RICHARD'S STORY

1931

So, hello to 1931!  It makes me think to myself that when it is my birthday, which won’t be long getting here, that after that I have still got another five years at Stanhope before I am able to leave and go to work to help Mum.  I wonder whether there will be much work about when I leave, we hear so little here at Stanhope that we do not know if things have changed in the outside world.

The weather is still very cold, and playtime is spent indoors in the playroom, where we run around and we can play billiards.  There is a very good library, but not many of the boys take books out to read, and as I don’t read very well yet neither do I.

My birthday is getting closer again, and although February is still a cold, wet month we know it won’t be long before Spring is here.  It will soon be time for the allotments to be given out, and I hope that as I will be nine years old this year that the Headmaster will think that I am old enough to help one of the bigger boys look after his allotment.  There are only twelve allotments so you have to be lucky to get one.  I do not know if you look after the allotment instead of doing lessons, or whether you have to do it in your spare time.

Now it is the 5th February, which is my ninth birthday, and to mark the day, the teacher will call me by my name instead of calling me number 54. Although I am now nine years old I am still the youngest and smallest boy ever to be sent to Stanhope. There is a card for me and also one shilling, but better even than this I have a letter from home.  The address is different again, but Mum has been able to send me some money, this is put into the school bank for me, with the money that I have earned.  I can earn seventy marks each week, which means I get sevenpence, but to get this I have to get full marks from both my teacher and the Headmaster, and of course if you misbehave you get marks taken away, and if you have not got enough marks you will not be allowed to go home at Easter. 

Rumours are going around the school that Miss Hammond is leaving, she is the lady that helps Matron in the surgery and also helps the maids who look after our underclothes and socks and our white pillowcases and nightshirts.  We all hope that the rumour is not true because we like Miss Hammond. She is very kind and understanding and she very seldom raises her voice.  We are sure that if she leaves her replacement could never be as nice, still we must wait and see if she is really leaving, it is no use asking, because we would only be told to mind our own business!

It is nearly Easter again and the boys who are able to go home for a holiday have been told, and again me and my brothers have heard nothing.  The notice board shows that we have got enough marks to be allowed home, but quite a few boys have enough marks, yet like us their parents cannot afford to send the return train fare.  As there are three of us at Stanhope now, this would be a lot of money for our Mum to find.  Some of the boys are not able to go home because their parents have parted and no longer want anything to do with the children, we are not sure what will happen to them when the time comes to leave Stanhope, but they may have to go into the Services or into the Police.  When the day comes for the boys to go home on holiday there is great joy for them and mostly glum faces for the rest, although some boys are glad to stop, and there is one boy who had earned enough marks and had his train fare sent, but refused to go home.  He has been at Stanhope for a long time and never had his fare sent before.

I don’t mind stopping at school so much now as most of the other boys are friendly now.  However, one of the new boys that came to Stanhope after the camping holiday last summer is number 63.  He has been given the nickname “Crabapple Face” because his face is almost perfectly round and slightly coloured and it looks as if his nose has been stuck on and his eyes cut out!  He is one of the troublesome boys and will try and pick a fight with anyone, he is really not very well behaved at all and has not got many friends.  He tried to pick a fight with me but, like my brothers, I am rather quiet and reserved and try not to get into an argument.  My friend, number 48, is not so shy and he takes my part, unfortunately he gets the worst of it and has to go to the surgery to have Vaseline put on his eyebrow where number 63 hit him and his eyelid came down and got stuck.  Matron tells him it is not really very serious, and that incident is over.

Soon it will be time for the boys that went home for Easter to return.  We wonder whether they will all come back on time; if they don’t come back on time we think it will be the worse for them when they do come back.  When they do arrive the first thing that happens is that they are searched and any money they have brought back is taken and put in the school bank for them.  When a boy leaves he does not have to have his fare home sent, because the school pays it and he is also provided with a new suit made for him by the tailor, Mr Hotson, and he is also given underclothes and working clothes and a new cap and boots.  It is Mr Hotson who escorts any leaver to the station to shake his hand and wish him well.

The rumour is still going round that Miss Hammond is leaving but we have heard nothing officially yet.  If she does leave it will be not only the boys that miss her but also Matron - we do not think that there could be anyone else as good and kind as Miss Hammond.

Today is the day that the boys are picked who will have an allotment for the summer, but I am still too young for this and must wait another year.  Next year I will be ten so perhaps I will stand a chance.  The boys that have been picked for an allotment will be shown how to carry on about starting to look after it by Mr Penny the gardener.  They will be given seeds to start their allotment, I do not know what happens to the produce, I think some of the flowers go to Matron’s house, I know that some of them are sent to the Church where we have to go every Sunday.  I think that the vegetables might go to help feed us and the staff, although the staff cottages have their own large gardens.

Now the Easter holidays are over we have to start our lessons again.  My reading and writing are a lot better now, thanks to our teacher, Mr Neat, who has been very good. Sadly he has told us  that he is thinking of leaving to go to another school, and if this is true I will miss him a lot because he has been my teacher ever since Tom and me  came to Stanhope.  He has been a very good and kind teacher, as well as helping me learn to read and write he is also the physical instructor and he has taught me to swim.  We have heard for certain that Miss Hammond is leaving, but we do not know when she or Mr Neat will be going.  We have been told that a trained nurse from the hospital is coming to take Miss Hammond’s place, and a music teacher is coming to replace Mr Neat.

The boys who are looking after the allotments are doing a very good job and some of the seeds are coming up, unfortunately the weather has been very rainy and the ground too wet to go onto the allotments to pull up the weeds.  We can tell what some of the young plants are that are growing; there are peas, lettuce, beetroot, onions and parsnips.   One of the boys has planted flower seeds called sweet peas, and when these flower they will go to the Matron’s house.  The weather should get better soon, and then it will be time to empty and clean the swimming pool again ready for the summer.  There are five house colours to compete in the swimming and also we compete boy against boy. I am still very small and don’t expect to be picked for any event, although there may be a competition for us younger ones just going across the pool at the shallow end.

The time has come for Mr Neat to leave, and he says goodbye and hopes that we all get on well with our new teacher, we are very sorry to see him go.  A week later, it is Miss Hammond’s turn to leave and her replacement soon arrives.  She wears a proper nurse’s uniform, she is rather short and plump and has blonde hair and blue eyes.  We have found out that we will be getting a woodwork teacher soon, he will “live in” and will have a bedroom next to the main dormitory.

Another new boy arrives, there are nearly 150 boys at Stanhope now and there is not room for many more to come unless there are a lot of boys due to leave, as there have not been any leavers for quite some time.  The new boy arrives and he is a little “different”.  He is bowlegged (we call it “bandy legged”)  and that makes him look shorter than he really is.  He tells us that he has been sent to Stanhope because he stole some sweets and some money.  He has come from Ramsgate and is given the number 62.  His hair is very long and combed straight back without a parting.  He says he uses his father’s hair cream and even though he has had a bath his hair is still shiny.  We think he may well be one of the boys picked by the Headmaster to go for a haircut this Tuesday!  Going to the barbers is a chance to run away, but he would soon get caught and brought back and punished.

We might be going to have a “visiting day” soon.  This means our parents can visit us, it is only for two hours, but it is still a nice idea, and we hope that Mum can afford the fare and that her leg is well enough for her to come and that Dad is able to look after our brothers and sisters.  Some of the boys don’t want to see their families and of course some come from homes where the parents have separated.

The weather is fine now and we are taken out to the sports field where we play cricket.  Sometimes a senior boy picks a team or we play house against house, also sometimes we play against a neighbouring village team, but the game is always played at Stanhope. Mr Tingley, the school secretary, is our umpire because he is too old to play.  The Headmaster likes to take a hearty “slog” at the ball, and so he either hits it and gets a boundary or is most likely out!  The Head Teacher is quite good at batting and bowling as well, even though he is left handed.

Soon it will be time for the summer camp, and we hope we will go to Dymchurch again because we enjoyed it so much, in spite of the pebbly beach.  We wonder if we will be there with the other school party that we met last year.  Their school sounded even stricter than Stanhope, but we were told that the boys there were all thieves, or had set fire to buildings or hayricks.

With the good weather we are using the newly cleaned swimming pool again and competition will be strong between the houses and all the boys, because there are prizes for the house and for individuals to be given out on Prize Day.  On our first evening using the pool we do not have any races, we just have fun.  We find out that one of the boys from my house (Red House) is a very good diver, but he can’t swim!  He is a tall boy and his  number is 27.  We try very hard to get him to learn to swim but he is too big to go into the swimming aid pole and afraid to go into the diving competition in case he drowns but in the end he agrees to go into the competition, and we hope he learns to swim before the competition day.  Time flies by and we spend more time on the cricket field than in the pool and so the day for the swimming competition comes round before number 27 has learnt to swim. There are judges from outside the school and there will be different length races for different ages, relay races and of course the diving.  When number 27’s turn comes to dive he does a really good dive, but he is hardly in the water before he shouts for help and one of the officers has to dive in to help him!  This brings our swimming evening to an end, and we give three cheers for the judges and helpers, and go to bed very tired indeed.

Although the weather is hot at night now we still have to wear our nightshirts, but a lot of us turn our counterpane down to try and be a bit cooler, eventually we all get to sleep only to be woken at ten o’clock for the toilet, and then back to bed to sleep until the half past six bell.  We all wake and start another routine day, with no swimming competition to look forward to anymore, but at least today we are to play cricket.  We are playing a local village team and our team has to be made up by several boys because we have not got enough officers to make a full team.  The officers we have got are all good cricketers, and we think it will be an interesting game, particularly if the village team are good players too.  We play all our games at Stanhope rather than playing away in case any of us decides to run away during the match.  We have heard that two new boys are coming to Stanhope and that they are from one of the villages that we play at cricket.  The village is called Charing and the boys are two brothers aged eleven and twelve. 

In the meantime, some boys have left the school, also rumours are going around that we are not going to Dymchurch for our camp this year because the Headmaster left it too late to make the booking and we will be going somewhere completely different, so we will have to wait and see where it might be.

Time passes, the allotments are nearly empty of their produce now and we have had our regular dose of the horrid Black Jack.  The new boys from Charing have arrived, and one thing that we have noticed about them is that when they smile their teeth are nearly black, we wonder if all the teeth are bad because if that is so then they will have to have them all pulled out, and what will happen when they come to chew their food?

Camping time comes around and we are going to go to a place called Seasalter which is near Whitstable.  That is on the way to Margate but still quite a long way from our home.  So the day arrives to set off for camp and after the nine o’clock parade the Headmaster tells us where we are going and hopes we have a good time.  We have a short playtime and then we have to parade again and march around the school to coaches that are waiting for us and we all climb aboard and start on our journey, we feel very happy and start to sing the Stanhope song.  We seem to drive for a very long way, and then someone sees a roadsign for Whitstable and we think that we must be getting near to our destination, we are glad because some of us want to do a wee, and some of us are getting very hungry!  At last we arrive at the camp site at Seasalter, but we do not like the look of the place very much, and it has started to rain.

It never rained when we went to Dymchurch, and we don’t think it is raining there now.  When we have all been checked off the coaches and given our hut numbers we have to stay inside to amuse ourselves until dinnertime.  We are very hungry, and although the food is not very appetising we are too hungry to care much. As it is raining even more we have to go back to our huts to play.  The beds are the same canvas ones that we had at Dymchurch with a pillow, sheets and a blanket and they are far more comfortable than they look.  It rains for four whole days and we are getting thoroughly miserable and bored and wish we were back at school where we have more to do on rainy days.  When it stops raining it is still rather cold and the beach is not very nice, we are not allowed to paddle, and when we are told that the holiday is going to be cut short because of the weather we are not in the least bit sorry.  So after only six days our camping holiday ends and the coaches come to take us back to Stanhope.  The journey back seems shorter and soon we are marching back into school and into the playroom.  We still have to be inside because of the weather but we are nice and cosy in the playroom and we have plenty of room to run around. 

The two brothers from Charing have had to go to the school dentist and when they come back they have got the whitest teeth in the school!  We ask if the dentist has painted them, but what he did was to polish them.  The boys will not tell us how their teeth got so black in the first place, but one of the other boys says maybe they had been smoking.

Eventually the weather improves and we can go outside to play and use the swimming pool and sports field although we have noticed that it is getting darker sooner in the evening and the summer holiday will soon be over for another year.

The holiday has ended and we are back to our lessons again.  My report must have been fairly good because I have been moved to a higher standard, of course this means the lessons have got harder but I should be able to manage in the end, and I want to learn as much as I can to help me when I leave school to get a job in four years time.  Time passes slowly and I am finding the lessons very hard, but I am trying very hard to do them as I do not want to have to go back down a standard.

Once again, we are looking forward to Christmas with the making of paper chains, the dinner and the entertainment.  Christmas Day comes and we follow the usual routine and really enjoy ourselves, and now it is time for the evening entertainment.  Some of the boys sing and the adults do the acting.  This year we have a magician who has come in to do some tricks for us but does not show us how to do them ourselves!  One of the tricks he performs is to prove that one of the boys has “water on the brain”.  He asks for a volunteer and it is number 58, who is one of the new boys.    The magician gives him a small bowl to hold in front of him and then he puts a tap on top of number 58’s head and turns the tap on and out comes the water!  This causes much laughter and clapping from everyone and the evening comes to a happy end and we all go off to bed and sleep.