Welcome to the unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum - for discussing everything CH/Old Blue related. All pupils, parents, families, staff, Old Blues and anyone else related to CH are welcome to browse the boards, register and contribute.
Share your memories and stories from your days at school, and find out the truth behind the rumours....Remember the teachers and pupils, tell us who you remember and why...
Please excuse my ignorance, but what is / was a "dame school"?
To quote from my dictionary, "a small school, often in a village, usually run by an elderly woman in her own home to teach children to read and write."
That's just what it was, except it was in a small town and the elderly woman (she was in her late 50s) did more than teach us to read and write. She was one of the first women to graduate from London University, though not actually allowed a degree.
There was one girl who was openly gay on my year from about the GE onwards - no one cared one way or the other... i know of a few more who have since 'come out' but I don't think it was too big a deal...
rebel wrote:i thought this thread was supposed to be all about punishments and homosexuality and stuff like that which looks at the dark side of CH, which was all of it as far as I was concerned. I'm glad to see a few gents from my era putting in their 2 cents(I live in N. America) worth. Where are the Hertford girls from the 50s? We had hormones too - and mostly they were directed towards suggestions that we should serve the Lord, preferably in a leper colony. Miss DR West, whom I had the misfortune to suffer as my headmistress at the time, said in her abominable autobiography that she was aware that girls had 'glandular disturbances' that made then aware of the opposite sex, but she soon sorted them out and the phase soon passed. Her great literary work is worth reading as a grotesque testimony to her perverted regime. She does, for example, describe the attempted suicide of one pupil, who jumped off a building, as inconvenient because she did it on a sunny day when lots of girls were looking out of the windows and could see her.
Oh for a good pint or two whenI think about it! Perhaps more than two.
This is more like it! I love a bit of real feeling mixed with a liberal dose of vitriol! And anyone who uses the word "grotesque" is to my mind a star of this often dull forum. Let us get bitter - anyone who has memories of being beaten by DHN could describe an assault of such pre-planned viciousness, laced with the memory of a carefully planned and sadistic ritual - so much time devoted to forcing the poor lad to be punished to move the equipment of his torture himself into JUST the right position - the man's hands down the back of the trousers to make sure a book wasn't placed there - the placing of 2 armchairs - back to back - the kneeling on one chair with the arms thrown over onto the second chair so the back of his legs are stretched and the stick will hopefully hit the tendons - the everlasting agony of waiting for the beating while the headmaster fiddled about to get the victim and the equipment of correction in JUST the right position - then the cricket bowler's run up - need I go on?
She does, for example, describe the attempted suicide of one pupil, who jumped off a building, as inconvenient because she did it on a sunny day when lots of girls were looking out of the windows and could see her.
We had some dramatic deaths at the boy's school too
There was the famous case of Sears-Mullins who hanged himself in the toilet about 1969 following bullying and his poor parents had to endure the funeral od their poor tortured child in the school chapel
Hail to thee hunteritis, for appreciating the vitriol that has accumulated through the years, begun but suppressed violently at CH. And to Lamma looker, who questions why I should want to 'pick at the scabs'. Of course I wouldn't if I had the talent for happiness that I never learned. I have been much better schooled in developing my abilties in the negative areas. I write excellent(and published) satiric poetry. I am known for my vitriolic attitude to just about everything. But I'm an expert on unhappiness, thanks to the education I received at CH. I have done the usual things, married, had children, had a career, but through it all I have managed to maintain my unhappiness skills because of my firm grounding.ANd of course this training has brought the predictable ends, unhappiness par excellence. One correspondent on this forum asked why I would want to pick at scabs. There's something strangely sensual about doing that, as any schoolboy knows. Another correspondent suggested I was up the creek which is quite possible, but no one would know who sees me daily. I only want CH to know, since they are the source of my pathology. I have just read on the opening page that contributors to these forums must not say nasty things about CH, or introduce negative thoughts. So, back to la la land. Hope everything is peachy pie in the realm of punishment and oppression, as per this forum.
Rebel, et al,
I think very few male or female would list CH as the most happy days of their lives. The problem is that those years are desperately unhappy for everyone - it's known as growing up. Just more difficult to swallow without a family support group around. There is also no question that the era of "unenlightenment" prior to around the 70's was brutal both physically (at least in the boys' school) and emotionally. But I am unsure how one can attach a lifetime of "unhappiness skills" to that period - surely it takes more practice or aptitude than the school had to offer to develop it to the Art to which you apparently aspire.
A strange Muse "Unhappy". Do you see or seek a cure for it?
THank you menace for your few kind words -which I think they are underneath. But I did shiver when I read the bit about unhappiness as being part of growing up. That sentiment, expressed so many times during my teenage years as I stood on the mat in front of this or that glowering person, came back like a haunting.
My remarks were a bit extreme, I know, as they tend to be when i get on a roll, perhaps led on by hunteritis. It's easier to do when raging against whatever, than in ecstatic mode, when silence seems more appropriate. King Lear is something of a mentor. Even more as I am becoming the same vintage.
No, I am not completely lost, but in a CH mood memories seem to overwhelm me like the tsunami.
On another forum I mentioned some things we had to do at Hertford and another peer who I remember as a very unhappy person claims she was happy and sent her son to Housey (he left early). I don't remember any particular punishments though I was almost horribly well-behaved although I did lose it once with a friend while holding a breadknife.
DR did have some VERY strange ideas. I haven't read her autobiography.
She did say in my final report that I wasn't a very caring person. I have been a midwife (and a good one I think) for 25 years now. (Shomething wrong there shurely)
Do you guys still sleep on horse-hair mattresses on beds with loose wooden boards and horse-hair pillows like rocks?
At night naughty boys had to run the gauntlet from one end of the dormitory to the other with all the other boys standing at the end of their beds with one bed-board in hand to attempt wacking bad-boy's arse as he ran past!!
On other nights, one end of the dormitory was made into a wrestling ring using matresses, for juniors to fight each other at the order of dormitory monitors...
What the hell! All part of growing up. You guys have it too soft these days!!
well htere is anotehr thread on teh beds or something, but on my juniors in Lamb B we had dorm lemmings, where a squit had to run from one end tot eh other and not get wacked.
Also we had pit fights in break where to ppl (usually) squits fought, this happened till MAtron came down in break.
ianthomas wrote:Do you guys still sleep on horse-hair mattresses on beds with loose wooden boards and horse-hair pillows like rocks?
These started disappearing at the beginning of the nineties. I lost mine in 1993 - and haven't been able to find a hard enough bed (apart from the floor) ever since.
I couldnt sleep in a soft bed having enjoyed the boards for so long in formative years - in fact the first thing I did when I got an antique bed in my first place in London was to insert boards under the mattress - but I didn't go the whole way and use horse-hair mattress and concrete bolster.
At least they weren't shirts. Those mattresses and boards were in fact reasonably comfortable and we are now discovering the advantages of firm support while sleeping - thanks to the wonders of modern science. Agree that at least one is able ever after to sleep almost anywhere.
Rebel - I did mean the words to be kindly, not a condemnation nor harsh. I live with a depressive and medication was the only answer, and it has been a good answer for both of us. I was trying to point out that for all the bad, even the girls' school must have had some redeeming features. Sport, educational standards - something?
I clicked on your profile by mistake and came to the place where all your stats are. I see you have managed to highlight the part of NA where you live. How did you do that? I did send a post once asking someone how to adjust the things on the profile page but the person couldn't tell me. I wrote a long reply to your thoughts about sports, ed. etc. but I haven't posted them after all as I've probably had my quota of moaning space on this forum. Suffice it to say, no, no, not for me anyway.
