Emma Ford
Our school was very basic. It had rough whitewashed stone walls and it was very dusty. We had the old combustion stoves and the smell of the coke used to get on your chest. But the rooms were warm. We got out for quarter of an hour in the morning to play, and then ten minutes in the afternoon. In the yard, we didn't think of anything but skipping. The boys played with whips and tops. Sometimes I took my doll to school, but more often than not it was taken from me and I lost its frock or some of its hair. There were no toys in school to play with. We played with bits of paper and we drew. Our teacher, Miss Stephenson, used to wear a great big hat and her hair was all piled up. And her little waist was tight in and her bust stood right out. I don't know where they got their bustles from, but people's busts and behinds went right out.
Mary Allison
We used to use slates. They were horrid things – they used to scrape when you wrote on them. We had to bring in our own rag to clean them, but sometimes we used to spit to wipe the writing off. It wasn't a nice thing to spit, but in those days you just did it.
Jackie Geddes
Our teacher was Mr Rose. He lived at Chester-le-Street, and he used to come in on a little Douglas motorbike. He'd been in the Boer War. The slates we had were about twelve inches, bigger than the infants' slates, and you had to buy your own slate. And you used to have a string fastened on so you could put it on your back, or inside your satchel. You did your homework on that. When you came back though, it might be raining, and if you had put your slate under your coat, it used to get rubbed off. If you put it in your satchel it was just the same. So you couldn't protect it, it got rubbed or washed off, and when you got to school the next morning, it would be ‘Where's your homework?’, ‘Sir, it was raining’, ‘It wasn't raining where I was,’ and you got the cane. I thought that was very unfair.
Rebecca Bowman
When we got our photos taken, the teacher would get an exercise book and make a paper collar. You would never think they had a paper collar on when they got their photo took. They had bare feet, but still the teacher put a paper collar on.
We used to get a great big ball of thick wool on a Wednesday afternoon for knitting with and we used to have big long needles. And we used to knit a whole lump and then whoever had knitted the most got some marks for it. Then when we'd finished, it was pulled out and wrapped up and then put on the needles. The same ball of wool.
Emma Ford
In the summer, we all wore cheap straw hats with elastic underneath. In the winter, we wore woollen, hand-knitted hats. The boys always wore cloth caps. We would hang up our hats and then we went to wash our hands in the basin. There was one basin with a roller towel. When that was done, we went and sat in the classroom with our arms folded, waiting for the teacher to come in. When she came in we stood up and she would say, ‘Good morning children.’ And we had to nod our heads and say, ‘Good morning Miss Johnston.’ Then she came round and examined our hands, back and front. A lot of boys were sent to get their hands washed again.
Bessy Ruben
I remember there used to be a nurse who'd come and examine our hair. Those who were lousy dreaded her coming, but those who were clean she'd pass over, and we'd be very proud to know we were clean. We didn't have any nits. Well, quite a lot of children who were very nice children, really and truly had nits, and one of my friends was so self-conscious about it.
Edith Turner
I was put in the London County Council School. At that time, I had no shoes on my feet. There was a School Board man who used to visit if you didn't go to school and they used to threaten the parents that they would prosecute them if children didn't go to school. So I had to go to school. I went climbing up the stairs at school, with no shoes and socks. My headmistress, Miss McCrae, she was a proper bitch. No matter what illness the children had, she demanded that they went to school.
Joe Garroway
When I first started school it was just a room at the primitive chapel. I must have been a bad boy because I was put down into the cellar, and when dinnertime came they forgot I was there. Well it so happened my little sister, two years old, was buried that day. When I didn't turn up my uncle came to seek me. He came and shouted down to the cellar where I was crying. He said, ‘I'll get you out, lad!’ and he went and saw the caretaker. As I came up the steps to my uncle the teachers came back into the school, and he said, ‘Who's put him down there?’ My teacher was Miss Clark, and she said, ‘I have.’ He said, ‘Take that’ and whacked her and he walked out again.
Bessy Ruben
There was a lot of poverty. We had a girl in my class called Nelly – she was a Christian girl and I liked her very much. She used to come to school without shoes on her feet. I couldn't understand it – no shoes and stockings, and it was the middle of winter and raining. She used to sit next to me, and I said, ‘ Aren't you cold?’ Her feet were so cold. I used to go home to her house for tea very often, and I could smell a very nice, welcoming smell – it was bacon. Although her mother offered it to me, I had an idea I mustn't eat it. I told my mother what had happened, and asked her, ‘Why mustn't I eat it?’ I couldn't have been more than nine at the time. And mother said, ‘Because it's not very healthy.’ And I said, ‘But Nelly Conlan walks about with bare feet, and she's never had a cold in her life!’
Don Murray
We used to go round by the girls' school and watch them come out and make fun of them. But the girls had a way of joining together and instead of going home separately, they used to go home in groups, singing a song that's quite popular now, ‘Strawberry Fair’:
As I was going to Strawberry Fair,
Singing, singing, buttercups and daisies …
And they used to do a little dance and then they each branched off as they got to their homes.
Emma Ford
We all wore pinafores at school. They practically covered our dresses. And the boys wore what they called ‘ganseys’, which are jerseys. They were mostly handouts, and some of them would be too big and some of them too small.
Bessy Ruben
After the Russian pogroms, there was an influx of Jews to our area – the East End of London. There were a lot of children who had to go to school. Some were big girls, twelve or thirteen, and you couldn't put them in the infants' school, so a lot of them came to our school. The older girls like myself were given a class, just to teach them to speak English. I remember one girl – when I told her to say ‘and’ she couldn't. She said ‘aernd’ and she said ‘royce’ for ‘rose’. This used to annoy me, and I did bully the poor girl a bit. One day, in the playground, she was standing in a corner, crying. I went over to her, and I said in Yiddish, ‘Why are you crying?’ and she said, in Yiddish, ‘Everyone's laughing at me. You laugh at me. I can't say like you say the word in English. I can't say “rose” – I say “royce”.’ I said, ‘But you've just said “rose”!’ After that I became very friendly with her.
Florrie Passman
My sister and I went to the Aldersgate Ward School. It wasn't a Jewish school, and