School’s back after the long summer break so here are some top-class photos to get you in the mood for all things education. Some of the vintage snaps are from the 1920s while others, such as a historic photo of the Love Lane School in Rayleigh are from even earlier.
Among the images is a rarely seen photo of the old St John’s College in Southend, which like many historic buildings, is long gone.
Another interesting image is from what is believed to be the first proper school room in Rayleigh, at the Holy Trinity Church. In 1792 the Rev. Moor, the Curate of Holy Trinity, loaned the Churchwardens the sum of £75 (£4,000 today) to build a new schoolroom for the use of the Parish. In 1863 the building was demolished and rebuilt and became the National School. The Rayleigh Town Museum has plenty of old school photos if you want to see more (rayleightownmuseum.co.uk).
Meanwhile, forget the 3Rs, in January of 1935, St John’s School in Moulsham, Chelmsford was dealing with a fourth R – rats! The school had become infested by the vermin to the extent the rodents were destroying classrooms. Things got so bad that special precautions are being taken to guard the children’s exercise books and reading books. Children have been told to take care not to leave any eatables in their desks. A professional rat-catcher had to be employed.
It’s no secret that corporal punishment was once the norm. Horrible headmaster William Lucus, who was in charge of Southchurch Hall School in Southend, was not shy in using his cane. In the spring of 1920, Lucas was summoned to court for an alleged assault upon a 10-year-old boy named Herbert West.
The boy’s mother Cissie West, aged 42, of Chinchilla Road Southchurch, brought the case after she noticed painful marks on her son’s legs. The mother then took her son to a police constable who also saw the marks. The court heard how the boy had been seen by Mr Lucas ‘playing around with a comic’ with another pupil whilst in school. The headmaster took West upstairs to his office and “struck him four times on the legs and elsewhere”. Each of the blows left a mark for days.
After a lot of debate and hearing statements from witnesses, however, the court found that the headmaster had not used excessive punishment and the mother’s charges against him were dismissed. The acquittal did not go down well with the boy’s father, a seaman, who yelled at the bench: “Then your Worship I shall punish him as he punished my boy!” He called the headmaster a vicious man and promised to mete out his own justice.
Messing around in the playground could once prove deadly for pupils. In November of 1892 young student Arthur Smith of Strood Cottage, West Mersea, died after a fellow schoolboy kicked him in the leg. Both lads were just nine years old and were known to get into petty quarrels but on this one-day Smith was left with a huge bruise on his knee. In the days and weeks that followed the bruise got bigger, his leg swelled up until the little lad could no longer get out of bed. He eventually died of blood poisoning, brought about by the kick which caused acute necrosis to the bone of the left leg under the knee.
Health and safety regulations have thankfully improved in schools, but it wasn’t always so. In 1895 a poor little girl named Vera Turp was burned to death at her school - the Quarry Hill Board School in Grays, Thurrock- after arriving early so that she could warm herself up because her home was so cold.
The five-year-old entered her classroom along with another girl, Alice Watts, but about 10 minutes later she was found by the schoolmistress lying near the door of the classroom. Her body was so ravaged by her burning clothes - which were still in flames – that she died within minutes. Ada White, a fellow pupil at the school, said she saw Vera standing in front of the fire warming her hands, when she fell forward into the fire, and her pinafore caught alight. Upon discovering the horror, Miss Louisa Patterson, the schoolmistress, threw her woollen shawl around the child and extinguished some of the flames and a doctor was called. But it was too late for little Vera.
It's not all doom and gloom, however, as we have some lovely photos from school events across Essex for you to peruse, including a careers evening at a school in the 1960s and even a visit by pop stars East 17 visiting a school in Rayleigh in 1993 as well as some snaps of some of the educators who have really made a difference to Essex education over the years.
