to come in. When she came in we stood up and she would say, ‘Good morning children.’ And we had to nod our heads and say, ‘Good morning Miss Johnston.’ Then she came round and examined our hands, back and front. A lot of boys were sent to get their hands washed again.
Bessy Ruben
I remember there used to be a nurse who'd come and examine our hair. Those who were lousy dreaded her coming, but those who were clean she'd pass over, and we'd be very proud to know we were clean. We didn't have any nits. Well, quite a lot of children who were very nice children, really and truly had nits, and one of my friends was so self-conscious about it.
Edith Turner
I was put in the London County Council School. At that time, I had no shoes on my feet. There was a School Board man who used to visit if you didn't go to school and they used to threaten the parents that they would prosecute them if children didn't go to school. So I had to go to school. I went climbing up the stairs at school, with no shoes and socks. My headmistress, Miss McCrae, she was a proper bitch. No matter what illness the children had, she demanded that they went to school.
Joe Garroway
When I first started school it was just a room at the primitive chapel. I must have been a bad boy because I was put down into the cellar, and when dinnertime came they forgot I was there. Well it so happened my little sister, two years old, was buried that day. When I didn't turn up my uncle came to seek me. He came and shouted down to the cellar where I was crying. He said, ‘I'll get you out, lad!’ and he went and saw the caretaker. As I came up the steps to my uncle the teachers came back into the school, and he said, ‘Who's put him down there?’ My teacher was Miss Clark, and she said, ‘I have.’ He said, ‘Take that’ and whacked her and he walked out again.
Bessy Ruben
There was a lot of poverty. We had a girl in my class called Nelly – she was a Christian girl and I liked her very much. She used to come to school without shoes on her feet. I couldn't understand it – no shoes and stockings, and it was the middle of winter and raining. She used to sit next to me, and I said, ‘ Aren't you cold?’ Her feet were so cold. I used to go home to her house for tea very often, and I could smell a very nice, welcoming smell – it was bacon. Although her mother offered it to me, I had an idea I mustn't eat it. I told my mother what had happened, and asked her, ‘Why mustn't I eat it?’ I couldn't have been more than nine at the time. And mother said, ‘Because it's not very healthy.’ And I said, ‘But Nelly Conlan walks about with bare feet, and she's never had a cold in her life!’
Don Murray
We used to go round by the girls' school and watch them come out and make fun of them. But the girls had a way of joining together and instead of going home separately, they used to go home in groups, singing a song that's quite popular now, ‘Strawberry Fair’:
As I was going to Strawberry Fair,
Singing, singing, buttercups and daisies …
And they used to do a little dance and then they each branched off as they got to their homes.
Emma Ford
We all wore pinafores at school. They practically covered our dresses. And the boys wore what they called ‘ganseys’, which are jerseys. They were mostly handouts, and some of them would be too big and some of them too small.
Bessy Ruben
After the Russian pogroms, there was an influx of Jews to our area – the East End of London. There were a lot of children who had to go to school. Some were big girls, twelve or thirteen, and you couldn't put them in the infants' school, so a lot of them came to our school. The older girls like myself were given a class, just to teach them to speak English. I remember one girl – when I told her to say ‘and’ she couldn't. She said ‘aernd’ and she said ‘royce’ for ‘rose’. This used to annoy me, and I did bully the poor girl a bit. One day, in the playground, she was standing in a corner, crying. I went over to her, and I said in Yiddish, ‘Why are you crying?’ and she said, in Yiddish, ‘Everyone's laughing at me. You laugh at me. I can't say like you say the word in English. I can't say “rose” – I say “royce”.’ I said, ‘But you've just said “rose”!’ After that I became very friendly with her.
Florrie Passman
My sister and I went to the Aldersgate Ward School. It wasn't a Jewish school, and my sister and I were the only Jewish girls in our class. My mother, although she was very orthodox, was very broad-minded. Not like some people who said to their children, ‘If they're going to have prayers, you must come out!’ But luckily, my mother said, ‘You must go to prayers and do everything, because when you get older, how will you know which is right and which is wrong? How will you go anywhere? What will you do if you don't know what they're talking about?’ And do you know, I got the prize for the New Testament!
Bessy Ruben
I remember Miss Green. She had snaggle teeth. I was very fond of her. Then we had Miss Poole, who was a dear, and we had Mrs Cameron, who was a fiery Scot. And we had a Miss Jackson – she was so patriotic that she wore a Union Jack apron. After the Kishenev pogrom, there was an influx of Jews from Kishenev. A lot of the children came to our school and I remember distinctly this Miss Jackson saying, ‘Now, all you foreigners who come from Russia, you should all go back to your own country.’ And a girl sitting in the front – her name was Yetta Solomons – she was so incensed about it that she took out her inkwell and flung it at Miss Jackson, and smashed her glasses. Of course she was chastised for treating one of the staff in that fashion, but our headmistress was a very nice and a very clever woman. I met her many years later and I asked if she remembered the incident. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘We had that teacher dismissed, because she was in a Jewish area and she just didn't like foreigners.’
Richard Common
We had this one teacher, old Ramsay, and he was a tyrant. He used to have a stick. It wasn't a cane, it was like a very thin rolling pin, and if you did anything wrong he used to rap you with it. You held your hands out, palms upwards, but if you pulled your hands back, instead of bringing it down on you, he brought it up and hit you on the knuckles. One day old Ramsay went out, and one of the lads hid his stick behind the central heating pipes. He came back and he couldn't find it and he told us that when he did find it, we were all going to get it. He marked our names down on the blackboard with the number of smacks we were going to get. And my goodness, when he found it, we got it. He stood us all in line and he looked on the blackboard and walked up, saying, ‘Ten for you! Six for you!’ right up the line. The girls got the same. He hammered us all.
Nicholas Swarbrick
The Jesuits ran Stoneyhurst College in Preston and the Catholic College for Boys in Winkley Square was staffed by the same Jesuits as the College. These Jesuits were very much inclined to use the leather strap they called a ferula like the devil.
In my first two or three forms at the college I did very well academically. Each week we had a card which we took to our parents, which had four designations on it – the first was excellent, the next good, the next fair, and poor. In the first three forms
