Dorothy Ruth West : RIP

[icomefromalanddownunder]

That's quite poignant that DR should think you could have been taken for her daughters at the Chelsea Flower Show, Katharine.

Love, Munch

Hi Munch

I agree about the poignancy of the situation, but also thinks that it confirms my opinion of DR being totally out of touch with us and the 1960s in general.

Can anyone imagine any of us agreeing to be seen in public with our Mums in school uniform, or anything remotely resembling it?

Love

Caroline

[Angela Woodford]

LOLOL.

Sorry, Susannah was early 19th century, not that I don't know my 18th from my 19th but I thought Susannah was about 1780.

I hope that my reference date - 1826-1832 - is correct. I am quoting from HTR. I wonder if I can verify this. There might be a date on one of the two portraits.

What I don't know is LOLOL!!

Yes Mary Mc, I admit to being fascinated by the history of lingerie. There's a wonderful painting of a Parisian belle, c1881-1885; The Reception by James Tissot - she's wearing her corset on top of her dress! Rather in advance of Madonna!

Caroline - yes, how I agree! Or even if a couple of sisters would be dressed the same when out with their mother!

I felt very surprised that DR should state (rather casually?) in HTR that she "thought of founding a society for the abolition of one-child families".
Did she not think of the parents who are able to conceive only one child? Or those who have restricted their family to the baby they can afford? I could go on...

But I do feel this shows her as out of touch. She could only see the "give and take" of a larger family, as in a boarding school situation.

Love

Munch

Hey! Back on topic!

[Katharine]

That's quite poignant that DR should think you could have been taken for her daughters at the Chelsea Flower Show, Katharine.

I agree about the poignancy of the situation, but also thinks that it confirms my opinion of DR being totally out of touch with us and the 1960s in general.
Can anyone imagine any of us agreeing to be seen in public with our Mums in school uniform, or anything remotely resembling it?

I know that we tried to go in everyday uniform so that it would be obvious to anyone who saw us that we were in uniform and not in rather odd clothes! I also remember Nicolette and I exchanged wry looks as she said it.

Years later I had a school group of girls at the Science Museum, in their 80s uniform complete with ties. There was another group there who were wearing something a bit like the cherry reds. On the way back in the train my group were discussing this and how much better it was to have a uniform that shouted SCHOOL, none of them had been certain the other was uniform until they had seen several!

[kerrensimmonds]

Crikey.. what a lot happens on this Forum, in a short time!
Yes there are two portraits of Susannah Holmes, painted in the early 1820's by AJ Oliver RA, because her Governor thought she had wonderful eyebrows.
The full length portrait now hangs in the higher rank in Dining Hall in Horsham, near the pulpit. The head and shoulders portrait used to hang in the Treasurer's office in the Counting House but is now in the main corridor of the Museum at Horsham.
The myths about 'Susannah' are many, and yes it is fun that they travelled from Hertford to Horsham! It's just a name and the myths do not relate to Susannah Holmes per se. DR used the name herself for her little book which I think is called 'The Spirit of Susannah' - where the first 'Susannah' is a little girl admitted to the school in 1552, and the 'spirit' re-emerges under the same name in every generation thereafter. (Miriam McKay and Jen Dyer updated it to the Horsham generation - adding an extra 'chapter', for the penultimate OGA reunion at Horsham. Even by then in the Nursing Home, DRW herself approved of their extension!)
The true 'story' is that Susannah Holmes herself fell on hard times after leaving school, and when the school found out it paid her for both portraits and then gave her a small pension for the rest of her life.

Katharine, I don't remember the business of tables in Dining Hall being moved around, I am afraid!

[Great Plum]

The story that Mrs C is telling seems to be more the ghost of a boy called Simon who was in Barnes - he is reputed to have died of migraines and you found him at the end of beds with his head in his hands...

[Mrs C.]

No, most definitely something about a blue woman.......

I`ve not heard the Barnes boy one!

[Richard Ruck]

I`ve not heard the Barnes boy one!

That would be Simon Randall - a Barnes A boy (he was a second-former when I was on my LE year) who died of a brain haemorrhage in (I think) late 1974. He would have been about 12 at the time. This sad event has been related elsewhere on the forum.

I can only assume that the haunting stories must have started some years later, once pupils who were actually at C.H. at the time had all left and the event had assumed some sort of folk-memory status.

Among the various memorial plaques just inside the door of the Chapel there is one dedicated to his memory.

[englishangel]

What I don't know is LOLOL!!

Laugh out loud x 2

[midget]

re: CH ghosts
There was a story that someone had once died in the Sanatorium- in the 1940's only opened if there was some sort of epidemic. Needless to say, thw story was that the room where she died was "left exactly as it was when she died, and that she probably came back to visit" In fact there were 4 beds in there, and it was about the nicest and sunniest room in the San. What is more, nobody died there- the girl in question had been taken to th local hospital and died there. I spent about 10 days in there during a mumps epidemic, and life was good, because they hired 2 temp. nurses (twins, known as A]a.m, and p.m, who had more up to date ideas about the treatment of teenage girls than did sister. The regime was very relaxed, and sister only made one brief visit of inspection once a day)

[Angela Woodford]

Laugh out loud x 2

Oh, right.

Munch

[J.R.]

I'm surprised no ghost stories have started regarding the bocker who hanged himself from the overhead pipes in the tube around 1958/1959 !

[Alexandra Thrift]

I am amazed that this seems to have turned into a school uniform/ghost
thread !

I just can't believe that there was so MUCH school uniform. Such a waste of funds ! All those hats and different socks and jackets ,coats ,blazers and summer and winter and weekdays and Sunday and pinnies and aprons and on and on. It was so much easier for the boys at Horsham.

At least FOUR different HATS !.......and I started in the mid-sixties! Mending,darning,sewing up pockets,sewing on our number tapes, making our sock garters.........We lived in a parallel universe.

I was a very skinny creature when I started....somewhere around 4st 10 pounds ( see the photos on the other thread !) and I remember putting on my uniform for the first time.The huge vest came down below the hemline of my dress and everything just hung baggily and thus it always continued to be.When I got to the age where we wore a skirt and those mid-blue blouses, the blouse always slid out of the top of my skirt and my tie was different lengths and skewed to one side.

In the end DR despaired of the unkempt waif that was me and assigned Diana (always looked smart) Garnham ( now Head of the Science Council and terribly important ) to be my "Trinny and Suzanna". Of course Diana couldn't change the uniform but she used to inspect me every morning and do her very best to make me look presentable by tucking everything in and straightening things up. Her admirable efforts only lasted a couple of hours before I had mysteriously degenerated into a scruffy orphan once more. Sad really.

I loved the chapel caps because they tamed my thick mop of hair and didn't blow away like the velour or panama that we wore on Sunday.I also liked the beige stockings because they were warm and it was such a relief to abandon the scratchy, thick, mud brown, revolting winter socks we wore in the third year ( first year at CH for me at age 11). In a way I liked the blue pinny because I could be messy and mucky with abandon while wearing it but in retrospect ,what an old fashioned item to be wearing in the mid-sixties. I liked the warmth of the Harris Tweed Sunday coats and sometimes wore mine in the holidays.

I never found CH Hertford cold.In fact it was quite luxuriously warm with radiators and central heating which I had never had before. Ashbourne and the long march up there was a bit chilly in pre-global warming winter but otherwise it was ok.

My problem with my CH days all relate to emotional issues. I honestly found the living conditions,clothes and food ok.....not brilliant but perfectly acceptable.

Before I started at CH I had lived in childrens homes from the age of about two years old and compared to that experience CH was bountiful.
I don't think I told anybody about this except Siobhan Kierans and possibly Mary Mc Donagh because it seemed such a shameful thing. I feel I measure my Hertford experience with a different yardstick and can relate to Wildone's ( Rosemarie aka Gaye ) experience of CH and DR, who was sometimes kind to me (and nowhere near as scarey as the adults who were in charge of my previous institution).

[J.R.]

I am amazed that this seems to have turned into a school uniform/ghost
thread !

I just can't believe that there was so MUCH school uniform. Such a waste of funds ! All those hats and different socks and jackets ,coats ,blazers and summer and winter and weekdays and Sunday and pinnies and aprons and on and on. It was so much easier for the boys at Horsham.

At least FOUR different HATS !.......and I started in the mid-sixties! Mending,darning,sewing up pockets,sewing on our number tapes, making our sock garters.........We lived in a parallel universe.

I was a very skinny creature when I started....somewhere around 4st 10 pounds ( see the photos on the other thread !) and I remember putting on my uniform for the first time.The huge vest came down below the hemline of my dress and everything just hung baggily and thus it always continued to be.When I got to the age where we wore a skirt and those mid-blue blouses, the blouse always slid out of the top of my skirt and my tie was different lengths and skewed to one side.

In the end DR despaired of the unkempt waif that was me and assigned Diana (always looked smart) Garnham ( now Head of the Science Council and terribly important ) to be my "Trinny and Suzanna". Of course Diana couldn't change the uniform but she used to inspect me every morning and do her very best to make me look presentable by tucking everything in and straightening things up. Her admirable efforts only lasted a couple of hours before I had mysteriously degenerated into a scruffy orphan once more. Sad really.

I loved the chapel caps because they tamed my thick mop of hair and didn't blow away like the velour or panama that we wore on Sunday.I also liked the beige stockings because they were warm and it was such a relief to abandon the scratchy, thick, mud brown, revolting winter socks we wore in the third year ( first year at CH for me at age 11). In a way I liked the blue pinny because I could be messy and mucky with abandon while wearing it but in retrospect ,what an old fashioned item to be wearing in the mid-sixties. I liked the warmth of the Harris Tweed Sunday coats and sometimes wore mine in the holidays.

I never found CH Hertford cold.In fact it was quite luxuriously warm with radiators and central heating which I had never had before. Ashbourne and the long march up there was a bit chilly in pre-global warming winter but otherwise it was ok.

My problem with my CH days all relate to emotional issues. I honestly found the living conditions,clothes and food ok.....not brilliant but perfectly acceptable.

Before I started at CH I had lived in childrens homes from the age of about two years old and compared to that experience CH was bountiful.
I don't think I told anybody about this except Siobhan Kierans and possibly Mary Mc Donagh because it seemed such a shameful thing. I feel I measure my Hertford experience with a different yardstick and can relate to Wildone's ( Rosemarie aka Gaye ) experience of CH, and DR who was sometimes kind to me (and nowhere near as scarey as the adults who were in charge of my previous institution).

The last paragraph bought things into perspective Alexandra.

Sitting here at 7:20 on a dark Sunday morning waiting for No 2. son-in-law made me think of our two daughters and our four Grand-Children and made me realise just how lucky they are.

I remember watching a TV programme recently about adults remembering their early days in childrens homes and just how horrific their life was in those innocent and formative years.

[sejintenej]

Before I started at CH I had lived in childrens homes from the age of about two years old and compared to that experience CH was bountiful.
I don't think I told anybody about this except Siobhan Kierans and possibly Mary Mc Donagh because it seemed such a shameful thing. I feel I measure my Hertford experience with a different yardstick and can relate to Wildone's ( Rosemarie aka Gaye ) experience of CH, and DR who was sometimes kind to me (and nowhere near as scarey as the adults who were in charge of my previous institution).

The last paragraph bought things into perspective Alexandra.

I remember watching a TV programme recently about adults remembering their early days in childrens homes and just how horrific their life was in those innocent and formative years.

My best man was at one of those homes - the extremely well known name and he tells some pretty horrendous tales about the treatment. On top of that we hear how inmates (well, they were prisoners) were assaulted etc by staff.

To think that even now Social Services like to take kids away from families and inflict this sort of treatment on them when there are grandparents, aunts/uncles available who could better look after them. Even now kids are taken away sometimes with no good reason, never ever to see their families again even as in a recent case where it was found that the parents had done absolutely nothing wrong.

[Angela Woodford]

My problem with my CH days

Before I started at CH I had lived in childrens homes from the age of about two years old
I don't think I told anybody about this .... nowhere near as scarey as the adults who were in charge of my previous institution).

Oh Alex. I find it really strange to think now how little we all knew about each other. The institutionalism of Hertford seemed to pack so much routine into each day that - well, speaking for myself, I never really considered that others might have come from a variety of backgrounds that they never spoke about. Sorry, I haven't put that so well.

I came from a slightly unusual set-up, but came to CH as a loved precious child of much older parents. Compared to home, CH seemed terribly grim! Although we had so little privacy, the main thing that comes back to me is how lonely I felt - and how scruffy and overweight I looked!

But then, away from the normal world, we did find a lot to laugh about in an original and eccentric way completely lacking in my own children. They seem very conformist to me! But they are "normal" and streetwise as I never was. Somewhere on the Forum there's a topic called something like "What would you be like if you'd gone to an ordinary comprehensive?"

Love

Munch