Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

There is a CH take on the history of the State vs Independent school debate and the surrounding political arguments. After the 1964 General Election, Labour (led by Harold Wilson) replaced the Tories as the governing party. One theme of Labour’s election manifesto then was “grammar school education ...

Otter wrote, The staff member supervising prep even found it funny, and said it wasn't serious, he was just "having a psych", as we used to always call it. Another time in roll call, people started chanting a taunt at him and the housemaster laughed and made no attempt to stop it. This imp...

I did Maths A level in the mid 60s, (for obvious reasons can't say I was a Maths Grecian!) and there was never any mention of computing as a career. I don't think it was seen as 'real' mathematics. It was seen as a tool, just as log tables were. All praise to Mr Bullard for taking you. Leo is well ...

Thanks. I'm most relieved concerning George Deakin.

Messrs Husband and Dobbie were at CH long after my time, so I did not know their initials.

Who are JAH and GWD? If the latter is GW Deakin (OB) I find this most strange. GWD seemed to have a very happy family life (including daughter nicknamed “Minnie”), did not leave suddenly but because his most important work (Engineering Grecians) was disbanded. Although he also directed the Manual Sc...

Of course Rockfreak is right, but for the record I am another type of underachiever. I was in the top sets for a while and then went off the boil but was allowed to be a Grecian. (In principle this was someone who was supposed to be able to win an Oxbridge scholarship. I didn’t/couldn’t although I t...

There are other factors, apart from all those emphasised so far in this thread, concerning the “success” of education. For example there are genetics and cultural traditions . At the risk of being labelled “racist” there are clear indications of apparently inherited genetic factors in the academic a...

Thanks very much. You're younger than me, so with a better memory. I'd forgotten about pillow cases.

I’m trying to write something about school life 60-70 years ago and cannot recollect how often we received clean clothes. I think that we may have had clean bands, shirts and underpants twice weekly (on Wed and either Sat or Sun?) with handkerchiefs, sheets and vests weekly. Is that so? The laundry ...

I remember at least two sorts of official lists of boys at CH. There was the “Alphabetical List,” commonly called the Blue Book, because it had a blue cover. It listed all the teachers’ surnames in alphabetical order and their degrees with universities, on the first page. This was followed on page 3...

I had two friends in Barnes. They were monitors and great healthy hunks of manhood, one even playing for a school XV (not the first). They were particularly thick with their matron, a battleaxe, named Miss M Watts. She had the power to select appropriate boys to receive supplementary Cod Liver Oil a...

Len Bates’s son was in La B and Sgt Maj Carter’s son in Pe A. I don’t recollect their initials, but the latter left CH to go to Cranwell (the RAF College) as an officer cadet. Does anyone know how he fared there and after? He was a bright spark and could imitate his father’s idiosyncratic way of spe...

Walter and Linda were a middle aged couple blessed with two beautiful daughters. Although they felt incredibly lucky for having their girls, Walter and Linda always yearned for a boy. They began trying for another baby, and it wasn’t long before Linda became pregnant. Nine months later, they welcome...

In fact there was not such a great difference in dates for the end of birching in England, Guernsey (and the Isle of Man), which were 1962, the mid 1960s and 1976, respectively, according to the following. From http://www.corpun.com/9feat2.htm In 1962 four adult men were birched in English prisons ....

You are totally and indubitably correct. The 26% FFP question is far, far, far more important than public executions, etc, etc.

Much good fortune and very many thanks to you, David Taplin, and your public spirited fellow Blues, working to retain CH as it SHOULD BE.