Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

I also think it was weekly.

I wonder what the laundry arrangements are at Horsham these days ?

Mrs C ?

For some reason I clearly remember that we had clean underpants twice weekly, on Wed and perhaps also Sat. In fact most of our laundering was twice weekly (socks, vests, shirts and handkerchiefs), with clean pyjamas once weekly. But unlike dsmg we only had big cubby holes in the linen room where such clothing was kept, next to matron’s room, and no lockers anywhere else. The fresh linen was delivered to the end of the bed, where we left the dirty items for collection next morning.

Our underpants then (1940s/50s) were not ‘fitted’ but rather like totally unelasticised white boxers, with horizontal loops, two pair on the front and one pair at the rear. The underpants were supported by threading the end of the braces (suspenders) through the loops and then buttoning them as usual onto the breeches. I haven’t seen such items for decades.

In the '70s (as I appear to recall it), we would twice a week find a laundry roll consisting of shirt, socks and underpants deposited at the foot of our beds; on another occasion in the week, a pair of socks with a pair of bands tucked into them would be similarly deposited on our beds by the fairies when no-one was around to see them do it. Anyone who was sufficiently scrupulous could help himself to socks from the linen room whenever the urge seized him. Our handkerchiefs were also kept in those same open-fronted linen pigeonholes in the linen room where socks etc. were kept, but I now have no recollection of ever exchanging grimy handkerchiefs for clean ones. Maybe we just blew our noses on our Houseycoats and had no need of handkerchiefs. After all, most of us unintentionally used our bands as napkins, coating them liberally in soup, gravy, tea, custard and vomit, so maybe there was a CH way of doing everything under the sun. My only solid memory of handkerchiefs at CH is of folding them up and using them as wallybonkers a.k.a. collyboshers in order to inflict mayhem. Like daggers made from ice, they were the perfect non-telltale weapons.

michael scuffil wrote: ↑Sun Sep 18, 2016 8:18 pm If you had School Cricket Colours you had a very posh cravat with diagonal yellow stripes.

Cravats were for seniors only. But do you remember the grey felt sunhats for juniors, to be worn, in the words of the rule-book, 'unadorned and in the proper shape'? Sunhats and cravats were in complementary distribution, i.e. one could only be worn when the other could not (quite apart from the senior/junior distinction). I remember sunhats were regarded as ridiculous, and few people wore them.

There was a woman in Barns Green who, for a small fee, would 'take in' flannel trousers (i.e. turn them into drainpipes). Her services were popular among a certain set.

I am very late to the party with this, but as far as I can remember the sun hat was only for those in the Prep School. It was called a 'Dudley'. As for the 'square' as we called the cravat, I remember it being so slippery it was difficult to keep it looking neat; it was always coming undone.

I wish I had known about the woman in Barns Green.