Less pleasant experiences of working class schools in the early 1900s

There are six pages in this section on education in the early 1900s

Page 1 of 6: The school system
Page 2 of 6: Classrooms
Page 3 of 6: The curriculum
. Page 4 of 6: Extra-curricular activities.
* This is Page 5 of 6: Less pleasant things *
Page 6 of 6: Education after elementary school

All based on experiences at Silver Street School, Edmonton which was built in 1900 to earlier Victorian specifications.

The school lavatories in the early 1900s

The school lavatories consisted of about eight cubicles, housed in one building with the sewage pipe going the whole length. They weren't flushed every time they were used: they had to be flushed out all together from time to time with buckets of water, and this was another job for the school caretaker.

Discipline at school in the earl1900s

I have two unpleasant memories of schooldays:

One unpleasant memory was when my mother refused to have my hair tied back as required by the school. My father went up to the school about it and even wrote to the Board of Education. The reply was that it wasn't a byelaw but a request as a precaution to control head vermin. For some reason my father refused to comply, and I was singled out at school. The teachers used to have a cup of tea at morning break on the landing, and the next day as we filed past them, my teacher pointed a finger at me and with all the venom she could muster, said loudly, "That’s Florence Cole". More repercussions were not long in coming. My mother had to go out for some reason and as my father was in bed, I had to stay away from school to be on hand for him. In the afternoon when I returned to school and was in the assembly line in the playground, the teacher said so everyone could hear, "And where were you this morning Florence Cole?". Childlike, I told the truth and said I had to look after my father. She in turn mimicked in a most derisory tone, "She had to look after her father", which of course brought peals of laughter from everyone. My father on the other hand received a letter from the Board of Education cautioning him that he would be summoned if his child did not attend school.

My second unpleasant memory was when I was in trouble again with the same school mistress. It was a needlework lesson and we were making pillow cases. At the end of the lesson we had to fold up the cases and were enjoying ourselves getting as much air into them as possible and causing a bang when we folded them. The mistress got annoyed and said the next girl to do it would have to come out to the front. It so happened that I, along with my friends had some balloons. They must have been very cheap as they would not blow up easily. During this lesson my friend told me to blow mine up, and I had a go. Before it was any size, it burst. Immediately the mistress demanded, "Who did that?", thinking it was a pillow case. Some little tell-tale said that it was Florence Cole who burst a balloon. I was sent to stand in the hall so that the headmistress would see me, which she did. After hearing my story, she gave me a letter to take home to my father asking for his opinion about what they should do. Should they cane me? My father’s answer was that they should. When she read his reply, she told me that she was loath to do it because it would be a disgrace and my name would have to go down in the black book. So after another little pep talk, I was dismissed.

You can see that I was often in trouble at school. Yet I had two prizes for good behaviour. One was a print of a well-known picture called "Between Two Fires", the fires being two women who were either side of a dining room table with a solitary male sitting there. The second was a small Royal Dalton vase. I also got a prize for a wild flower collection.

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This website Join me in the 1900s is also known as Join me in the 1900's and is © Pat Cryer.