjoy the free time, going into parks or playing fields, safe in the best ruled country in the world, provided they did not get into mischief; they had been brought up to behave.
The “bringing up to behave” was accomplished principally by worthy mothers who viewed the well-being of their children through the running of an ordered home as essential. No matter how far children might roam on free days, they had to reappear for meals and other domestic arrangements laid down by their mothers. They were told the limits of what they could “get up to” and for how long. There were plenty of chiming clocks on church towers, and policemen, park-keepers and respectable-looking adults could be “asked the time.” Ten-year-olds went in groups and had little desire to get into trouble. Stories were told of how the restrictions of family life and squabbles between brothers and sisters were one thing, but to be “taken away by the Authorities” or handed over to Barnardos – who broke up families so that children grew up without even knowing of the existence of brothers or sisters – was not lightly risked.
There were parks and playing fields enough in Ealing, providing enjoyment for children on a sunny day. Sums and Scholarship could be put out of mind if not perhaps the influence of Miss Williams’ literature lessons. The recently acquired Gunnersbury Park was full of grottoes, temples and (imitation) ruined monasteries and there was a farm with real sheep as well. Toy boats could be floated on the pond in Walpole Park. All were guarded by uniformed park-keepers, usually ex-servicemen or ex-policemen. Some children might go as far as the Viaduct fields, the countrified Brent River valley above which Brunel had taken the Great Western Railway on high arches. Just beyond the iron girder bridge that spanned the main road, fields were being built over with dozens of brand new houses. Children going to look were allowed to see the Show House and given leaflets to take home to their parents. An ordinary house was £300, a bigger one £400. People borrowed the money, paying £75 down and from about half a crown to seven shillings and sixpence a week (from c. 12p to 37p!) until the price and interest were paid off. Children romped home having seen ‘‘inside’’ toilets, fitted bathrooms and kitchens, things not present in the houses they occupied. Parents reacted in various ways. A family with an income of £2.50 per week and ten to 15 shillings rent per week to pay could not raise £75. A branch manager of a multiple retail firm might have £3-5 a week and a £90 bonus for the year. Being however employed on one week’s notice either way only, many years’ service notwithstanding, and pressured weekly to produce “better trading figures,” he might well hesitate to shoulder the risks of house purchase, preferring to “pay a weekly rent and done with it.”
Mothers coping with old stone sculleries, outside lavatories and tin baths that had to be filled from a kettle, yearned for what their children told of the domestic convenience that a stable safe income could buy. Wise mothers would however continue to yearn rather than chance going into insoluble debt. No worse hell could be imagined than a life being dunned for money week in week out. There was little chance of a dramatic improvement in circumstances for working class people. Sweepstakes and lotteries were illegal in Britain; there was an Irish one if people could get a ticket and go to Ireland to get the money if they won. A chance of winning money was just being introduced, called “Football Pools,” based on forecasting the results of matches, getting over legislation against ready money betting by having the forecasts sent in on credit, with a promise to pay next week, win or lose. Religious authorities spoke against people with small means hazarding their budgets on the chance of sudden affluence, highlighting the impulse to increase the stake “next time,” after a “near miss,” as a feature of the gambler’s road to ruin.
Empire Day being the 24th May, the long summer holiday was not far off. Some Christ Church children’s families would be able to go away for a week at the seaside, perhaps sailing down the Thames to Southend, Ramsgate or Margate on the “Golden Eagle” paddle steamer, or travelling by coach to Southsea and Southampton to “go over” one of the giant liners tied up there. They might see the great German seaplane airliner DOX with its 18 engines taxi down on Southampton Water, or even “go up” for a five-shilling trip over the sea and along the beach in a real aeroplane. Then back to school for the autumn term and what for ten-and-a-half-year-olds were the last six months of being a “primary,” a long time all the same in their eyes.
In class, they could relate experiences of their holidays to Miss Williams. Boys told of wonders of the modern world they had seen with their own eyes. Mr Hayles, the headmaster, went on about getting the Scholarship.
Sundays were quiet, shops shut, parks open but no games allowed, swings tied up. Morning church bells told it was Sunday, shop managers at home would be doing the books, adding up rows of figures by mental arithmetic. Sunday lunch would be late, possibly not until 3 p.m., after which many adults liked to “snooze.” Men said they needed one day on which to relax. Sunday evenings could be very quiet in residential roads.
It was late on a quiet Sunday evening that the extraordinary phenomenon of a man shouting in the street was heard. The man was a bearer of news. R101, on the way to India, had crashed in flames near Beauvais, a town in northern France. 46 people on board had perished, among them important men. The French army lined up the coffins in the town’s market place and saluted them. They were to be brought back to England to lie in state in Westminster Hall. At Christ Church, a grim-faced Mr Heatley said the airship’s hydrogen had been contained in canvas bags: originally it was to have been held in animal skins. Boys had a toy version of R101, made of silver-coloured tin, with a clockwork-driven propeller. Hung up using a piece of thread, it flew round in circles. They found it hard to accept that the real thing – they had seen it with their own eyes and heard its powerful engines – was constructed of canvas stretched over a frame and kept up by gas. They were not encouraged to dwell on the tragedy; it was difficult enough for adults to understand, children could not. Boys would change to wanting a model of the “Golden Arrow,” the fastest car in the world, of “Bluebird II,” the fastest boat, and Britain would win the Schneider Trophy Air Race with the fastest aeroplane, the “Supermarine S. 6.” It did not follow all would get the toy car, boat or aeroplane they would like; children of the time were used to being told they could not have everything they wanted. Woolworth’s “Nothing Over Sixpence” store did its best to meet the demand with a cheap version of the latest “craze” object but a costlier one from a toyshop looked “more real.” Children normally confined to Woolworth’s for satisfaction nursed hopes of getting something of Toyshop quality at Christmas, when the windows of these lit up with extra, albeit temporary brilliance.
At Christmas that year, a child getting the Felix Annual found the then renowned homeless black cat deciding to try his luck on another planet. He used a lightning bolt to take him to Saturn, where he got in the way of a bicycle race round the Rings and was kicked off. He landed on Mars, where they not only didn’t feed him but put him on show as a freak. He escaped and jumped off Mars, gladly to float back to Earth where at least he knew what to expect, that is, “more kicks than ha’pence.” For as an American homeless cat in a human society, Felix was usually ascribed the lower social status of a “bum,” to whom people felt impelled to give the “bum’s rush.” This meant in English that he was viewed as a would-be scrounger, vagrant, beggar or petty pilferer of the sort people preferred not to entertain. Felix attracted sympathy as an “undercat” all the same, especially when he succeeded against all odds now and then. In the same way Charlie Chaplin, in the guise of a “little man underdog,” was shown beating stony-hearted officialdom at times. Children saw it as great fun and adults laughed too, though often with feelings of reserve. Then, just before Christmas, was a time when employers reviewing their “figures” for the year, tended to hand out dismissals in pursuit of “economising.”
After Christmas, Christ Church children reaching the age of eleven were told they were about to be graded for separate development by the “eleven plus” examination, designated the “Scholarship” to give it tone. They would be selected either to go on to the County School, leaving at 16 with the magical “Matric” (School Certificate/Higher School Certificate), or to a Secondary Modern School, leaving with no written evidence of the standard of education reached. As “Matric” was then universally cited by employers as essential for entrance to the “clean” or “better class” jobs, it appeared all should aim to get the “Scholarship” that led to it. It was doubtful whether many Christ Church eleven-year-olds of the time thought seriously about what employment they would be taking up, outside of those having fathers in whose steps they could or were expected to follow. Mr Hayles, the headmaster, had stated forcefully that the Scholarship led to “better jobs” but did not go into details. He also avoided pointing out that going to the County School meant five years’ intensive schoolwork, well beyond what had been experienced hitherto. In a down-to-earth time, he was doubtless aware that parents would ultimately determine their children’s attitude to education at the age of eleven.
Selection was done not by evaluation of schoolwork and interview but by an arbitrary written I. Q. style test, believed to be “sums” oriented. It was most likely designed to assess whether a child would persevere in the effort and discipline of the “Matric” course and fit into the type of employment which for many would follow it. This could mean life commitment to clerical work in the Civil Service or a bank for instance, fortified by prescribed conditions, establishment, the opportunity of getting one of the “all mod. con.” new houses and a pension on retirement over and above what the State paid out. Parents who had never known an income from secure employment will have been expected to urge their children to work for the means to get one, not only for the children’s good, but with an eye to their own future as well. Simple decision making was not normally possible for this class of people at the time, however. A child going to the Grammar School had to be fitted out with the official uniform and other equipment and maintained until the age of 16 as against the Secondary Modern School leaving age of 14, considerations of vital importance to low-income families. It has to be stressed that the start of a Welfare State was some quarter of a century and another world war away from that time, and the very idea of State Income Support would have been viewed as an unrealisable pipe-dream that would never come true. Some parents, from diverse motives, resolved to make considerable personal sacrifices on their children’s behalf. Others in the same position were not sure this was a good thing to do. If the English are very class conscious it has been often for quite practical reasons. The fear was expressed that scholarship children from poor families coming into contact with children from families in “better circumstances,” living in modern semi-detached houses, would come to “look down” on their own parents and get ideas beyond their expectations. There was no question of any child other than those from professional backgrounds and others of considerable means going on beyond Matric/School Certificate into higher education. Also, a lot of people felt that who got the “safe” jobs was “cut and dried,” that is to say, determined at birth by birth.
Some children therefore were urged to go for the Scholarship, some not to do so, and some went to the Test in a spirit of indifference engendered by their parents’ expressed mistrust of “book-learning” in general and the study of “useless” subjects like foreign languages in particular, a form of the anti-intellectualism found at all levels of English society.
Very unfortunate was the capable child whose parents were not in the habit of communicating with him at all. This one went to the Test neither knowing what was wanted of him nor what to do for his own benefit. He was liable to put the fear of losing friends and acquaintances in the place of better judgement.
Most unfortunate was the child at the age of eleven whose family was living on the brink of financial catastrophe, the father, in a managerial position, striving to keep his employment in an old-established firm that had come under terminal threat from a new type of competition. Then, the child being in the higher grade school and doing well, actual disaster struck so that he was obliged to leave it.
It was possible to go on and get “Matric” by private study, maintaining concentration on each of the specified number of subjects that had to be passed together at the one examination, failure in one subject meaning failure to get the certificate.
For the child denied a grammar school place for whatever reason, the urge, resolve and confidence to attempt certificated qualifications anyway will have originated in the quality of Primary teaching experienced. The expository technique used by Miss Williams at Christ Church instilled into pupils a thirst for reading and writing that placed them already more than half way to a “Matric” level pass in English. Mr Heatley’s presentations put them within reach of a General Science pass; it was only necessary to make the transition to meeting the “Matric” syllabus requirements. Any “romantic” or entertaining view of Science had to give way to quantitative treatments and an exact understanding of phenomena shown.
Other subjects not taught at primary level at the time had to be taken. French or German for instance in terms of translating short texts; few English people would have contemplated actually speaking them. It was possible to get a knowledge of the living language from the “valve” wireless sets which were then becoming universal and were capable of receiving Paris and Berlin, though this stood to be thought highly eccentric or even subversive.
For the non-mathematically inclined, the most daunting compulsory subject was Mathematics, for this could not be learned through reading. Its apparent terrors could be overcome by accepting the rules, learning them and doing the exercises, however irksome, in full. It appeared determined rote-learners had an advantage at this level. Really in difficulties with the subject was the child with a sight handicap, especially an astigmatism that made little bits of the numbers on the paper disappear, causing the problem to be misread. As with most minor physical handicaps, this stood to remain undetected or impatiently dismissed and the pupil written off.
All the same, despite the tendency of the times summarily to pigeon-hole people for life, there were individuals who persevered right through to getting an external university degree, taking seven years to do it. This was usually done with some particular end in mind and meant competing with those who had obtained the necessary qualifications internally and therefore with much less effort.
Those being educated are influenced by forces other than those brought to bear by their
educators. What these were at the time in Ealing is worth a study in itself.
Norman Maggs, 1997
A copy of this essay is held in the British Library, shelfmark YK.2001.a.8777