Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

I would like to support this admirable cause and hope that this notification will be sufficient. I very much regret that other subjects somehow intruded into this so important subject and must take some responsibility for this. I should have started a new topic which I tried to do recently on Sergea...

There must be a date when corporal punishment was finally made illegal in schools. Did C.H. cease this practice prior to this? Early histories of the school refer to public executions that were carried out frequently at Newgate Prison which adjoined the school buildings and were witnessed by pupils....

I don't remember public beatings in Big School in my time (1941-47) and wonder when this practice terminated. I suggest that it may well have been in the aftermath of the First World War when Hamilton Fyfe took over from Upcott in 1919. I believe that the latter was the last Head Master to administe...

I do not know how this appeared in the Parents' section. I thought that I had started a new topic thread. Perhaps the Moderator can transfer it accordingly. There was an article in "The Outlook" c. 1952-53, which consisted of an interview with him mainly about his Army career. He was a con...

There must be many memories of the above named and his withering repartee to all and sundry., His best known was the apocryphal "The next time you come to Gym. don't " He was fond of the term "floppy Joe " to describe those who could not perform fairly simple gymnastic tasks on t...

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 won...

Ken Mansell has informed me that there was a piece in "The Blue" for early 1969 stating that the new seating arrangements were introduced in that January. It set out changes that resulted in improvements to the general appearance and meal service. Coleridge B table still kept their old pos...

Another name comes to mind. "The New Statesman and Nation " was known as the Staggers and Naggers".

If it was raining there was a signal given , probably by Sergeant Fielder the Headmaster's orderly, on the Big school of three chimes times three to indicate No P.T. I remember the joyous acclaim given in the classrooms to this. If there was to be no shoe cleaning inspection the cry was given of &qu...

D.S. Macnutt was certainly a fearsome teacher and one remembers that when he made some jocular remark ( not very often it must be said ) there was always a burst of extremely nervous laughter from the class. If a boy was clearly out of his depth, as some were, he surprisingly showed a great deal of ...

Further reflection on the order of seating by Houses in the Dining Hall reveals the obvious logical reason for this is that Coleridge B would be the first House to march into the Hall from the Western end of the Avenue and Lamb A from the Eastern end. I assume that this would have remained unchanged...

My original entry regarding the order of seating in the Dining Hall intended to enquire when it was decided that Coleridge B was to be the House nearest the dais and then following through the West end of the Avenue to Peele A and then the East end from Lamb A to the Preparatory School as it was. Th...

This photograph also obviously includes the Coleridge A table. It was taken in the Autumn term of 1947 and includes M.K.D. Gunton, J.P.C, Allen, I.H.S. Murray .J.S. Whitehead later, Ambassador to Japan, D,R,D, Blakiston, and T.R. Bayley. The gap in the seating was filled normally by yours truly but ...

No one would want to open a can of worms on this subject but the arrival of C.M.E. Seaman led to other masters' services being terminated, a polite way of saying dismissed. I know of two such cases who went in 1955 and 1957. I did see a reference in The Blue much later, it may well have been when he...

The A.H.Buck incident happened in Streatham High Road on his way back from an Amicables Dinner in London. and is mentioned in the book "More than a brother" which was a collection of correspondence between AHB and Edmund Blunden. He had crashed into a central road barrier.