AOSA CENTENARY HISTORY 1841 - 1941

Chapter VI
THE WORK OF THE COMMITTEE: 1841-1865

Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Appendix

Return History
Contents

The Committee assumed the whole responsibility for the running and maintenance of the school as an institution, and they assumed no easy task nor did they take their duties lightly. The minutes of their monthly meetings reveal an intimate though tangled view of the school’s early growing pains. The annual General Meeting appointed the Committee and the women’s committee. The Committee appointed sub-committees for finance and farm. Responsibility for the school as a whole rested on the Committee; the women’s committee controlled the girls’ side, the household department, the general order and good ordering of the house: farm and finance looked after their own subjects, and reported on them.

Children at school and children likely to come to school claimed the Committee’s first attention. They regulated their payments, their food, their clothing, their hours of work and their punishments. Any money that parents left or that children possessed the Committee early took note of. Three months after the School started they instructed the superintendent to ‘take charge of all the money brought by children to the school or otherwise obtained. In order to provide a weekly allowance for pocket money the Boys may be provided each with a suitable piece of land for Gardens, and the Girls with the requisites for such needlework etc. as may be found desirable (on easy terms) the proceeds in both cases to be appropriated to their own use, all expenditure being subject to the approval of the officers of the Institution.’ This seemed to them to be sensible, wise and an incentive to work.

Friendly liberality supplemented the proceeds of sales. As the children of this institution are not allowed any pocket money a Friend kindly presents each child with 16 tickets monthly which in value represent 2d. When they transgress the rules of the school they are fined one or more tickets by the Officers. At the end of each month they receive cash for the tickets then in possession and are expected to state for what offences the forfeitures have been made. Should the number be reduced below 8 suspension ensues till the officers can vouch for improved conduct. This regulation has been found to have a very beneficial effect upon the behaviour of the children.’ Thus discipline was maintained, propriety was rewarded, insubordination was fined at an average cost of one penny per child per month; the sinner confessed his sins, the virtuous received their reward.

Nor did the Committee neglect the matter of discipline. They and the superintendent discussed corporal punishment. George Dixon, disciplinarian as he was, did not lack difficulties. Some children were sent to school because the parents could not manage them at home, and though Edward Pease pointed out that the committee was running a school and not a reformatory, no child was refused for such reasons alone. Difficult children naturally tried the superintendent, and when reason and pleading had alike failed chastisement had its turn. The Committee suggested that a consultation with some committee friend resident in Ayton should be held previous to any thrashing. Even at that time George Dixon made the ancient, honoured and mendacious plea, ‘in inflicting it I believe I suffered more than the boy. I think I made a mistake. When an appeal to a boy’s sense of duty did not succeed it would have been better to have sent him home in disgrace.’

Two matters of prime importance needed the attention of the Committee in these early years, water and light. The supply of water came at first from the wells and from a cistern for rain water which Holmes had put under the roof of his new building overlooking the green. These were inadequate to the needs of a growing family and depended too much on the weather.

At the very beginning of 1842 the question of an additional supply arose. The Committee stated that they were ‘fully alive to the desirableness of laying pipes to secure a continuous supply of water and recommend its adoption whenever the funds of the Institution will allow.’ They decided to pipe water from Dykes beck which ran by the road from Gribdale gate. The fall was quite sufficient; the beck had dams across it to check the flow. Expert advice suggested a filter bed and a two-inch pipe. This water supplied the house, the orchard and farm buildings and the cottage used by the boys for a washhouse. But sediment clogged the pipes and the early flow gradually lessened. So when Cleveland Lodge was being built a settling pond and filter bed were constructed higher up the beck. A three-inch pipe took the water to Cleveland Lodge and a branch pipe supplied the school. The new buildings of 1846 contained very large cisterns and the water question was settled for a considerable time.

Physical light in the School for the first nine years was produced by Argand oil lamps and by candles. In the boy’s schoolroom two lamps softened the gloom; the girls depended on one only, and one of the duties of the apprentices was to trim these lamps. The Committee realised ‘the disadvantages arising from a deficiency of light’ and as Thomas Richardson had ‘expressed his willingness to contribute towards the cost of such buildings and apparatus as may be needful for the manufacture of Gas ‘the secretary was requested to secure estimates.

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