Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Charlie_Hartley_Hall wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 9:09 am Thanks for all the replies!
Does anyone know how to attach a word document to these posts? Can it even be done? If there is interest I'll see if I can post at least my article if not the whole edition of the upcoming newspaper.
Charlie

If you send me a Word or PDF document once done, to admin@chforum.info, I'll upload it for you to our server and can provide you with a link to be able to post it here....

Looking forward to reading it...

Julian

This is the thread referring to the punishment book.

Den Childs wrote: ↑Mon Mar 29, 2021 8:55 pm
It's been mentioned that in other houses the punishment time included changing from, and back into, full housey dress. By my time this was regarded in Barnes B as unhygienic - you worked up quite a sweat on a run like that - and the times were adjusted to permit starting and ending in games clothes.

Dennis; "unhygenic"? By 2023 standards yes but those were different days. I left in 1961 (a bit before you arrived). The showers downstairs never worked and one was allowed a bath just once a week. No doubt we were hit by every bug around but getting ill (despite the conditions) was rare. In 9 years I got mumps, measles and one case of the flu but in each case they were country wide epidemics (There is a photo of 4 "Col A members" going into lunch - and one was an import!)
ISTR three other visits to the sicker; on one occasion I had come off my bike and skinned my face, shoulder, arm and hand. On another I had been smashed up by an older group of CH thugs and needed treatment. Don't recall why I went the other time - Dr Scott was away so one of the nurses decided to remove a number of warts painlessly. All that in 9 years. Hygene was not a factor in any of those.
IF you were weak enough then you got "Malt" which made every germ emigrate and the poor boy wish he could go as well.

Somehow that carried through to later life - I got malaria (and an attack camping in deep snow on top of the hills of the Brecon Beacons!) and I now have had another illness for 20 years which at last is improving despite the doctors.

As a contemporary of Dennis, I am not sure that a conscious decision was taken that it was "unhygienic."
When I arrived in CH, and I think for the first two years, we had PE in the break between the first two periods in the morning and the second two. This took place an all days except Wednesdays and Saturdays.
Obviously there was no time to change, which I didn't find unusual as at Junior school, we played football at every break and never changed afterwards.
I had a two mile walk/run to and from school and we only had one bath at home, and hot water only when the fire was on, so only had a weekly bath. Taking a shower after exercise was not the norm as far as I was concerned, nor was it possible. Getting muddy just meant cleaning hands and knees.
After afternoon rugby, there was the trough, and the trough was basically to get the mud off since the water was rarely changed. I never saw those showers working, except when someone was being picked on.
All this changed when they did the buildings at the back of the houses, with new changing rooms with showers. I can't remember which years that took place.
Even before the new changing rooms I don't think we had to change before and after punishment runs, so I believe the practice must have been different in each house.

jhopgood wrote: ↑Tue Jan 24, 2023 2:04 pm As a contemporary of Dennis, I am not sure that a conscious decision was taken that it was "unhygienic."

I had a two mile walk/run to and from school and we only had one bath at home, and hot water only when the fire was on, so only had a weekly bath.

Living "below stairs" my mother and I had rooms high in the loft. There was a bathroom with cold water. Hot water was carried up in a watering can!
As for school I guess it was a mile and a half, mainly across an occupied cattle field. Devon gets rain so a day soaked to the skin was not abnormal - that was my bath outside summer which was when I was in the sea!