Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Does anyone recall the daily ritual of one of the School sergeants visiting each classroom in turn asking the master in charge for "any absentees sir "?
Presumably this was a Government requirement to record all cases of truants although perhaps not so necessary in a boarding school.
I wonder when this practice ceased.

We didn't have anything like that. Mind you, we didn't have school sergeants either!

I do recall it, but I have a notion it died out during my time. I don't think it was a govt. requirement, the school itself had a good enough interest. The list of absentees was presumably compared with the sicker lists. There was actually no other check on who was there and who wasn't. There was never a roll call in class.

I don't recall it. Presumably it would have been the formidable Sgt Usher. What would have been the penalty. A spell in the guardhouse perhaps?

rockfreak wrote:I don't recall it.

Nor me. I don't even recall masters calling out the roll except on the first day of the school year to ensure pupils had the right room.

I suspect the older masters would not absentees and report / ask afterwards in the common room

I clearly remember in the mid 1950s Sgt Usher making the rounds of all classrooms in the second period of the morning (so that those who had been to the sicker would have returned to class?). He carried a clipboard with TWO lists, on blue and yellow paper. One list was the attendance register (the blue one?) and the other was for those who had been punished with a drill for that day. The drill, supervised by Sgt Usher but on weekdays only, took place on Lamb asphalt starting at about 12h20. There were typically about 10 such participating miscreants.

JohnAL wrote:I clearly remember in the mid 1950s Sgt Usher making the rounds of all classrooms in the second period of the morning (so that those who had been to the sicker would have returned to class?). He carried a clipboard with TWO lists, on blue and yellow paper. One list was the attendance register (the blue one?) and the other was for those who had been punished with a drill for that day. The drill, supervised by Sgt Usher but on weekdays only, took place on Lamb asphalt starting at about 12h20. There were typically about 10 such participating miscreants.

That is precisely my memory. When Usher left, his place was taken by the much more human Guest, whose functions were initially the same, including this one. But I think the practice died out during Guest's time. I cannot actually recall a case of truancy, the penalties would have been horrendous. (Which does not of course exclude the practice of taking, shall we say, an unnecessarily long time to return from surgery.)

michael scuffil wrote: I cannot actually recall a case of truancy, the penalties would have been horrendous. (Which does not of course exclude the practice of taking, shall we say, an unnecessarily long time to return from surgery.)

That was my first thought. I cannot remember hearing of a single case of a runaway, though I imagine they might be hushed up. While I don't remember prolonging visits to the Sicker, I did find that haircuts could be used to great advantage, especially if you could get one that overlapped two periods.

Kit Bartlett wrote:Does anyone recall the daily ritual of one of the School sergeants visiting each classroom in turn asking the master in charge for "any absentees sir "?
Presumably this was a Government requirement to record all cases of truants although perhaps not so necessary in a boarding school.
I wonder when this practice ceased.

I have no recollection of this during my time.

I well remember Sgt. Guest, but NOT him ever collecting an absentee list from classes. That would be around 1959/60.