AOSA CENTENARY HISTORY 1841 - 1941

Chapter IX
THE YEAR OF JUBILEE: 1891

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

Incoming children at the start of a new school year left luggage at the station and in the warmth of an August afternoon walked down the familiar road to the school.

Friday was always kept as the day of arrival and nothing save essential night attire was unpacked that night. The authorities had decreed Saturday morning as the time for unpacking and on Saturday morning the boots and shoes were put in their divisions up the narrow stairs which linked topcoats below to boots above. The master on duty in the shed, despatched first coats and trousers to the numbered divisions in the boys’ bedroom under the clock, and then to the matron in the passage by the bathrooms, tightly-rolled bundles of shirts, night-shirts, half-a-dozen handkerchiefs, three pairs of stockings, half-a-dozen collars, each bundle with its supporting list. The boxes, empty save for intimate personal possessions, were carried, each box by two boys, to the box rooms in the archway.

The first Sunday was a breaking-in day. Breakfast was delayed until eight o'clock; Meeting took an hour and a half, and remained for some time a mystery to non-Quaker children who wondered when the service was going to begin, and who, for weeks, did not find out how it ended, for the bulky bodies of adults concealed the grave formality of the closing handshake. After Meeting, walking round in the strictly circumscribed limits of the playground passed the time till dinner.

Work started in earnest on the Monday. Two unequal ‘halves’ constituted the school year; one from mid-January to General Meeting in July, the other from August to just before Christmas. The strain of the long half was relieved by a weekend exodus at Easter of those whose parents wished to have them, but always a considerable number of girls and boys remained at school. Each week, too, had a Wednesday and a Saturday half-holiday.

The day began about half-past six. The master who slept in the little room off the boys’ bedroom, roused the heavier sleepers by pulling away the single pillow. He enforced strict silence in the bedroom during the five minutes which he allowed for a quick putting-on of knickerbockers and stockings and a turning-back of bedclothes and mattress. Boys with the rest of their clothes bundled under their arms dashed down to the washroom and when the last boy left the bedroom the master followed and stopped all talking in the washroom during the last five minutes, timed minute-by-minute with watch in hand. Boots from the rack at the top of the first flight of stairs completed the daily toilet.

Bells and collects punctuated the day’s progress. The bell, hanging by the schoolroom door, where to-day a deep groove in the stone testifies to continual use, had a harsh and menacing clang, which demanded quick obedience; its public summons could not but be heard. Collects took place in the shed. Whenever the boys or any considerable body of them had to be moved, they were moved in due order from collect. The orderliness of collect varied directly with the discipline of the masters. Various years produced various vintages. In 1891 the three masters, Charles de Vit, John T. Thompson and John W. Proud, were all apprentices or ex-apprentices; they were accustomed to tackling Ayton boys; anything but promptest obedience brought swift retribution.

The first bell of the morning at a quarter to seven called the boys into the schoolroom for Bible reading. Each boy had a copy of Select Passages. Some few were to be committed to memory by all, the 23rd Psalm and others, part of the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, that tremendous outburst of Joel where he saw the pillars of smoke and the sun’s darkness and the moon’s blood, and from the New Testament, the beatitudes and chosen parables. The rest of the select passages were grouped under chosen headings and from these, texts were picked with apparent caprice.

Spelling and derivation very frequently occupied the half-hour until half-past seven. Mongan’s spelling surely supplied all the words that any one would need, and a wealth of curious information as well.

Breakfast and the hour from eight to nine usefully interrupted the morning’s work. Beds were made, inspected and passed; the boys who had ‘offices’ bustled about to their tasks; they swept and dusted the schoolrooms and the masters’ room; they cleaned the playground, sweeping where necessary; they saw to the supply of ink and chalk; they cleaned the blackboards and picked up any papers that might have escaped on to the terrace; one boy, highly favoured, because he went daily to the village, collected the letters; another tidied the bootroom and another the washroom. Each ‘office’ when done had to be reported to the master on duty and passed by him.

The boys cleaned their boots in the boxrooms off the archway. The boxroom boy had to keep his eye on the supply of' toddy,’ that boot-blacking which, wrapped in its green oilproof outside cover, proved so extremely reluctant to leave its inner layer of paper. Two brushes, a ‘toddy' brush and a polisher, a plentiful supply of spittle and a good deal of elbow grease sufficed to clean the easily observed parts of boots, including the heels. Saturday demanded a longer time, for Sunday boots had to be cleaned and passed that day and little could escape the prying eyes of the master at the collect when the boots were held up and slowly rotated, apart, for his inspection.

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