The Other side of St Chad's

Had it been just up to me, I would have stayed at the Grays Open Air School forever, but when I turned twelve Miss Williams the Head thought I should get the benefit of a Secondary School education.  For me that could only mean St Chad’s Tilbury. I could have told her she was making a awful mistake, I had heard some terrible things about St Chad’s, but after Easter off I went, I was not looking forward to it.

Despite the war, and its decimation of the male population, St Chad’s had an all male teaching staff headed by Mr Stone the Headmaster. Stone by name, and hard as a rock by nature.

First day of term, and his opening address to us new boys was,

“Up till now you have been taught by women, now you will be taught by men” as if all we had experienced up till now was some terrible mistake, that could and would now be corrected

The School, all boy’s, (the girls were separated from us next door) was divided into four streams, A B C & D all new arrivals were put into D, unless you came with exceptional credentials, which I did not.

Had St Chad’s a remedial class, which it did not, the whole of my class would be in it. It had it’s fare share of those who could not read, or write.  It was a case of sink or swim.  Since I was already an avid reader I thought I was ahead of the rest, but there were some things I had yet to learn.

In an English composition class, the teacher asked a question, and I stupidly went and answered it.  A boy sitting two rows to my right glared at me.  As we left the class at break time, someone said to me “your for it” I did not understand what he was on about. But outside the boy who had glared at me in class shouted “Come here Shirley” the tone in his voice told me to run the other way, so I did, but he walked, he had no need to run, he could take his time, for the playground was surrounded by a six foot iron fence, I was cornered, and got a duffing-up, so what was my crime.  Answering that question the teacher had asked of course.

You see unbeknown to me, young ‘Glare’ as I will call him, had fallen foul of that teacher the previous term, and had now determined that a state of non-co-operation should existed between the class and the teacher.

The teacher’s punishment would be that he should be denied the benefit of seeing the results of his efforts shine in the eyes of his students. Anyone breaking that rule got duffed-up.

What St Chad’s lacked in educational achievement it made up for in sporting triumph, if you by your sporting efforts, could add another trophy to the large cabinet in the Head’s study, then you got all the privileges you could ask for. The pride of the school was the boxing club, and two of its stars were in my class, two brother’s, the younger of which was already “Punchy” at the age of twelve, I watched him struggle as he tried to cope with his class work.

By the autumn my health problems overtook me, and the winter of 1947/48 the worst in living history saved me.  For in the spring, much to St Chad’s relief and mine, I was returned to the bosom of the Open Air School.

But all good things must come to an end, the Headmistress again, against my better judgement, thought it would improve my prospects in the world of work if I left school with a Secondary School Leaving Certificate. So in the autumn of 1949 back I went to St Chad’s, could I survive one last term?

Well actually I found that I could, back I went into the D stream, and guess what? there were all my old class mates, none of them had progressed out of “remedial” and I found that in my absence the dispirited staff had simply repeated the class work year on year, so it was for me a doddle, I had done it all before.

By now puberty had kick in, and we were treated to a lesson in biology, we copied a picture of a frog, and a cut away drawing of a daffodil, what asked the teacher was this lesson about, stunned silence, then someone ventured a reply, “Sex”, “Sex, what’s that”.  “Babies” someone, said, “doing it, “ another whispered,  “Ere dirty” said a third. With that we were apparently equipped for life.  No talk about condoms, then only available to married or engaged, couples. No talk on sexually transmitted diseases.

Next came lessons in personal hygiene, this to boy’s whose homes often lacked basic amenities like inside plumbing. It was common practice in poor families to only change underwear once a week, following the Friday wash.  Consequently in the summer some boys through no fault of their own smelled a bit ripe, so much so that one hot July day, the biology teacher told one boy that he stank, and to go home and don’t come back till you’ve had a bath, and some clean clothes.

Within the hour, the boy’s mother stormed in to the classroom, shouting and swearing, and caught the teacher a “fourpenny one” round the ears, knocking him off his high stool. Whilst he lay prone upon the floor she appriased him of the consequences for him if he ever called her boy smelly again. She was subsequently charge with common assault.

With puberty came sexual identity, and for one boy, lets call him Pinney,(Not his real name) there was no question about it, he was gay. And boy did he suffer for it. By now we got homework, and when the results were readout next day, some teacher’s used it as an excuse to have a go at Pinney.  He would be called out the front, to be humiliated, his entire pass misdemeanours would be paraded for the benefit of the class.

He was apparently bought up by his gran; all this and more was repeatedly thrown at him.

To his credit he would stand up for himself, and answer back, but each time he would in the end crumble.  Under the unremitting onslaught he would be reduced to tears, and uncontrollable trembling. It’s worth remembering that this was 1949, the swinging 60’s had not yet arrived, and homosexuality was still a criminal offence.

Christmas came as it always does, and I got my Secondary School Leaving Certificate, off I went to the Youth Employment Office for advice and guidance on my future.  The Youth Employment Officer was as old as Methuselah, and as deaf as a post. 

The following year I saw Pinney on the bus to Grays, he had shoulder length hair dyed blond, wore a smart grey two piece suit with pearls, high heels, and smoked a cigarette through a fashionable long holder.

He acknowledged me and smiled, he looked happy, at last he could be himself.