Bessie Locke, daughter of the Empire

Last time, we considered the School at Clapham in the nineteenth century. All of the pupils who came and went over that period have the School in common although they are, of course, individuals in their own right. They all have their own stories to tell. Tracing the individuals to find the stories is relatively straightforward if they remain within the UK. It is when they slide out of reach by ‘Going Abroad’ that it starts to be trickier. And when most of the life being researched is actually overseas, it can be a challenge. One such is Bessie Phear Woodford Locke, who appeared on only two UK census returns (30 years apart), and her story may never have been uncovered were it not for a brief comment in Massonica [sic] in June 1913.

‘Lady Hamilton is well-known to many of us as Bessie Locke, silver medallist of her year.’

But we are jumping to the end of her story here so let us go back to the beginning.

Bessie was the daughter of Henry Hover Locke and Louisa Jane Locke, nee Woodford, and she was born on the 14^th February in Dumdum, near Calcutta (today Kolkata) in 1876. She was baptised on 25^th March 1876 at St Stephen’s Church, Calcutta.

Record from British India Office births & baptisms, accessed via FindMyPast website

St Stephen’s Church, Kolkata

Her father was the Principal of the Government School of Art in Calcutta, an architect by training. From Wikipedia, we learn that this school began in 1854 at Garanhata but within months had moved to Mutty Lall Seal in Colootola.

‘In 1864, it was taken over by the government and on June 29, 1864 Henry Hover Locke joined as its principal’.

Image of the entrance to the college http://www.victorianweb.org/art/architecture/granville/3.html

From https://www.gcac.edu.in/

Dumdum, where Bessie was born, is a name derived from the Persian word damdama, which refers to a raised mound or a battery. During the 19th century there was a British Royal Artillery armoury there. Here in the early 1890s, Captain Neville Bertie-Clay developed a specific type of bullet which came to be known as a dumdum bullet. More properly known as an expanding bullet, its design is specifically intended to maximise damage and it has been long prohibited for use in war. 

Modern map from Google Earth; Dumdum is just north of Kolkata, West Bengal. Dhaka (see next paragraph) is also shown here. It is now in Bangladesh.

Bessie and her sister were both born in India but so also was their mother Louisa Jane Woodford so they were Empire families across at least two generations. Bessie’s grandfather was Charles Thomas Osmond Woodford, a surgeon, serving in India. He was born in London in 1821 but in 1845 he married Jane Cunnew in India. She was also from London (b. 1819). They were married in Dacca (now Dhaka) in 1845.  Charles Woodford

‘Joined the Uncovenanted Medical Service, Bengal, in 1848; he was Surgeon to the Calcutta Police and ex-officio Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in the University of Calcutta.’ https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/     

He died ‘of general debility’ in 1881 in Coonoor, Madras but lived long enough to see his daughter Louisa married in 1873 at St Paul’s Cathedral Calcutta, and the birth of his granddaughters.

St Paul’s Cathedral; image by Ankitesh Jha – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20204193

Bessie would have been five when her grandfather died but it is possible that she hardly knew him as he died in Madras (now Chennai) about a thousand miles from where Bessie and her family resided. Sadly for her, however, just four years later her father died too, on Christmas Day 1885, the cause of death given as heart disease and heat apoplexy. In his will, he named his wife, Louisa Jane, as his sole beneficiary and appointed her as guardian of their infant children. Because of her father’s death, Bessie came to the School (Petition No 1456) possibly in 1886. What else she did or did not do during her time at school, we know that in 1890 she was entered for the Senior Cambridge Local Examinations which she unfortunately failed. Sarah Louisa Davis, Head Governess, never one for pulling punches if she was annoyed with girls, was clearly sympathetic in this case.

‘The one failure is Bessie Locke, a most persevering good girl, quite worthy to be entered but of an anxious disposition; she may have failed to grasp the meaning of some things in the exam particularly arithmetic.’

She tried for a second time in 1891 but the arithmetic let her down again.

Nevertheless, the Head Governess wrote of her that she ‘has always been a specially good girl and by attention and perseverance has attained a good position in her classes’. In 1892, Bessie was awarded the silver medal.

17 May 1892 – Morning Post – London

Enlarged detail from above newspaper report

In 1892, it was written [she] ‘passed Junior Cambridge Class II Hons. And has prizes for Religious Knowledge & French’. On this basis, she was recommended to take the vacancy as pupil teacher to teach ‘little girls’. She was given a year’s trial but, at the end of this period, Miss Davis ‘felt that there was little point in continuing as she would not attain to any higher level of teaching … she will be better placed in a private school in England or abroad where she could improve her languages & music and therefore able to obtain a post as a governess, which would suit her better than teaching in a large school. Miss Davis cannot speak too highly of her personally and she recommends that she receives the ex-pupil’s grant.’ And in pencil afterwards is written £40.

Where Bessie went to after this is currently unknown. She is not located on the 1901 census so it seems likely she returned to India where, in 1909 in Rawalpindi, she married Henry Hamilton.

Henry was considerably older than Bessie, being born in 1851 at Coolaghey House, Raphoe, Co. Donegal. He had been educated at the Royal School in Raphoe before going to Queen’s, Belfast. He qualified first as a lawyer before going on to medical training, where he graduated in 1875 as M.Ch. The following year he joined the Indian Medical Service as a surgeon and served with the 23rd Bengal Native Infantry. It is possible that he had known Bessie all her life as he first went to India in the year she was born.

In Crone’s Dictionary of Irish Biography it records: “HAMILTON, Sir Henry, Surgeon General; b. Coolaghey, Donegal, 1851; ed. Raphoe and Q.C.B; B.A. 1872; M.D., 1875; entered I.M.S., 1876; took part in march to Kandahar, 1878; senior M.O. Chitral Expedition, and principal M.O. China Expedition, 1900-1; C.B., 1904; K.C.B.; d. Mentone 1932’

He was several times mentioned in despatches and received special promotion to Brigade Surgeon Lieutenant-Colonel. Further promotion followed, being advanced to Colonel in October 1902 and in March 1907 –

‘To be Surgeon-General Colonel Henry Hamilton, M.D., C.B., V.H.S. Dated 25th March, 1907’ – The London Gazette.

He retired in 1911 and in 1913 was invested with the KCB (Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath) and his arms would have been displayed in the Henry VII Lady Chapel of Westminster Abbey.

In 1921, Bessie and Henry are listed in Romsey, Hampshire. Whether this was their home or they were visitors is unclear. Henry died on 21^st Jan 1932 in Menton-Garavan, on the French Riviera. Bessie, despite being 25 years younger than her husband, survived him by only a year. She too died in Menton-Garavan so this would appear to have been their home.

http://www.worldwidemarinasales.com/en/marinas/menton-garavan-port.html

Like so many of the pupils, Bessie arrived at the School as a fatherless daughter. She did her very best with her lessons, then returned to her roots in India before marrying, ultimately becoming Lady Hamilton. Bessie’s life from the Raj to the Riviera with a stop-off point in Clapham!

C19th Life at Clapham J

The second half of the century saw the School move to its third site and the last in London. In response to ever increasing numbers, new school premises, bigger than the last, were created to accommodate more pupils. The site chosen was St John’s Hill, Battersea, facing the north end of Wandsworth Common, next to what was to become Clapham Junction about a decade later. Geographically confused, the postal address was Battersea, Wandsworth Common was just over there, Clapham Junction was next door and the telephone number (eventually) was through the Putney exchange. But it was always known by the girls as Clapham or sometimes Clapham J, so as such we shall refer to it.

The School showing the proximity of the railway lines.

On 2^nd August 1852, there was a grand opening ceremony costing £400 ‘so that everything might be done with grace and splendour’ (Royal Masonic Institution for Girls from 1788 to 1900 by G Blizard Abbott). An estimated 4000 people were in attendance, marquees erected, bands engaged to provide vocal and instrumental music and later dancing to a quadrille band. ‘Nine hundred dined, presided over by the Grand Master’ (which implies 900 Freemasons) and it was said to be almost midnight before the festivities were over.  The girls in the meantime had been returned to St George’s, Southwark. Although present to view the School and participate in the ceremonial, they were not to move in until December.

(This image drawn by Sheila Donaldson Walter, former pupil, from an image published in the Illustrated London News.)

Life at Clapham was pretty much the same as life at St George’s just in a bigger space. In summer, the girls rose at 6 am and in winter at 7 am. The pupils would rise and dress themselves. By 1845, the uniform had changed little from the 1788 original: the blue serge dress – the same; the white apron, with the bib and wide ‘collar’- the same.

By 1852, the apron had shortened but remained in proportion to the amount of dress covered as the dress itself had also shortened. Its hem had risen to mid-calf length where it remained for considerable time, regardless of what the skirt lengths did in the external world of fashion.

No concession was made for even the youngest pupils (8 years old) who were faced with the daily task of donning all the uniform. Underneath the dress were the black woollen stockings worn throughout the year, regardless of external temperatures. And then there were the dreaded ‘combinations’, which were long-sleeved, long-legged and buttoned up to the throat. In summer, they were cotton, but in winter they were made of wool “which had the consistency of steel wool. They itched, prickled and tingled” as one pupil recalled.

 Up and dressed, Morning Prayers were at 7.30 am in summer and 8.45 am in winter and breakfast followed. In 1877 this comprised bread and butter, washed down by milk and water. By 1895, tea, coffee or cocoa were added to the menu.

After breakfast, chores were completed and these varied but included dusting, tidying, and Being Generally Helpful. Lessons began at 9.30 am until 12.30 pm, six days a week.

There were half-holidays on Wednesdays and Saturdays where girls were not in lessons but were obliged to be occupied meaningfully.

Until 1853 (i.e. very shortly after the School moved into Clapham), there had been no school holidays of any kind. The 1792 Committee expressed the very decided opinion ‘that leave of absence from the School ought not to be granted to any Child on any pretence whatever, as the preservation of good Order in the School and the Health and Morals of the Children essentially depend on their never being suffered to go home to their Friends while under the protection of this Charity.’ Sounds horrendous from this end of Time but RMIG was not alone in this kind of view. Other charity schools expressed similar misgivings about the ‘damage’ that may result if parents intervened in their daughters’ education. Much had changed in the intervening half century but it was still down to the persistence of the Medical officer, Dr Gaskoin, to push for some kind of school holiday and two periods of three weeks, winter and summer, were granted. By 1892 these had been extended to

Five weeks in the Summer

Three weeks at Christmas

Easter Monday

Whit Monday

Last Saturday in June (ex-pupils’ day)

Michaelmas Day

November 9th (The Grand Master’s birthday)

And the half-holidays previously mentioned.

When the School first removed to Clapham, the lessons were still very basic – little more than the 3Rs, their catechism, and lots of sewing. In 1858, in a grudging concession that education for girls had developed, French and Drawing were introduced and pianos provided for music lessons. As with all things, once changes were made, there was scope for further changes. By 1888, prizes were awarded in: Religious Knowledge, Music, Drawing, French, German, Elocution, Arithmetic & Cookery, thus indicating that these had been added to the curriculum.

Drill provided exercise but there was also a swimming pool which, in winter, was drained and boarded over to become the gymnasium.

Following morning school, lunch was at 1pm.

Over a twenty year period, the midday meal was much the same – meat, veg and pud.

Afternoon lessons began at 2pm and ended at 5pm except for the half-holidays.

These images were taken by one of the pupils and, whilst somewhat faded, still gives a sense of what the classrooms looked like.

Afternoon lessons may have been followed by limited free time then tea was at 6pm and comprised bread and butter and tea or coffee. Occasionally, if in season, it was supplemented by radishes, mustard and cress, watercress and cake (which begs the question when is the season for cake?)

Originally that had been it for the sustenance but towards the end of the C19th supper was added, consisting of milk and bread and butter, cake or biscuits. Somewhat delightfully, those senior girls who were working hard for external exams were actually allowed claret! The School report to the ‘gentlemen of the Committee’ from the Head Governess for Nov 21 1872 reads:

 ‘Miss Davis will feel obliged if the Committee will again allow one dozen pint bottles of claret for the children during that week, as she has found that the best thing for their refreshment in the midst of their work.’

You can imagine the spluttering that would be going on in the Home Counties if a Headteacher were today to request alcohol to improve pupils’ attainment.

On Saturday, lunch was stewed meat, vegetables, bread and baked rice pudding (and lessons in the morning). Occasionally, when in season, the menus included pork, fish, peas, beans, plum pudding, fruit pies and salad.

Sundays meant church morning and evening, separated by (summer) Roast beef, vegetables, bread and fruit tarts or (winter) Stewed beef, dumplings, vegetables and bread.

Church services required that the whole School decamped and went off to a nearby church; any of St Paul’s, St Mary’s, St Luke’s or St Mark’s. As any one concerned with moving large numbers will confirm, the logistics of shifting 350+ girls from one place to another meant the crocodile to end all crocodiles.

This image, showing the original site of Battersea Grammar School, suggests that this may have been the homeward journey from St Mark’s.

Whatever meal was being eaten, in whatever season, it was consumed in silence. These were not convivial occasions but functional. Grace was sung both before and after every meal. Anyone who had not finished her meal before the second grace had to face the ignominy of sitting down again afterwards and finishing her meal, under the gaze of the pupils filing out of the dining room.

After tea and before supper, pupils did the school work set for completion for the following day. There might also be chores to do as one of the lessons the girls took away with them from their days at school was the virtue of industry.

And then it was bedtime with uniform carefully folded and stored in a basket underneath the bed, ready for the next morning.

The Ghost of Christmases Past

Christmas 1789. 15 little girls, a matron and possibly a cook-cum-housemaid. A house in Somers Town, once described as a fine property but now possibly starting to be a little bit shabby round the edges. Here we have the very first Christmas in the School’s history.

In January 1789, 15 girls began at the Royal Cumberland Freemasons’ School and it is important to remember (for those of us brought up with three school terms interspersed with holidays) that once they began at the School, they did not leave until they were 15 years of age. They were, in effect, fostered by the Charity that supported them and, in recognition of the great benefit they were receiving, there was no time off for good behaviour. Their parents –often a single surviving parent, mostly mothers – were allowed to visit once a week on Thursday afternoons between 2pm and 4pm. And, unless the families were very local, that might involve a considerable journey which effectively rendered any visit unlikely if not impossible. So Christmas was at school in this year and for many years to come.

On Nov 25th 1789, in a letter to the Gentlemen of the Committee, the Matron (Charlotte Learmonth) outlined the requirements for five more girls who were shortly to be admitted to the School.

The Matron also requested 15 new aprons for the original pupils but, to show she was not a spendthrift, added that the old ones would be turned into night caps. Interestingly, there was a request for 14 pairs of pattens – not 15. Perhaps one of the girls had been more careful than the others? Or maybe, reversing the coin, one of them was being punished by having to make do with an old pair. Pattens is not a spelling error. It is a kind of overshoe designed to protect shoes more suitable for indoor wear from the muck and grime encountered outside when the girls took their daily constitutional. Quite what the School pattens were like is unknown. The drawing below shows a kind of patten but whether this resembles the School ones, your guess is as good as mine.

Drawing made by David Ring, commissioned by Europeana Fashion, scanned by team of MoMu – Fashion Museum Province of Antwerp; Creative Commons

The School house in Somers Place East would have had fireplaces to heat it but quite possibly not excessively so. The weather at Christmas 1789 is described as ‘fair’ although this may have been in comparison with some stormy days earlier in the week.

The Gentleman’s Magazine Vol 66 https://books.google.co.uk/books

40^○ F for those who use new money is just over 4^○ C which is not especially warm. However, the 1789 temperature had dropped by 7^○F since the day before so probably felt a lot colder.

The girls may not have been exactly warm and toasty but they were being taken care of and, as the bill of mortality for the same period shows, an awful lot of children of their age were not.

(ibid)

This shows that 77 young people died in the month of December although, rather like the current ‘bills of mortality’ – the Covid deaths total – we do not know the actual causes of death. The Covid totals are those who died within 28 days of a positive test result but do not indicate if Covid is the cause of death. Poor saps may have got run over by a bus on their way home but they would still appear on the total. Any recording of deaths in this manner is a very blunt instrument.

Exactly how the girls’ Christmas was spent we have not the foggiest because it was never written down. By the middle of the following century, when Dickens was penning his Carol, Christmas was regarded as a relatively minor festival, so maybe Christmas 1789 was ‘hey ho, just another day’. There are references – not for Christmas it should be pointed out – to the girls being given a treat of plumb [sic] pudding on occasions of celebration but not as a Christmas treat. That this is now strongly associated with Christmas might also be Dickens’ fault.

‘… Mrs Cratchit entered … with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of brandy …’

Let us turn to another Christmas but ‘Fear Not’ as an angel is supposed to have assured some shepherds, this post will not be an interminable trot through the 233 December 25ths in the School’s existence. Some Christmases have been looked at with other posts and by the later C19th, there were actually Christmas holidays! If for no other reason, because there are zilch records of what Christmas was like at the School, it’s a guessing game anyway.

By 1795, the School had left Somers Town and moved to St George’s Fields, Southwark. Christmas 1795 saw the School in the recently built school house where everything was shiny and new. As they had been there since June, possibly the dust had settled a bit and maybe the last of the builders had left. Because this was a purpose built school, we do at least have an idea of what the interior was like.

The ground floor was dominated by the large school room with an ‘eating room’ to one side and a kitchen, of equal proportions, on the other. Although not specifically identified as such, there appears to a fireplace to one side of the school room which probably didn’t radiate a great deal of heat more than a foot away from it. By comparison, the Matron’s room has two fireplaces with a further one in her bedroom on the floor above. Ditto the Committee room although, as that room would not be in use all the time, quite possibly the fires were not lit until needed.

In contrast to both the Matron’s and the Assistant’s bedroom, the girls’ dormitory had a singular absence of fireplaces. Whether there was any projected heat emanating from the back of the staff fireplaces is a moot point. If there were, these would no doubt have been the premier locations in winter with possibly not a little indecorous and unladylike jostling for position!

Unfortunately for the girls, the following comment was made about the winter of 1795:

Very severe frost in London on the 25th: -21degC in Marylebone, -19degC in Mayfair. Thames frozen … December in particular … was amongst the five coldest such-named months in that record (since 1659) … and Christmas Day was intensely cold, with the Thames frozen. https://www.pascalbonenfant.com/18c/geography/weather.html

Collings, Samuel; Frost on the Thames; Yale Center for British Art; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/frost-on-the-thames-245394

This period of British history is often referred to as a mini Ice Age so perhaps the girls were more inured to it than we would be. Nevertheless, the agony of chilblains is something the modern generations rarely experience and for which they should be immensely thankful.

By 1852, the shininess well and truly worn off the St George’s Fields schoolhouse, the School had moved to Clapham, an ever bigger purpose-built school which still very quickly filled up with pupils. The year 1852 was rather a wet year with December accommodating two severe storms. There does not, however, appear to have been any damage to the new buildings whereas, in 1822, the old Schoolhouse had borne the brunt of a wind described as a hurricane.

Jackson’s Oxford Journal (Oxford, England), Saturday, February 9, 1822

By this stage, school holidays were in place so most pupils were absent from school over Christmas. Not all though, as those who could not go home for various reasons stayed at the School. https://rmsghistoryextra.wordpress.com/2015/12/22/christmas-entertainment looks at some of the entertainment they experienced. And no doubt crowed about when their schoolfellows returned as, quite possibly, they had not been entertained anything like as royally!

Nowadays pupils are most unlikely to stay behind during school holidays except under the most extreme conditions. All boarding pupils are required to have a ‘guardian’ in place who will take responsibility for pupils if they are unable to return to their parents. Covid was one of those exceptions as some girls were unable to fly home and boarding staff did sterling duty – as they have always done – by offering a positive experience for those pupils forced to stay on at a difficult time.

But any unlikely Christmas stopover is equally unlikely to involve snow despite all the cards we send.

The above image is the sort of Victorian Christmas street scene unlikely to have been witnessed most of the time but nevertheless a staple of Christmas card designers.

“… as Arthur Gaunt writes in 1954 ‘The idea that snow falls in the United Kingdom at Christmas probably arises in no small measure from the writings of Charles Dickens.’” https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2020/12/10/truth-behind-white-christmas-dream/

It is recorded that, for the first 8 years of Dickens’ life, it snowed at Christmas so no doubt he had that notion in his head as he penned his novels and the idea has stuck despite all the information to the contrary. So there’s only one thing to be said about it, isn’t there?

Bah, humbug!

Image on left is Department 56 Dickens Village Scrooge/Marley Counting House and image on right from https://www.list.co.uk/event/1621574-boxing-with-dickens-a-victorian-christmas-experience/

Clapham as seen by …

Amongst the School archives is a small green photograph album presented to Enid Thorpe in 1916 on her 12^th birthday. It contains a number of, often faded, images of Clapham and some of the pupils and staff. Some of them are dated 1921 making them now 100 years old and others are presumably older than that as who receives a lovely new photo album as a birthday present without having the desperate desire to put photos in? Unlike today’s instant photography/selfies stored on a phone without identification, many people who kept photo albums labelled the images. The similarity to today’s digital imagery is that labelling was often idiosyncratic or incomplete. An image tucked away somewhere labelled (say) ‘Molly in the garden’ or something similar is fine – except that one can’t remember who Molly was, or whose garden or when it was taken! When a personal photograph album is discovered where the individual is not known at all it is impossible to get into the mind set and try and identify the people in them. They are still a valuable record of a moment but they will never mean as much to others as they did to their owners at that moment in time.

This is Enid Beatrice Hedley Thorpe who owned the album which was later presented to the School. She was born quite some distance from Clapham – in Uganda to be precise. Her father, a civil servant, was deputy treasurer of the Uganda Protectorate. Sadly he died aged only 36 whilst the family was in Uganda. He is buried in the Entebbe European Cemetery, Kampala.

Death record of William Thorpe. The National Archives of the UK; Kew, Surrey, England; General Register Office: Registers and Returns of Births, Marriages and Deaths in the Protectorates etc of Africa and Asia; Class: RG 36; Piece: 2

By 1911, Enid and her widowed mother had returned to UK and are found in Hove with Enid’s grandfather (and father of Emily Thorpe, Hedley’s widow). This confirms that Enid was the only child of the marriage.

As Enid’s father was a member of Cricklewood Lodge, she was eligible for support as the daughter of an indigent freemason and in 1911 she was balloted for a place at the School. She was admitted in February 1913 when she would have been just shy of her ninth birthday. Her early days at the School, however, were somewhat marred by her contracting scarlet fever almost immediately in March. She was treated at Tooting Grove Hospital, otherwise known as the Grove fever hospital. Between 1916 and 1920 it became a military hospital and ‘Most of the Grove Hospital buildings were demolished in the 1970s’ https://ezitis.myzen.co.uk/grove.html but it was clearly the ‘go-to’ place for infectious cases at the time.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Grove_(Fever)_Hospital,_Tooting._Wellcome_L0006811EB.jpg

This was a somewhat inauspicious start to her school career. Scarlet fever, sometimes called scarlatina, is a bacterial infection which can spread very quickly in places like schools where people are in close proximity. Nowadays treated with penicillin or amoxicillin, these treatments were of course not available in 1913. Rather than treatment, prevention of its spread was the watchword with invocations to wash hands and keep space. Oh, they sound familiar!

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-campaign-to-prevent-spread-of-coronavirus-indoors-this-winter

Enid was not alone in being sent to Tooting Grove as Ilene Chumley was another pupil at the same time who also contracted it and went to the same fever hospital. Mary Bickford contracted it in 1914 which may, or may not, have been part of the same outbreak but episodes of it continued to be recorded at the School until about the 1940s. After this, whether there were fewer cases or it was not being recorded by the matron is anybody’s guess.

Scarlatina was not the only medical problem encountered by the girls. Enid recalled diphtheria, pneumonia, bronchitis, catarrh, hay fever and tonsillitis.

Extract in School archives from Enid’s recollections of life at school.

Having returned to health, the remainder of Enid’s time at the school seems to have been uneventful. When she left in 1921, she attended Brighton Technical College following a commercial course. That’s a rather catch-all expression but whatever it was it enabled her to obtain a post in 1922 as a clerk with the London County Westminster & Borough Bank in Brighton. It is not recorded whether this was where she met her husband but as he was a bank cashier, it seems a possibility. They married in 1928, had two children and lived in Hove. In 1943 she is listed with an address that will delight fans of I’m sorry I haven’t a clue – Mornington Crescent! Admittedly it was not the one in London that inspired the complex and unfathomable rules in the panel game https://isihac.net/mornington_crescent.php .

But back to Clapham Days as recorded in Enid’s little book.

As can be seen, the quality of the images shows their age but as a record of buildings that no longer exist they are informative. The interior shots are even less distinct, probably simply because they are inside with little natural light.

These show two images of the dining hall (one identified as such); what appears to be a lecture room (bottom right) and, rather delightfully, the swimming bath with water and bathers. The School does not possess any other images of the pool in use. In winter, the water was drained away, the pool covered over and it became a gym, complete with hollow thuds upon vaulting exercises. This immediately identifies that the image must have been taken in summer. A school with an indoor pool in the C19th century was apparently a rare beast and is a clear indication of the efforts to provide the best for the girls who went there as supported pupils.

Another summer image, marked on the reverse ‘Miss Mason’s birthday’, shows 4 girls either on their way to play a tennis match or perhaps having completed it. Unfortunately the girls are not identified individually but may well be the ones who feature elsewhere in the album. At a time when school holidays were few and far between, the half-holidays given to celebrate the birthdays of the Matron and the Headmistress (Miss Mason and Miss Dean respectively) were very much enjoyed. Miss Mason’s birthday was on 15^th June but the year in this instance is not given.

One photograph which does identify and date the instance is this:

Which Evelyn and which René is far less clear cut. There are no Renés listed in school records but there are Irenes and as this was usually pronounced I-reen-ie at that time, it can probably be assumed that the René referred to is an Irene. That gives 2 possible contenders – Irene Davidson and Irene Davis both born in 1903 which is contemporaneous with Enid. There are two possibilities for the Evelyn mentioned too: Evelyn Denman and Evelyn East both b 1903. More than that it is impossible to say. The only other named girl is one who is 4-5 years older than Enid. Asia Bickerton appears in the album.

Here she is clearly not wearing school uniform but appears to be painting lines on the grass (tennis court maybe?). Although Asia left in 1916, she did stay on as a pupil teacher for a while so perhaps this was taken of her at school.

Enid stayed in touch with the school via OMGA after leaving and sadly it was in Masonica that we learn of her death at the age of 49. Like her father, Enid died relatively young but her lasting legacy to the School is a set of snapshots preserved in an album capturing lost times, lost friends and lost buildings.

Decennial Musings

The previous post left off at the 1881 census with the School in Battersea/Clapham, its population steadily rising and many of the Big Names in the School history front and central. This post picks up at the last census of the nineteenth century.

The details asked for in a census return have often caused perplexity to those completing the schedules. Many were uncertain of their exact date of birth which might seem surprising to we who live in a world where personal data is the creed by which life is conducted. Standards of education sometimes created difficulties with spelling and this might be compounded by enumerators not being familiar with names of places or their pronunciation. Uttoxeter in Staffordshire is a good example of this. Locally it is pronounced Utcheter in defiance of its spelling. An enumerator unfamiliar with this may have been at a loss to know how to record a birthplace given orally as Utcheter. Similarly, where people were unsure how their family name was spelled, it was left to the enumerator to write what he believed he had heard. Regional accents added to the burden as many people are recorded a long way from their birthplaces. The result is often weird and wonderful. As it was all handwritten, the individual calligraphy added even further variations. In 1841, Harriet Jack can be read as Harriet York and the Jarwood sisters as Yarwood simply because the enumerator wrote a J thus:

Occupations can also provide mirth for later researchers although the enumerators might not have found it funny at the time. Quite how to categorise the person who declared that his occupation was ‘professional wizard’ must have left the enumerator scratching his head. Whilst we accept the term ‘occupation’ to refer to paid employment, clearly the person who wrote ‘generally useful’ did not grasp this. However, we can feel some sympathy surely for the enumerator who found Osborne House within his remit and who carefully – and unusually – placed a woman and not her husband as head of household and then wrote ‘The Sovereign’ in the occupation column. Some householders clearly had a sense of humour – like the Head of Household who recorded his sister in law in 1911. In the column headed ‘Infirmity’, he has entered Suffragette.

By 1891, the School by now firmly established in St John’s Hill, Battersea, we have a Head Governess for the first time.

Inset from Miss Davis’ portrait

Although Sarah Louisa Davis had been present in the 1871 and 1881 census, she had always been listed below the name of the Matron who was deemed the most important personage. After the death of Eliza Waterman Jarwood in 1886, the School recognised Miss Davis as the most important person and the Matron as second-in-command. Listed below these two are seven assistant governesses and three subject specific teachers (Needlework and Music x 2). That the roles of teacher and matron were interchangeable is shown by Florence Mason, later the revered Matron, being listed as music teacher.

Inset from Miss Mason’s portrait now in Great Hall

There were five pupil teachers (four of whom went on to become salaried teachers) and an assistant matron. But there is also a matron and governess of the Junior School (at that time still on the same site) and three pupil teachers, one of whom, sadly, died at the age of 20 whilst still at the school. There is also a certificated nurse and an assistant nurse, making 25 staff in total.  In case you’re wondering, there are also 28 servants whose names appear at the end of the School’s census return. There are 3 cooks, two kitchen maids and 2 scullery maids; seven housemaids, two dormitory maids and 2 general servants; a laundress assisted by five laundry maids. For the first time, the Bragg family makes an appearance as they were to do for the next 70 years or so across several generations. William Bragg is the carpenter whilst his wife Emma is the lodge keeper. They lived in the Lodge cottage which survived long after the rest of the School was demolished. There is still a gardener and his wife although she is now listed as a gate keeper as well.

The image of School superimposed on modern day Google Earth map

The School was positioned at the north end of Wandsworth Common with two entrances: one in Boutflower Rd and the other in Comyn Rd. This, then, would account for the necessity for two gate keepers.

257 pupils are listed as present on census night, including 64 junior pupils, with only four born beyond the shores of the United Kingdom.

The enumeration book’s summary of the 1901 census shows a dip in numbers down to 248. Also on this page is the handwritten comment that the School comprised five buildings.

‘When the 1901 census was taken on 31 March 1901, the total population of England, Wales and Scotland was recorded as 36,999,946.’ (FindMyPast website) The current pandemic vaccination totals which feature on the daily news reports indicate that a figure similar to this represents 60% of the current population.

In the 1901 return, Matron is again listed at the top of the tree. This is probably more to do with the fact that Miss Davis had retired in 1895 and her successors had yet to establish themselves. There had been two since Miss Davis. By this stage there are 16 teaching staff, 4 pupil teachers, a daily governess (listed above as the visitor), a Matron with 3 assistants, and two hospital nurses. There are 30 individuals listed as servants including 4 male staff: a Head Gardener, Foreman, Assistant Carpenter and Fireman. William Bragg has become the Foreman and his son Ernest is assistant carpenter although the fireman listed is the man in charge of the boiler, as a railway fireman is, rather than someone employed to put fires out.

A blank 1911 census form shows the amount of detail required

The 1911 census for England and Wales was taken on the night of 2 April and is the first in which the handwriting of the householders is shown. If nothing else, this is an indication of how much educational standards had improved although not entirely universally to judge by some of the peculiar spellings. At the School, 39 staff are recorded with the matron first. Bertha Dean, although listed only as ‘school teacher’ is next in line, thus indicating her imminent elevation to the post of Head Governess. Florence Mason is listed as the Mistress of Junior School and she and Bertha Dean were destined to be the most important personages in the School and significant figures in the move to Rickmansworth.

Clapham Staff c 1915 with an inset of Bertha Dean

There are 3 nurses and a trainee nurse, and 26 house servants. Ernest Bragg has taken over his father’s role just as his son, still only a child, would one day take over from him.

The pupils listed total 263 representing a steady rise. By the time it was deemed necessary for a new site, the design was to include accommodation for 400 girls and by the time RMIG left Clapham (1934), almost 300 girls were squashed into pretty much the same space occupied in 1911, with more at the Junior School then occupying its own site in Weybridge.

The 1911 census being made partially available from 2009, and entirely so from 2012, it has been a long wait for the next scheduled census release in January 2022. It will be an even longer wait for those with Irish ancestors as their 1921 census was destroyed by fire just as the UK 1931 census was. It will be interesting to see what information is revealed about the School in 1921 and what can be read across the grain. Then, as now, a pandemic was fresh in the memory although it was not this which caused the census date to be postponed from April to 19^th June: the re-privatising of the mines on 1^st April seemed highly likely to result in a strike of miners, transport workers and railway workers which would ‘as an incidental side effect make census-taking all but impossible.’[i] So the whole shebang was pushed back to June. That, in turn, resulted in anomalies as the population of some seaside towns were inflated by holidaymakers whilst their home towns were depleted in numbers.

As for the 2021 census, when its turn to be opened comes, what will tomorrow’s researchers make of us? As Susan Lumas points out in Making Use of the census (1993)

‘today’s researcher may not be seeking the same information as a reader one hundred years’ hence.’

The current pandemic will, one hopes, be a very distant memory just as we currently view the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic – something that happened to our ancestors and that won’t happen to us.

Or will it …

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[i] The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick maker: the story of Britain through its census since 1801 (Roger Hutchinson, 2017)

Two Blues

Two little girls met for the first time in the early C20th in a building in Clapham.

It was the beginning of an intertwining of their lives that stretched far beyond being little ‘girls in blue’.

Mary Ruth Cherry Piggott and Violet Kate Dingley were both elected to the School in 1902. Some 86 years later, Violet wrote in her memoirs ‘…Mother took me up to London to the school … where I met my lifelong friends Gwen Kitkatt and Mary Piggott, who seventeen years later became my sister in law’. (from The Memories if Miss Violet Kate Dingley by Violet Piggott © Violet Piggott’s estate)

At this time, the School was on its site in Clapham/Battersea where it had been since 1852. It was by this stage started to be rather overcrowded both by the encroachment of properties nearby and also in terms of the accommodation within the School. It had expanded probably as far as it could go and it was a case of juggling to fit all the girls in. There were almost always more girls admitted than left in any one year, an indication of the continuing need for support for the daughters of freemasons.

The School had been established 114 years before Mary and Violet were admitted. Designed for the daughters of freemasons whose circumstances were reduced (charmingly referred to as ‘decayed’ – how the import of language has changed!). As such, the girls came from middle class families and the reason for the ‘decay’ was often, but not exclusively, the death of the father. In the cases of both Mary and Violet, this was true.

Above: The Piggott family c. 1898, Mary highlighted. This studio portrait is an indication of the status of the family.

Mary’s father, Walter Arthur Piggott, died in October 1901 aged just 42. He was a chartered accountant and his estate in probate was valued at £435. This has a representative value of about £20,000 today but with a family of nine children to support, it did not give his widow Charlotte much to work with. Her son Hubert, later to marry Violet, said that ‘Mother had a small pension from father’s partnership in business’ and the sudden reduction in income made Mary a prime candidate for masonic support. The family had been living in Beckenham, Kent but moved to Belmont in Surrey after Walter’s death. Charlotte, however, had come from grander things having been brought up in Hawling Manor, Winchcomb where her children were also baptised.

Hawling Manor from https://www.countrylife.co.uk/property/low-key-cotswolds-62359

The family were tenant farmers of this substantial house dating originally from the C11th although this building dates from the C16th. It was sold in 2014 – for an asking price of £10 million pounds.

Violet’s father, George Dingley, was a jobmaster, one who lets out horses and carriages by the day and hour. The family lived In Marylebone ‘in a flat above the carriage houses of my father’s business.’ As the motor car was starting its rise to dominance, the jobmaster’s role was diminishing so, even if George had not died following an accident in which a broken rib pierced a lung, a reduced income may well have made Violet eligible anyway. His death left Violet’s mother, Charlotte, with seven boys and one girl to bring up singlehanded. As Violet recalled in her memoirs, there was no government aid in those days and, because Charlotte hailed originally from Exeter, ‘she had no family in London to fall back on in time of need.’ The Freemasons came to the rescue, first with Violet’s brother Albert (who went to the Boys’) and then, in 1902 when Violet was of age, she was also educated by the Freemasons.

Violet enjoyed being at school. In fact she remembers being called ’conceited’ because she found school work easy and probably, as is the wont with children, boasted of it! Violet’s memoirs mention a prize for arithmetic but not whether that was at the Masonic or the school she attended before that. Violet passed College of Preceptors’ exam in 1905. This institution, now little known today, was established in 1846 but

‘the College… committed the unpardonable sin of the twentieth century: a lack of communication’ Janet Delve in https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0315086003000260.

Because at the time the College of Preceptors’ exams were well known, no-one at the School recorded what was being examined. We are left to guess what exactly Violet passed in 1905 but it may possibly have been mathematics and may therefore be the ‘prize’ she refers to. It should be noted that, whatever it was, Violet was only 11 at the time so she was clearly a clever little bunny.

As with so many of our early pupils, Violet’s recall of her lessons stayed with her all her life: Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories in Class 5; Walter Scott in Class 3, learning by rote part of The Lady of the Lake; on to Shakespeare in the top classes. French was taught in Junior school with German and Latin in the Seniors. All the school work was tested by Junior Cambridge and Senior Cambridge exams. Violet took Senior Cambridge, which she passed with Honours, and the following year was made Gold medallist, the highest level of achievement of the School, her name being recorded in perpetuity on the School’s Honour Boards. As well as ‘brainbox’ activities, Violet won a singing prize in 1910.

Mary also passed Senior Cambridge in 1910 and was due to leave that year but was retained to assist the matron in the Junior School. Her own memoirs (supplied by her grandson) indicated that she was a pupil teacher. As such, she would have been at the School when Queen Mary visited in 1912 although Violet, unfortunately, missed it.

This rather faded image serves to show the uniform that both Mary and Violet would have worn.

In 1914, Mary Piggott obtained a post to assist in a nurses’ home in Plaistow.

Photo supplied by her grandson

When war broke out, ‘I was on loan to the Social Services Department at City Hall – my job was to interview wives whose husbands had been called up into active service … until their husband’s family allowances were fixed.’ In 1916, she undertook some nurse training but then worked at the War Risks Dept of the Sun Insurance Office.

Her change of direction was because she had met the man who was to become her husband, Arthur Ernest Hopkins ‘Hoppy’.  He was a soldier who served with distinction in WWI, being wounded twice (Ypres & the Somme). Although he had been born in Manchester, he had emigrated to Canada in 1913 and was serving with Canadian forces. At a hospital in Edinburgh he met Mary’s brother in law, Sidney, who brought Hoppy to the Piggott household for tea where he and Mary met.

They married in 1918 in Belmont, Surrey and then Hoppy returned to the War where, despite several near misses, including contracting ‘Spanish’ ‘flu in November 1918, he managed to survive. After recovering, Mary & Hoppy obtained berths on a ship departing for Canada in July 1919.

Violet, in the meantime, discovered that while she shone at School, it was not quite so easy out in the wider world.

As she wanted to be a teacher, a masonic grant for her training was made available but she had to be 18 to start and she was 17½. Unfortunately, the family needed income so Violet had to apply for a job as a teacher’s assistant to earn some. She gained a post in a private school where ‘I was put in charge of the littlest, without a clue or any given directions as to what to do with them.’

After a couple of months, a friend told Violet of a job with the International Correspondence School, which she took. ‘There I stayed until 1918, marking arithmetic and algebra papers’. Then she became engaged to Mary’s brother Hubert whom she had met on weekend visits when he was on leave from his ship. In 1919, he had managed ‘to get a berth on a company steamer … bound for Hull [from Egypt]. Arrived in Hull Easter Sunday. Arrived in London on Tuesday, April 22, and was married Saturday, April 26, 1919.’ (One Man’s Life, Hubert Piggott, 1979) At West Holloway St Luke to be precise.

https://mapio.net/images-p/54926898.jpg

The die of their future together was presumably already cast, as whilst Violet went back to work, Hubert set about obtaining a ship to Canada. In June, he set sail waving goodbye to Violet on Princes Dock, Liverpool.

http://www.penninewaterways.co.uk/liverpoolcanallink/link63.htm

The next time they were to meet was in Canada where they joined with Mary, her husband and small son John in a place called Peace River.

https://peaceriver.ca/community-profile/

In Part II, we will look at their Canadian life. Geographically several thousand miles away but in terms of a different lifestyle, metaphorically a million miles away for two little girls in blue.

With grateful thanks to Ivan and Norm, grandsons of both Mary and Violet, who provided much family information.

Vitreous history

Ever had one of those moments when what you had previously believed to be true suddenly took one pace to the left?

Let us pay a visit to the Great Hall. We have always known that the armorial windows there were originally in the Centenary Hall in Clapham, opened in 1891 by the Prince of Wales.

Above left from The Illustrated London News; above right: the Centenary Hall showing the armorial windows. Where the girls are seated in the drawn image are the alcoves containing the other stained glass work of Edward Frampton (the literature windows, now in the Great Hall corridors).

Except that they weren’t. At least not entirely. (Shortly we may stop talking in riddles. But no guarantees.) The pandemic is creating odd times but it also has some strange positives. One of these is that the Great Hall, which would normally have contained exam desks as pupils silently struggled to remember their revision (or wished they had done more: c’est la vie), was left empty. This gave the opportunity to photograph the windows and chart which armorial bearing was where. Suddenly, what was previously known for a cert wasn’t.

https://rmsghistoryextra.wordpress.com/2020/06/10/a-light-on-windows/ shows that, whilst many of the designed windows originated in Clapham, the numbers just don’t add up. Some of the windows with armorial bearings now found in the Great Hall did come from Clapham. The man responsible for their transfer and installation at Rickmansworth (Louis Ginnett) states very clearly that 97 shields came from Clapham. However, there are 134 armorial designs in the Great Hall which means we are 37 adrift. Which 37 is, at present, an unknown and as neither the original placement design for Clapham nor the same for Ricky are available to consult, it becomes a vitreous detective game.

One place to start, however, is with the window which is generally known as ‘the royal window’ and which takes pride of place in the centre of the east wall. Several of the armorial bearings in there appear to be decades younger than the rest.

The first clue comes in the realisation that one of the armorial shields is that of Edward VII.

Those of you quick at royal dates will immediately realise that the Clapham windows, being created around 1890, could not contain any armorial bearing for Edward VII as he was still, at that time, the Prince of Wales and would be until 1901. So that was the first anomaly.

There are four further royal coats of arms in this window.

 

Three are in sequence at the base of the window. They are the Duke of York, the Prince of Wales and Prince Arthur of Connaught. The remaining one is the Duke of Connaught positioned centrally immediately above.

So far, so good and all of these titles had antiquity and could apply historically so the title alone did not pinpoint them chronologically. It is what else is written underneath the arms that identifies the specific Prince of Wales from, as it were, the generic Prince of Wales. Each has a masonic ranking written beneath the title and this enables us to identify the individual. Furthermore, because the masonic rank of the Prince of Wales is recorded as Deputy Grand Master of Surrey, it enables the window to be dated very accurately as he became Grand Master of Surrey in 1935 and, of course, Edward VIII in 1936. So we can state with certainty that this window was created no earlier than 1924 and no later than 1934 as the windows were in place when the School opened on its present site. The Duke of York became George VI on the abdication of his brother in 1936. Prince Arthur of Connaught succeeded his grandfather as Duke of Connaught in 1942 when the Duke of this window died. Also an Arthur – as was his son and his grandson – he was the third son of Queen Victoria (and younger brother of Edward VII) and he laid the foundation stone of the new site in 1930.

 

Five other armorial shields in this window can be dated by the annotations accompanying them: the Earls of Derby, Donoughmore and Harewood and the Lords Ampthill and Cornwallis.

The Earl of Derby of this window is Edward George Villiers Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby, KG

The armorial shield from the Great Hall and Stanley’s official portrait http://searcharchives.vancouver.ca/edward-stanley-17th-earl-of-derby

Unfortunately, as this armorial shield is right at the top of the window, and therefore about 30 feet up, it is not possible to make out what is written underneath his title. However, Edward Stanley was East Lancashire Provincial Grand Master from 1899 until his death in 1948 so it seems likely to be him. History has not been particularly kind to the Earl. Even his own biographer described him as ‘ridiculous’. He was appointed Secretary of State for War in 1916 and General Douglas Haig was particularly scathing in his comments, likening him to “the feather pillow, bear(ing) the mark of the last person who sat on him” (Sheffield, Gary & Bourne, Douglas Haig War Diaries and Letters 1914-18). Lord Derby died at the family seat of Knowsley Hall, Lancashire. His other family home was Coworth Park, now a hotel.

Knowsley Hall by SLR Jester – Flickr and Coworth Park by A Taylor Moore – Vacationing in Berkshire (both https://commons.wikimedia.org)

The Earl of Harewood, Henry George Charles Lascelles, married Mary, the Princess Royal, daughter of George V and Queen Mary and was therefore the great-great nephew by marriage of the Duke of Connaught. As he was Viscount Lascelles until 1929, the Great Hall window must date after this period.

Portrait of Henry Lascelles https://www.flickr.com/photos/thelostgallery/14946429990

The window records his status as Provincial Grand Master of West Yorkshire. This is another dating clue as in 1942 he became the Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England.

The Earl of Donoughmore is a title from the Irish peerage and the holder indicated in the window is Richard Walter John Hely-Hutchinson, 6^th Earl who was Grand Master of Ireland from 1913 (http://www.irishmasonichistory.com/the-donoughmores-and-the-craft-by-dudley-wright.html )

The caricature is by Leslie Ward – Vanity Fair, 9 February 1905 Digitised version from www.lookandlearn.com and the photograph is courtesy of https://www.geni.com/people/Richard-Hely-Hutchinson-Sir-6th-Earl-of-Donoughmore-of-Knocklofty/6000000015973015291

Arthur Oliver Villiers Russell was the 2nd Baron Ampthill. He had several civil service appointments of note including Governor of Madras and then Viceroy of India, Deputy Lieutenant of Bedfordshire and was one of the co-founders of the National Party in 1917.

Photo from Wikipedia and caricature from Vanity Fair

Ampthill rowed for Oxford three times against Cambridge in the Boat Race (1889 to 1891), winning twice. He was president of the Oxford Union Boat Club and then moved to London Rowing Club, becoming club president in 1893, a position he remained in for almost 40 years until his death in 1935. He was, perhaps more surprisingly, also president of the Magic Circle.

The last of the armorial shields that is annotated and dateable is that of Lord Cornwallis. However, this one is not quite as clear cut and there are two possible candidates, father and son, and the information could apply to either.

Left: Colonel Fiennes Stanley Wykeham Cornwallis, 1st Baron Cornwallis by John Saint-Helier Lander (in Museum of Freemasonry) and right: Colonel Wykeham Stanley Cornwallis, 2nd Baron Cornwallis from https://www.geni.com/people/Col-Wykeham-Cornwallis-KCVO-KBE-MC/6000000013095393009

Both men were eminent freemasons with the 2^nd Baron Cornwallis succeeding his father as Provincial Grand Master of Kent in 1935. The window is annotated Deputy Grand Master but it is unclear which of the two men held this office. Colonel Fiennes Cornwallis died in 1935 less than three months after Lord Ampthill.

The remaining five armorial shields in this window all relate to organisations rather than individuals and are therefore less clear cut about dating. They could as easily be from 1891 as 1934.

Mark Master Masons – long associated with the School, they gave both the Old and New Mark Halls to the School: OMH 1957 and NMH 1994

Great Priory – officially Knights Templar: The Great Priory of the United Religious, Military and Masonic Orders of the Temple and of St. John of Jerusalem, Palestine, Rhodes and Malta of England and Wales and its Provinces Overseas https://markmasonshall.org/orders/knights-templar

The Supreme Grand Chapter of England – the governing body of Royal Arch Masons in England, Wales and the Channel Islands, its headquarters is at Freemasons’ Hall, Great Queen Street, London.

The Supreme Council 33° – has ‘the responsibility of managing the affairs and promoting the wellbeing of the Order, including the consecration of new Chapters, and of maintaining fruitful relationships with other Masonic bodies, both nationally and internationally’ http://www.sc33.org.uk/history.html

The large central window between the two latter ones represents the arms and motto of the United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE), the governing Masonic lodge for the majority of freemasons in England, Wales and the Commonwealth of Nations. The translation of the motto Audi Vide Tace is Hear. See. Be Silent. It is also the motto used for the Masonic Boys’ School.

Only when the windows are looked at in detail do we challenge what was previously ‘known’.

So the Great Hall windows all came from Clapham?

Nope.

One hundred years ago

As we begin the third decade of the 21^st century, time to look back to the same period last century. In 1920, 29 pupils of RMIG left the care of the school to make their way in the world. Their backgrounds and their subsequent lives represent a microcosm of the School’s history. Custom certainly never staled their infinite variety! Given the relative paucity of careers available to girls at the time – and the careers advice which continued for the next four decades to be largely ‘Do you want to be a nurse, a teacher or a secretary?’ – it is hardly surprising that only one of our 29 leavers initially opted for anything else. The one that was different Violet Bryant who went into accountancy. But then this was someone who had been Head Girl and Gold Medallist in 1920 so she clearly stood head and shoulders above her peers.

The School had, at that stage, only ever been in London, and eight of the girls were born locally. But there were also 4 girls whose birth was a long way from London. Gladys Chamberlin was born in South Africa as was Marion Gould (Durban & Johannesburg); Annie Hewer was born in Queensland, Australia and Lilian Peters in the British Honduras. So they had already travelled some distance to reach the School. Annie returned to Australia upon leaving school (after having worked at Australia House until then), married there and, we have to presume, died there otherwise she would now be 117 years old. Gladys, too, died overseas but in her case in France in 1953, apparently ‘suddenly’ whatever that might mean. It could have been on holiday rather than where she was living but the evidence either way is missing. We don’t know where Lilian died as we lose trace of her but she travelled to South America a few times so it might be a reasonable bet to assume it was abroad. Marion returned to South Africa after she left school but in 1932 changed career direction and trained as a nurse in Wallasey, Cheshire. In 1936 she was Silver medallist at the Victoria Central Hospital, Wallasey and she continued her life as SRN in UK, her final resting place being Kingston upon Thames in 1988. There were two English-born girls who died abroad: Mildred Boutwood, born in Leeds in 1903, took office work on first leaving school and then went to the USA. On a visit ‘home’ she was listed as assistant in broadcasting and she died in 1978 in Arizona. Sadie Mansfield was born in Long Eaton in Derbyshire. She became a teacher and then, upon marriage, she travelled with her husband, Kenneth Wallis, a Government analyst, to Port of Spain (Trinidad) and Guiana. She and her husband and two children had been en route to a new posting in Uganda when their ship was torpedoed and sunk by a U-Boat in December 1942. Sadie Wallis is one of the five girls commemorated on the stone tablet in the Chapel of those former pupils who died because of World War II.

Even within the UK-born girls, there were a couple who were born some distance from the School given that travel was then slower than today: Mary Garrett in Chepstow; Edith Taylor in Newcastle upon Tyne; Ivy Hunter in Portsmouth and Ethel Parsons, born in West Derby (Liverpool) but whose family then moved to Portsmouth. In Ethel’s case, she became a pupil after 1912 when her father was lost on the Titanic.

Overseas sojourners aside, of the 23 who continued to live in the UK, just 2 ended up north of the Watford Gap, regardless of where they started from. One was in Derbyshire and one in Staffordshire although both had started life in the South East. Six ended their days on the south coast – Hastings (x 2), Hove, St Leonards on Sea, Eastbourne and the Isle of Wight. Two went for coastal areas even further west – Ilfracombe and Exeter, whereas one went to the seaside on the eastern seaboard: ‘Sarfend’, land of the kiss-me-quick hats and bracing walks on the pier. Blandford Forum, roughly half way between either coastline in the south west, was where a former Essex girl ended up. In fact no UK girl ended her days where she had begun them although 2 were in the same vicinity: Uxbridge-Hillingdon and Hastings-St Leonards. Edith Taylor, who had travelled form Newcastle upon Tyne to join the School, worked as a teacher in Harrow. Unfortunately not a member of OMGA, we lose track of her and the name is not an uncommon one so trying to trace a death for her is impossible.

Dorothea Quiney, whose name was more unusual, disappeared from sight until a general internet search picked her up – in Hong Kong: specifically at St John’s Cathedral where she married Charles Pinel in 1929. Thereafter she can be traced until her demise in Hastings in 1998. Her husband was a prisoner of war of the Japanese for four years. Whether the Pinels had seen what was coming and got Dorothea away, back to UK, is an unknown factor but she was not interned by the Japanese. As anyone who has read A Town like Alice or watched Tenko will know, women were interned and, indeed, another of our pupils, Gertrude Jewel nee Craik, was detained for 3.5 years in civil Assembly Camp C in Yangzhou. She had left school in 1919 so was almost a contemporary of our 1920 leavers and they are certainly likely to have known her.

The careers advice, as previously indicated, was somewhat limited but one former pupil clearly decided to have a go at several of them: shorthand typist then nurse and then cook. She obtained a post as a shorthand typist in Southampton on leaving school (which must mean that she had learned those skills whilst still at school) and then, in 1928, she went to train as a nurse at Barts hospital. Perhaps she completed her training, perhaps she didn’t. We don’t know the answer to that, except that in 1939 she is a cook at the Trusty Servant Inn, New Forest, working for Mr & Mrs Leith the licensed victuallers. This country pub is still operating today offering both accommodation and a restaurant.

https://www.thetrustyservant.co.uk/

If you are passing through the new Forest, you could call in for a drink where Grace worked! Grace Russell had been born in Great Yarmouth where her father was the District Medical Officer. Unfortunately he died when Grace was just five months old. He was interred in Southampton, his coffin being transported there by train

A decided touch of pathos came in the form of the identification of the funeral wreaths:

Nine of the 29 girls did not marry – inasmuch as their death records are in their maiden names. One who did marry – Irene Davidson – was unfortunate to be a widow by the age of 22. We have already seen that Dorothea travelled eight thousand miles away to marry and Annie Hewer married in Australia albeit that was her home so it was where she might be expected to marry if anywhere.

Only one of these 1920 school leavers lived to see the 21^st century – Norma Richings – although it should be pointed out that we lose trace of three of the leavers so they could also have made it to the next century. Two came close, meeting him with the scythe in 1998 and 1999. Marjorie Willcocks died in January 1999. She had worked for many years for the Royal Bank of Scotland and had been a regular returnee to Old Girls’ Days over the years. Dorothea Quiney was the other one – her third mention here. One girl, very sadly, hardly got started on her post-school life before she died: Marguerite Noyes Coe died when she was just 18. Her father also died in that year so it must have been a very difficult time for her mother. The school records do not give any further information about Marguerite’s demise and there are no hints in Matron’s records of a long-standing illness so we are none the wiser about what transpired to cause her death. One pupil for whom an early demise might not have been a surprise was Evelyn Denman. She arrived at the school on 29th April 1915 but was found to have a weak heart and medical advice was that she was not robust enough to be at the school. She was sent home on 4th May with a view to being out-educated. However, she returned to the school on 7th June and the medical officer admitted her. Despite her medically uncertain beginning, she lived until she was ninety!

Not all of the girls who left school in 1920 appeared in the whole school photo dated 1912/1913. Some, clearly, had not then joined the School.

But 18 of them did. Capturing their images from a larger photo results in rather fuzzy and out of focus images unfortunately but it gives a vague idea of their appearance.

I wonder if anyone will be writing in 2120 about the girls who left in 2020?

CQD and RMIG

The telegraphic call of CQ (pronounced sécu) had been used to alert all stations along a line. Rather as the beloved shipping forecast begins with ‘Attention all shipping’, CQ was the equivalent of ‘Hey listen up guys!’ There was no agreed emergency signal but in 1904 the Marconi Company instructed their operators that D (for distress) should be added, thus making CQD a telegraphic signal that help was required. At the same time the distress signal SOS was also being used interchangeably with CQD.

The two signals represented as Morse code might suggest that SOS was marginally quicker to send but in the hands of a skilled telegraphist the difference was minimal. One such skilled person was Jack Phillips, chief telegraphist on RMS Titanic. On the night of 15 April 1912, he initially sent CQD. Harold Bride, the junior radio operator, suggested using SOS. With a kind of gallows humour, and perhaps realising by this point that the unsinkable Titanic was going to do just that, he commented that it might be their only chance to use the ‘new’ signal. Phillips then began to alternate the two distress calls.

Phillips – and Bride who stayed in the radio room alongside him – was very much the hero of the hour, remaining at his post until Captain Smith issued the order to all crew to ‘save yourselves’ – an indication that all was lost. At the inquest, another radio operator who had picked up the signals commented that Phillips’ transmissions never wavered in their consistency or accuracy.

‘Jack’s last message was picked up by the Virginia of the Allen Line at 2.17am, and the Titanic foundered at 2.20am. ‘

http://www.godalmingmuseum.org.uk/index.php?page=jack-phillips-and-the-titanic

Because of telegraph messages, news of the ship’s fate reached newspapers in UK by the following day although there was clearly confusion in interpreting them.

But what has all this to so with the School? Well, this is the +RMIG bit of the heading. The Royal Masonic Institute for Girls had been established in 1788 to come to the aid of those in distress and the terrible loss of lives on the Titanic was certainly a time of great distress. Four girls who became pupils of the School did so because their fathers went down with the ship. Florence and Eleanor Hill, twin daughters of Henry Parkinson Hill (and known in School as the Titanic Twins) and Ethel and Brenda Parsons, daughters of Edward Parsons, all become pupils. Florence & Eleanor Hill and Ethel Parsons were at the School contemporaneously. Brenda Parsons, the youngest, two years old in 1912, would not have been old enough to be a pupil until 1918.

These fuzzy images are Florence Hill and Ethel Parsons as captured from a whole school portrait taken in 1913 (below).

Ethel and Brenda Parsons were the daughters of marine storekeeper Edward Parsons.

17 April 1912 – Western Daily Mercury

No doubt his family would have been extremely proud when he was appointed to the White Star line’s most luxurious and prestigious ship, little imagining the fate that awaited him. After all, the Titanic was unsinkable.

The Parsons family had been living in Liverpool and four of the children had been born there. They moved to Southampton sometime before 1910 and Brenda, the youngest child, was born there. As the wife of a member of ship’s crew, Mrs Parsons would always have been aware of the dangers of the sea but – the Titanic was unsinkable. What could possibly go wrong?

One of Edward’s grandchildren later commented that the family had a letter from the White Star line indicating that Eddie (as he was known) was last seen on the deck giving biscuits to children and comforting them. His body was never recovered or identified. His wages of £6 per month as Chief Storekeeper would have ceased with his death, leaving Mrs Parsons with five children to support on no income. She benefited from a Titanic relief fund but Edward’s Masonic connections meant that they too stepped in to offer support.

Ethel Parsons probably came to the School almost immediately after the disaster and left in 1920, accepted by Southampton Education Committee as a pupil teacher. Later she won a place at Hartley College, Southampton to read for an Arts degree but decided instead to train as an elementary teacher. She returned to the School in 1924 as a Lower School mistress, described as a temporary post, and she either left when she married in 1925 or slightly before. Thereafter, the School loses sight of her and it is left to public records to note that she probably died in 1994 in Surrey.

Her youngest sister, Brenda, little more than a baby when her father died, would not have become a pupil much before 1918 as eight was the usual admission age. It seems highly likely, however, that Mrs Parsons would have received financial aid before Brenda became a pupil as this was ‘part of the package’. She left school on 15th December 1927, undertook commercial training and by 1928 had a post in an insurance office. In 1929 she married George Holloway, a Congregationalist minister. In 1958, she married for a second time and became Mrs Tiller and she died on 22^nd December 2008 in Eastbourne, not quite making it to her centenary but coming very close.

One of the Titanic Twins did make it to her centenary but let’s not jump ahead. They were the daughters of Henry Parkinson Hill and Florence Hill nee Baxter who married in 1903. Sadly by 1908 the marriage had failed and Henry had left the family home. The girls remembered little of their father as they were only 3 when he departed. Whether he went off to sea at that time or later is unclear but he was a 3^rd Class Steward on the Titanic’s maiden voyage. His body too has never been recovered or identified. As he had been a Freemason, his daughters were eligible for support and they were elected to the School.

Eleanor’s time at the School is less well-recorded than her sister. She left school in 1921 and went to help her mother who ran an electric massage establishment. By 1923 she was nursing at the Treloar Cripple [sic] House in Alton but by 1927 was helping her aunt to run a boarding house so it seems her ‘career path’ was less clear cut than Florence’s. The school magazine records Eleanor’s death as being on 27th July 1976 ‘after a long illness’ and also notes that she was for a time assistant to the catering officer at the School.

Her sister Florence was clearly a bright cookie and was entered early for Local Examinations (equiv. of O and A levels then). Having passed them, according to her own recollections, the School didn’t know quite what to do with her as she was too young to leave. So she took them again the following year.

And the year after that!

She declared that in her final years at the School she was bored out of her mind because there was nothing academically for her to work towards. She did not have the qualifications for university having no Latin, a requirement at the time. In 1922 she became a student teacher with Peterborough Education Committee and went to Peterborough Training College the following year. In 1926, she won a place at Bedford College for Women and emerged with a B Sc. upon which she returned to the School to teach mathematics. The following limerick was written by an unknown pupil about Florence.

When the School moved to Rickmansworth in 1934, Florence moved with it and became Housemistress in one of the boarding houses (Connaught) before leaving in 1937 to marry the brother of one of her colleagues. In 1954, she came back to the School to teach until retirement in 1965. In 1994, she married for a second time, at the age of 89! She told friends that falling in love at 89 is just the same as falling in love at 29 – you feel all bubbly inside.

In 1999, she paid another visit to the School during which she entertained a group of Year 7 students with tales from the past of the School. They couldn’t quite comprehend a world where uniform was worn at all time except for pyjamas; where, having been in lessons all day, you spent the evening doing homework because there was little else to do. A world without television [today it would be smart phones]? Impossible!

After retirement, Florence lived in Lincoln and then Leicester. But a sedentary lifestyle it was not. Her nephew by marriage wrote of her:

You won’t be surprised to hear that at the age of 100 she organised her own birthday party, which was a truly joyful occasion, and one attended by numbers of her old pupils.

After the war, she had visited Germany a number of times and learned to speak German. She had been on one of these visits shortly before her death on 3^rd November 2007 at the grand age of 102. Her death was sudden but peaceful in hospital where she was being treated for a broken collar bone, an injury that in a child is as nothing but in a 102 year old is a coup de grâce.

The death of Florence did not quite bring an end to the Titanic association. All girls were presented with a Bible on their departure from the school and in 2013, the School was contacted by an antiquarian book seller in Ireland to say he had found Eleanor’s Bible amongst a box of other books and would we like it returned? We would and it was! So a century after she was first in the School, something belonging to her was returned to it. 104 years after the Titanic disaster we can bring their stories to an end.

Glanville St as was

Sophia Kewney, another of the first pupils starting at the School in 1789, hailed from Marylebone although part of the street in which she lived was originally St. Pancras, ‘the boundary passing between the east and west sides of the street in an oblique line.’  http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol21/pt3/ [1] ‘The crossroads at the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road is an historic junction, where four parishes met.’ [2]

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side

In fact the address of 44 Glanville St, Rathbone Place is a kind of anomaly in itself as Rathbone Place was originally known as Glanville Street rather than being a separate street and perhaps it was at the point of changing in 1789 when Sophia’s address was given. Rather like a belt-and-braces approach, both names for the street were used so that there could be no doubting which street it was.

The surname Kewney is often difficult to trace through records, as the w may be written so that it blends into the n and could easily be read Kenney. In the Rough Minute Book, Sophia is described as being ‘approved a proper Object’, her parents being William and Ann. Her application was supported by H Spicer (Henry Spicer a portrait & enamel painter of Great Newport Street), someone who had been involved in the School since the beginning. There are some fleeting references in public records to a William Kewney. He appears in tax records in 1782 and 1792, both times given in Glanville St. However an electoral roll in 1774 gives him as a mason living in Noel St, Westminster. Presumably, this same William is the one who applied for financial assistance in the List of petitioners[3] where it is recorded

‘William Kewney, mason, requests assistance after severe illness has left him unable to support his family. Recommended by Lodge of Operative Masons, No. 185 [SN 613], London’

Whether these two are the same William Kewney is impossible to say but, given the rarity of the surname, it seems likely.

 

The newspaper gives that Sophia was baptised in St Pancras on 6^th March 1780 having been born on 29^th January of that year. However, the records actually give a baptism on 6^th March 1779 at Percy Chapel, St Pancras so, like Mary Ann Ruscoe, Sophia appears to be a year older than the School thought she was! If this were a deliberate fraud (as Mary Ann Ruscoe’s was) it is one which has only been uncovered two centuries later …

Of her time at the School, we know only that she was retained as a servant at the School when she was old enough to leave. This might imply that family circumstances had deteriorated even further than in 1788 or it may simply be a case that there was a vacancy for a house servant and Sophia was available. She clearly worked hard as she earned a guinea’s gratuity after a year. So we can place her until at least 1796 and then, in 1799, there is a marriage.

London Metropolitan Archives; London, England; Reference Number: p85/mry1/393

This marriage took place at St Mary’s, Lambeth and indicates that both lived there. This is not an area previously associated with the Kewneys but possibly Sophia had moved on from being a house servant with the School to a domestic role in Lambeth. John and Sophia had five children and their only daughter later married Mr Crichton and there are Crichton descendants today who can claim Sophia as an ancestor.

But it is Rathbone Place, Glanville St that is the star of this show (post) as around the time the Kewneys were there, it was a little hotspot for artists and art suppliers.

The houses [in Rathbone Place] were regular three and four-storey brick terraces … Houses with 20–22ft widths generally had three-bay fronts, standard rear-stair layouts, corner fireplaces and closet wings. Some had marble chimneypieces … The street was a good private address, with a number of wealthy residents ‘ https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/architecture/sites/bartlett/files/chapter31_hanway_street_and_rathbone_place.pdf

Where there are artists and architects and ‘Nearly every house in Rathbone Place had an artist as tenant at some point’ (ibid), then almost inevitably there will be art suppliers. George Jackson & Co, Samuel and Joseph Fuller, Winsor & Newton and George Rowney & Co were all in this area. The Fullers were at No. 34 from 1809 until 1862 in what came to be called Fuller’s Temple of Fancy.

A leaflet, apparently from the Lady’s Magazine, August 1823, depicted Fuller’s shop interior, and gives a good idea of the product range; the business was advertised as ‘Publishers of the greatest variety of Sporting Prints …Wholesale Manufacturers of Bristol Boards, Ivory Paper & Cards./ Engravers, Publishers, Printsellers, & Fancy Stationers.’ https://www.princeton.edu/~graphicarts/2013/03/interior.html

Left: Fuller’s Temple of Fancy Right: Jackson’s logo today from https://www.georgejackson.com/

George Jackson & Sons Ltd was established in 1780 producing decorative plaster ornament. Their premises were at No. 50 by 1817, expanded into No. 49 c.1832 and then to Nos 47–48. Behind the showrooms was a large workshop. The firm continued to operate from Rathbone Place until 1934.

 

 

 

 

Next door at No 51 was George Rowney & Co., artists’ colour manufacturers, from 1817 to 1862 and at No. 52 from 1854 to 1884. This is a company that has had almost as many names as the colours of paint they produce! It started as T & R Rowney (Thomas and Richard Rowney), then Thomas’s son took on the business with his brother in law, trading as Rowney & Forster. After 1837, another son took over and it became George Rowney & Company, later George Rowney & Co Ltd. It relocated many times, finally leaving London completely. It retained its connection with the Rowney family but eventually it ran out of Rowneys and in 1969 was sold. In its bicentenary year (1983), it became Daler-Rowney, under which name it still trades very successfully today.

http://www.daler-rowney.com/

 

 

The other art suppliers from Rathbone Place, still very much trading today, is Winsor & Newton. William Winsor, chemist and artist, and Henry Charles Newton, artist, set up business at No. 38 in 1833 in what was then ‘part of an artists’ quarter in which a number of eminent painters had studios, and other colourmen were already established’ (Wikipedia). Together they combined the knowledge of science and the creativity of art to provide

‘a regular source of reliable colours and brushes.’ http://www.winsornewton.com/uk/discover  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     38 Rathbone Place may well have been Newton’s home before it became business premises and within a short time, No 39 was also part of the business. https://www.npg.org.uk/research/programmes/directory-of-suppliers/w.php

To Dickens they were ‘Rathbone-place magicians … Has anyone ever seen anything like Winsor and Newton’s cups of chromes and carnations … and crimsons, loud and fierce as a war-cry, and pinks, tender and loving as a young girl?’ All the year round, vol.7. 1862, p.563

http://www.winsornewton.com/uk/

 

Having sourced our paints, let us go and find the artists who used them. Of the Rathbone Place ones, at least two of them had a connection with the School’s history. Humphry, Hardwick & Hone were there at the time that we know the Kewneys were living there; Burrell, Constable, Lewis and Pugin may have coincided with the Kewneys’ residence but after Sophia had started at the School; Linnell, Hawkins, Bielfield & Moore were there slightly later but still in the early part of the C19th.

Joseph Francis Burrell, was a miniaturist who exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1801 and 1807. He lived at No 7. John Constable, of course, is known to all of us. He lodged at No 50 when he was a student at the Royal Academy. Frederick Christian Lewis was an etcher, aquatint and stipple engraver, and also a landscape and portrait painter. He lived at No 5.

Left: miniature by Burrell. Centre: self-portrait Constable. Right: etching and aquatint by Lewis

Augustus Charles Pugin at No 38 was a French-born artist and draughtsman and a skilful watercolourist. He was in Rathbone Place 1804–6. Perhaps he is somewhat eclipsed in fame by his son Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin. John Linnell, who lived close by at No. 35 (1817–18) was a painter and engraver. Like Constable – but just a couple of years later – he became a student at the Royal Academy where he won medals for drawing, modelling and sculpture. It is known that Nathaniel Hone, portrait and miniature painter, died at No. 30 in 1784. He was an Irish-born painter and one of the founder members of the Royal Academy.

Left: portrait of Pugin by John Nash. Centre: self=portrait by Linnell. Right: self-portrait by Hone

Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, living at No. 11 in the 1830s, was the son of an artist (Thomas Hawkins) and is particularly renowned for his work on the life-size models of dinosaurs in the Crystal Palace Park in south London. However he also produced very fine natural history paintings. Henry Bielfield, painter, lived at No. 13 (1837–54) but he also lived at No 18 and No 21. Presumably not at the same time. George Belton Moore, landscape painter, lived at No. 1 Rathbone Place in 1830. Moore was a pupil of Pugin so he only had to walk down the street for that.

Left: Porcine Deer (Axis porcinus) from Knowsley Park by Hawkins. Centre: Meeting of day and light by Bielfield. Right: Fish Street Hill looking towards London Bridge, 1830 by Moore

That leaves the two who have tangential connections to the School’s history.

Ozias Humphry, who lived at No. 29 in 1777, was a miniaturist of some renown who was later appointed Portrait Painter in Crayons to the King (1792). Lest this sound somewhat childish to modern ears, crayons was the term used for what today we call pastels. Sadly, his deteriorating sight (he eventually became blind) meant that he had to turn from miniatures to larger portraits. Amongst his work was a portrait of one Bartholomew Ruspini, the instigator of the School of which Sophia Kewney became a pupil.

 

Left: Extract from “The Royal Freemason’s School for Girls”. The Builder. 9: 722. 1851..Right: photograph of Philip Hardwick, c 1850 from The Patrick Montgomery Collection

Philip Hardwick, an architect and son of an architect was born at No. 9 in 1792. He trained as an architect under his father, Thomas Hardwick, who was in turn the son of another architect Thomas Hardwick (1725–1798). The Hardwick family name spans over 150 years in the history of British architecture. When the School desired to move to its third site (Somers Place East and St George’s Fields, Southwark were the first two), Philip Hardwick was appointed the architect.

Whilst working on Lincoln’s Inn Great Hall (1843-4), Philip Hardwick fell ill and poor health dogged the rest of his life. His son Philip Charles Hardwick assisted his father and they worked as a team. In 1851, the 3^rd school site was opened, its style very much reflecting the zeitgeist for Gothic revivalist style.

The School at Clapham

So the School in Somers Place East connects to the site in Clapham via Rathbone Place, or Glanville St that was, in a very curious and unexpected way.

 

[1] Survey of London: Volume 21, the Parish of St Pancras Part 3: Tottenham Court Road and Neighbourhood ed. J R Howard Roberts and Walter H Godfrey (London, 1949), p. 12. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol21/pt3/p12 [accessed 7 March 2019].

[2] ‘https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/architecture/sites/bartlett/files/chapter31_hanway_street_and_rathbone_place.pdf

[3] Moderns Grand Lodge Committee of Charity, GBR 1991 HC 12/C/110