Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Here’s some more about Kit Aitken. In the mid 50s he coached the Colts rugby team and for a while his co-coach was (surprisingly) Gad Malins. I believe that Kit had played for some prestigious rugby team before the war. He normally only taught junior forms and I understand his subjects were mainly E...

The Chaplain’s teaching of divinity (Christian religious studies) was almost as important a duty as the conducting of Chapel Services. Before the appointment of the first Assistant Chaplain (Rev L. Whitfield, or ‘Windy’ Whitfield) there were non-clerical teachers of divinity. In about 1950 they incl...

Another of Tush’s (Sgt Usher’s) duties was to visit every classroom in second period with two lists, one on which the teacher would write the names of those absent and the other (it may have been on yellow paper) which was for the names of those to report for a punishment drill, held on Lamb asphalt...

Mr Ed has told us that In my time, 1978-85, the 'academic' Button Grecians did read Grace, In my days, some 30 years before Mr Ed’s time at CH, button grecians were so designated (and clothed) only for academic reasons. In the remote past (when university scholarships did not exist, except at Oxbrid...

An original, and most prestigious, Oxford degree used to be Lit Hum or Mods* and Greats (Ancient Greek and Latin Literature followed by Ancient Greek and Latin History and [I think mainly Greek, but also some more modern] Philosophy). It has been a four year BA course, even in the days when almost a...

Excuse my ignorance but what are

The bits in the classroom he called a 'work break'

and

CWN's 'fish' periods

According to the Oxford online dictionary (https://www.lexico.com/), polymathic is fine and I was previously unaware of this.

Perhaps Bob Rae deserves his own thread in the Forum. Here’s a start. He was a Cambridge graduate in maths, who had attended Solihull Grammar School. He came CH as a junior housemaster and finally became senior housemaster of Col B, after the departure of AH Buck, but with a term of so of CF Kirby a...

Thanks. To quote the late Duke of Windsor, while he was an undergraduate at Oxford, “The knowledge I lack would fill volumes.” TB

I’m thick, so I don’t understand Sejintenej’s aphorism at the end of his contribution. Please explain? Thanks. TB

Beaky Davies was certainly an excellent teacher and a very pleasant man, who left CH to become the headmaster of various prep schools in turn. One item about him while at CH was an occurrence during a Harlequins match, in about 1954, when somehow he lost his shorts. The Daily Mirror published a pict...

In spite of the recent event at Twickenham, why limit this thread to Rugby? So then we could have mention of Cricket (and DRW Silk). Why stop there? There are Rowing, etc (and even Tiddly Winks) to consider.

I’m clearly missing something, but quite apart from me there are surely others who don’t know Tucker’s Law. Please enlighten us?

Of course I know what a ‘bum’ is, though I’m not sure if I learned it CH or not. What sort of strange question is that?

It’s an Americanism, someone who’s worthless, a hobo, tramp or vagrant.

Since the election of Harold Macmillan as Chancellor of the University of Oxford has been mentioned again, there is an important additional comment that has also been made previously. Macmillan was chosen purposely not because of who he was (although there was some degree of ‘payback’), but as a pro...

I think that you omitted Thursday from your list of lesson times. You wrote

MICHAELMAS AND LENT TERMS.
Monday, Tuesday, Friday.

Presumably Thursday should have been included here.