The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

PasturesNew

Pyxis wrote: »

Do you mean he was in charge of the photocopier? :rotfl:

In short, yes. But you have to remember the times.

When I went to school you'd go into a class and be handed a sheet of paper for notes, or a short test - this would have been produced on an old manual reproduction machine, using alcohol/inks etc. Everything was manual.

One version was to type a template onto a rubbery film - then hook that round a drum and turn the handle, with each rotation producing one new copy. The other version used alcohol and produced writing that came out blue and, over time, would go purple/pink in colour... those smelt lovely and were on a shiny paper. I've typed the ink roller type myself and used those machines, but never used the other sort, so not really sure how that works. So I googled it: Spirit Duplicator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_duplicator

Then they got these modern electric photocopiers etc - and so I guess they needed somebody to control/monitor the contracts, paper supplies, costs and apportion all the copies to the relevant departments and generally be "in charge of all the copying that was done, who by and why".

With an old manual machine, bit of ink and a box of paper it wasn't likely to be expensive/abused.... roll in a very pricey contract photocopier and it'd be easy for all teachers to be rolling off all manner of copies, often to be wasted, "just because they could and it was excitingly new".

silvercar

GDB2222 wrote: »

One of the great things about Wikipedia is that you can edit it yourself. If your old school listing has unaccountably omitted your name from the list of notable former pupils, it is easy to remedy.

Looking at my old school listing it has indeed omitted my name. Sensible people running Wikipedia!

I did learn though that TS Eliot taught there for a year, about 50 years before my time. It was a miserable school, and I can well understand that it might have inspired The Waste Land. All the critics trying to fathom the meaning of "April is the cruellest month of all" have entirely missed the simple point that it was the start of the summer term and he was dreading going back to work.

I googled.

My sister-in-law's kids go there. It seems to be favoured by the trendy set, a fair sprinkling of famous names. Kids have names like silk and apple. (Her kids have normal names, thank goodness.) They do seem to enjoy school, so possibly it has changed since your day.

GDB2222

I get the impression it's much happier now.

PasturesNew

Teachers back then were of the WW1/WW2 generation, with most female heads being spinsters.

Many male teachers will have fought in WW2, and possibly lost a parent in WW1.

I looked up a couple of my old headmistresses the other week, both spinsters. One'd lived with her parents and spinster sister. The parents had died, then her sister, then her. The girls had never "left home".

One was 1918-2004, the other was 1916-1990.
They were heads to me when they were 50 and 55 respectively.
But they both "looked old" with their grey hair up in the standard "bun" and wearing twin sets.

It was "easier" to be a headmistress back then .... you just had to wait it out until all the other females had married off/left and you were the longest standing member of staff

Pyxis

PasturesNew wrote: »

Did anybody else have school houses? Where teachers lived?

Well, mine was a convent school, and a lot of the nuns were teachers as well, so yes, I suppose mine did!

We did have 'ordinary' people as teachers, too!
The only male teachers I ever had were an elderly chap who taught violin, another chap who taught guitar. Both those were extras you had to pay for. Because we were poor, but musical, I think I must have had some sort of grant or bursary or something, to pay for those.
The only other male teacher that I can remember was the Headmaster of my Primary School, but he never actually taught my class. He gave us regular spelling and pronunciation tests, though.

I remember one test, dunno how old I was, and I had to read down a list of words. I got a bit stuck on pneumonia, and the Head was about to chivvy me along, when the light dawned! So I got them all right!

Funny, the things you remember!

ivyleaf

The Head of the last primary school I went to (we moved around a lot so i went to several different schools) started teaching us French in the last term of what would now be Year 6 - 4th Year juniors in those days, of course. He began by standing at the front on the class and holding up a pencil.

He said "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" over and over again, until eventually some one twigged, and said "A pencil!"

The Head replied "Oui, c'est un crayon!" and so it went on from there. He didn't use any English at all in any of the lessons, which I found terrifying, but we got a really good grounding, which stood us in good stead at our new schools the following term.

PasturesNew

French was done at my school, aged 9-11... but I only did one term because then we moved house. The next school didn't do it, but I did sew/embroider with basic stitches a nice little pencil case with a fold over flap and press-studs.

PasturesNew

I love old newspapers ... and by keying in fish and chips I've ended up now being thoroughly interested in a murder (1926), a millionaire who was acquitted ... and his eventual death penniless and being laid in a pauper's grave (1939) ... and the wife of the murdered man dying nearly 50 years later with a notice searching for relatives as there was some inheritance to sort out from the will of a "Sir"... the notice in the Gazette were looking for claims from the dead woman (d 1973), or her brother (d 1968) and they had super long furren names.
https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/46693/page/11981/data.pdf

I wonder how that estate wound up ... and what it was all about. Maybe I'll know later... or maybe I'll get a bit bored of it all

EDIT: Worked that one out. The brother/sister had both died without children. Their mother was an only child and had a super-rich Scots dad, but she'd married some Spanish chap with a very long name. As the sister/brother didn't have kids, all the inheritance from the "Sir", their granddad, went to cousins.

So that money was from her side of the family.

I wonder how come a millionaire Eton-educated.... ended up penniless.... he inherited his money, so maybe it was a lot and he blew it, but it's hard blowing that much in just 10 years I'd imagine.

EDIT 2: Ah ... unsuccessfully suing various newspapers for libel etc. He was keen on being bankrupt too, doing it at least twice.

michaels

My sixth form was one of the few state schools in england that took boarders, we used to have kids from the falklands there.

vivatifosi

In terms of newspapers, I read recently that the British Newspaper Archive has won permission to digitise the Trinity Mirror papers, which will more than double the amount of historical British papers allowed online.