got sixpence from my father for that. When I moved into the senior college there was one particular Jesuit priest, Father Ellison, and he was a devil with the ferula. On one particular occasion I had a lot of homework, I was given a lot of irregular verbs to parse – horrible things. I did my best, but Father Ellison hit me so hard and hurt me so badly that I refused to go back to school. My father more or less acquiesced, and my education was ruined. Although I was instinctively a studious person, that ruined my education. Nowadays, Father Ellison would have been jailed for what he did to us. If I'd had my way, I would have gone to the local Church of England grammar school where there was no ferula, but religious intolerance was fairly rampant, and I wouldn't have been allowed. After that incident I stayed at home and no one came in to teach me. I was fourteen when I left school.
Thomas Eustace Russell
When I was at Hatfield Road School in St Albans, we had a master named Cowley who was a brute of a man. A sadist. He broke a boy's wrist with the stick on one occasion. There was a great how-de-do about it.
John William Dorgan
In Choppington, there were two schools. One was the Church School with a grant from the County Council and the other was the Colliery School. My mother couldn't fit me out with decent clothes, so I couldn't go to the Church School. I went to the Colliery School. On Monday morning, every child in the school had to pay fourpence. That was an enormous amount of money in those days. Usually, I didn't have it, so I had to walk to the front of the class and put my hand out. I received four good straps on the hand. Girls who couldn't afford the fourpence got the same. About half the class used to get the strap every Monday morning because they couldn't pay.
Bessy Ruben
A lot of the children at our school didn't have birth certificates, so when they reached the age of fourteen, their parents would have to go and swear an affidavit at the solicitor's to say the child was fourteen, and the child would have to swear too. At school one day, one of the girls said, ‘I haven't got a birth certificate, and I've got to go and swear that I'm fourteen.’ So Dinah, this friend of mine, said, ‘Oh, you don't have to worry – all you have to do is, if you're a Christian, you stand up and say, “I swear by the Lord Jesus Christ”, and if you're Jewish, you have to swear another way.’ That's all she said, and she never meant anything derogatory against Jesus Christ. The teacher was out of the room when this happened, but there were two Christian girls there. When we went out to play in the playground, I could see these two girls walking up and down talking, and pointing at Dinah and our little crowd. When we came back, the teacher of the class called Dinah out to the front of the class. ‘How dare you stand up and make fun of Our Lord? We don't make fun of your Rabbis or your Gods!’ and so on. And Dinah was weeping. ‘I didn't mean anything,’ she kept saying, and she didn't, but the teacher wouldn't even let her speak. She was sent out to the headmistress, and then she was sent to apologise to all the English staff of the whole school. She was sent to Coventry. The only one who used to speak to her was myself, and I used to meet her outside school. Sent to Coventry with a year's marks taken away from her.
Albert ‘Smiler’ Marshall
My headmaster was a wonderful man who took a great interest in me and all the pupils. He taught everything, including football and cricket, gardening – and he was also the scout master. The staff were a bit ‘fishy’ – a Miss Herring, a Miss Salmon, and the headmaster was Mr Whiting. They were all much loved by the pupils. Twice a week the rector visited for the first hour. We started with a hymn and were told about all the historical events which had taken place on that day. Any trouble, and you got the stick. None of the boys mentioned this to his parents, as he might well have been belted at home had he done so. Most boys had an orange-box on wheels, and when we were released from school, there was a rush down the hill to collect horse manure for the gardens.
Andrew Ruddick
My first school was run by a middle-aged woman called Minnie Turnbull. We used to pay thruppence a week, and the big school at Hallbankgate cost tuppence. Minnie Turnbull had ten pupils, five girls and five boys, so that was half a crown a week, and that was all she had to live on and she had a daughter and a father to support. When free education came into operation, after the summer term Minnie Turnbull had to close down, and we went to the big school.
Bessy Ruben
Commercial Street School was a lovely place. What attracted us very much at the time was the unseen heating. In the winter we had the warm air blown in and in the summer it was cool air blown in. We were told how lucky we were that this was our new school, and we were breathing clean, fresh air every day. The school had about 304 children, out of which about 300 were Jews and four were Christians. In consequence, we had all the holidays, both Jewish and Christian.
Harry Patch
I went to a Church of England school where the headmaster was a disciplinarian – so much so that he lost two teachers in three months. They couldn't stick him. But he was a good man. He gave up two nights a week, Tuesday and Thursday, for evening classes. His one condition was if you started, you had to stick at it. First hour on the Tuesday was English as it is spoken. The second hour was Latin. Anyway, we stuck it, and on Thursday the first hour was geometry, and the second hour was algebra. He asked us the shortest distance between two points, A and B, and of course the answer was a straight line. He told us to write down the definition of a curve. Well I couldn't think so I wrote ‘straight line with a bend in it’ and he gave me a rap across the knuckles.
Henry Allingham
When we moved to Clapham, South London, my mother wanted to get me into a high-grade grammar school in South Lambeth Road. She went to see the head, who said, ‘Send the boy up to me and if he can pass the school entrance, I may be able to find a place for him.’ So I went to do the exam. He was a lovely man. He put me in the main school hall. He said, ‘Now, make haste slowly!’ and I did my best and answered all the questions on the paper. And I passed. It was a fantastic school, and they taught us French, science, woodwork, metalwork and art. The art master took us to the Tate Gallery. I used to spend Sunday afternoons at the Tate. I loved that school. I went there until I was almost sixteen.
Albert ‘Smiler’ Marshall
I was a bit of a fighter at school. A boy who had been expelled from another school started causing problems in our class. The master took me aside and told me to deal with him, so I met him outside where he was bullying some of the smaller ones and I gave him a good beating. He was as right as rain after that and he wanted to be my friend, but I wasn't having any of that.
Richard Common
The classroom had wooden ceilings, and when the teacher went out, we used to play darts with our pens. We threw the pens so that the nibs would stick in the ceiling. Then we would throw anything – hats or whatever we had – up to the ceiling to try and knock them down. One day, the teacher came in and we all had our pens except Billy Hurd, a Scotch lad who lived in Stanley Street. ‘Where's your pen?’ asked the teacher. There was one pen stuck in the ceiling. The teacher made Billy sit underneath it. ‘You'll soon know when it comes down,’ said the teacher, ‘you just sit there.’ And he made Billy sit underneath it all day.
Joseph Henry Yarwood
I went to the council school
