broken the day before a crucial match. Had it not been, I would undoubtedly have had my colours. We played rugby football over the winter, association football and hockey during the spring term and cricket during the summer term. There was tremendous competition between the Houses at sport. There was a cup for which the Houses used to compete with tremendous enthusiasm.
Gordon Frank Hyams
At thirteen, I started at Charterhouse. Straight away, we were given an exam by the house monitors, who asked us lots of questions about school institutions, the things you were allowed to do and the things you must never do. They also gave us awkward questions, such as having to name a monitor, and listing the colours he'd won. We had a system of fagging, whereby each monitor had a ‘study fag’ who had to look after his study and keep it neat. I was in a house called ‘Robinites’ and my housemaster was Oswald Latter, a well-known naturalist.
Being in a house meant you lived there, you slept there and you had your meals there. The house system was very strong and there was great competition between the houses over football and cricket. The dormitories were very good. They were divided up into enclosed cubicles, each one containing a bed, a chair and a hand basin. Our clothes were looked after by the matron, who cleaned and distributed them every week. The food was good, on the whole. We had porridge and a fried egg for breakfast, a main course and a sweet for lunch and tea at six o'clock, which was a big meal.
The forms at Charterhouse were sorted by ability, rather than age, so you had some older boys in the lower forms. I started in a form called the Upper Fourth. I was rather fortunate. It was a classical form and the master in charge was a man called Girdlestone. He was a very old man who used to waddle like a duck. He had founded his own house, and it became known by everybody, including the staff, as ‘Duckites’. Girdlestone's method of teaching was very odd. When he gave Latin or Greek prep, you were supposed to look up any words which you didn't know and list them on a piece of paper. During the lesson, he called you up to read your prep and you handed your list in. If you stumbled over a word he'd say, ‘I don't see this word on your list. Why isn't it?’ and you answered, ‘I thought I knew it, sir.’ He was a dear old boy and we were very sorry to see him go.
Maurice Edward Laws
At the age of thirteen, I went up to the Admiralty for an interview to get into Osborne Naval College. The interview was designed, not to test your knowledge, but to see what kind of boy you were, and how you would react to an unexpected situation. I was asked all sorts of silly questions. The final question was asked over a blank map of Africa. One of the examiners, some old admiral, asked me what a particular river was. I said, ‘That's the Congo.’ He said, ‘No, my boy. That's the Niger.’ I said I was sure it was the Congo and someone else piped up and said he was sure it was the Niger. They went into a furious discussion and a porter brought in a proper map with the names on it and I took no further interest in the matter because my time was up. I never found out whether it was the Niger or the Congo. I didn't get into the Navy, but it was nothing to do with the interview. I failed on medical grounds.
Helen Bowen Pease
We were educated by a governess, Miss Cornish, who was the daughter of the headmaster of Eton. Our education was entirely literary, as girls' education usually was. It puzzles me, because Father was an engineer and the tradition in the family was in science and engineering, but they never took us to see a canal or a tunnel, we were taken to see Dr Johnson's house in Lichfield. They didn't show us Erasmus Darwin's house up the road. Sometimes, Mother taught us, and that was always rather unfortunate. Father took Maths sometimes and that was very entertaining. Father was a terrific historian and he used to ask us questions at dinner, like, ‘When was the battle of Waterloo?’ and if you said, ‘1815’ he said, ‘Silly! I didn't mean the year! What month?’
Dorothy Wright
I never went to school. I had governesses who taught me reading and writing and Mathematics and History. I got through an incredible number. Having a ‘gov’ wasn't like being in a classroom. The gov watches you day and night. I had other classes as well. A French class was got up for the children of the district. Monsieur Poiret came from Leeds University every week to teach us. We had dancing lessons in the Town Hall. It could be trying, because one was made to do the waltz or polka with some little boy that you couldn't bear. We had a drawing class taken by the headmaster of Leeds Art School. I had always been interested in drawing. My mother used to illustrate all her letters to me when I was at the sea with my nanny. And at Easter, she used to paint my Easter eggs. I wasn't particularly musical – I liked other things better. My mother bought me a violin in the hopes that I'd learn it. I did for a bit but I sold it to buy a pony. By the time I stopped lessons, I was leading a life of leisure and a great deal of enjoyment. I was learning how to live with older people and how to treat them.
Ernest Hugh Haire
Father decided to put me into teaching. In 1908, I went to St John's College in Battersea in London. We were affiliated to London University. The syllabus was very wide, and in the first year I did English, History, Geography, Science and Maths. The discipline was extremely strict. We had lectures every morning at seven o'clock and you had to be there on the dot. It was a bind – there was a competition to see how late you could stay in bed to get there for seven. Three mornings a week, the lecture was Chaucer, the other two it was Maths. Breakfast was at eight-thirty, then chapel at nine. We had lectures until twelve-fifteen, then lunch. We had splendid food and we were waited on hand and foot. In the afternoon, we had one lecture between two and three, but on Wednesday we were free all afternoon. We had another good meal at six, with beer provided at the table. I didn't drink at that time, but two prefects used to arrange to sit at a table with ten teetotallers each evening until it dawned on people that they were getting tight every night. After dinner, we had chapel at quarter to seven, and supervised private study between half past seven and half past nine.
I passed out of the college in 1910. I specialised in history teaching and I had to sit a paper on the letters and speeches of Oliver Cromwell. I did well on that, but I also had to do the school practice. That meant being assessed as you taught a class. The subject of the class was given by the tutor. I was hoping it would be a History or Geography lesson – in fact he made me give a grammar lesson on the ablative absolute: which was really a Latin thing. I took a class of forty-nine boys in a Chelsea school, in front of the class teacher, the headmaster, the tutor and the Inspector. For thirty-five minutes I taught the ablative absolute. I struggled. At the end, the Inspector came to me and said, ‘My poor boy. You have my sympathy. Who the hell gave you that subject?’ ‘That gentleman over there,’ I said, indicating the tutor. ‘I wonder how he would have managed,’ said the Inspector. The Inspector turned to the tutor. ‘You are responsible for assessing the subjects and you gave this young man a lesson on the ablative absolute. He struggled manfully with it but he couldn't illustrate it. I'll bet a darn you couldn't have done it! What a ridiculous thing to do! And I'm going to give him an “A” mark!’
Bill Owen
I went to St Clement's School in Dove Street. We had a headmaster called Mr Campie – talk about discipline. Discipline was nothing when I went in the Marines, because this chap really was strict. Many times I didn't have a piece of bread to go to school with – there was nothing in the house – but had a polish on my shoes. I had one of those collars on, and that had to be washed and cleaned, and your hair cut. He had a cane, and he'd have your hand under the blackboard, and he'd bring it down on your fingers.
At school – talk about brainwashed – when we went out in the yard it was all ‘Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue’. I think that was the start of me joining up – having it drummed into me.
