school life recorded

[Susan Kitchen]

Just thought i would make a suggestion to all those in the School section. Many years a go i was on holiday in St Agnes in cornwall. It was the centenary of the village school. Someone had put together a booklet recording a few years of the schools life. I don't come from or have any relatives from St Agnes but it was very interesting to read about the childrens daily life. How a couple of lads were not in school because they still had no shoes, or they were stone picking. Another girl had to rush home because her mother was having a baby. The booklet records countless reasons why some children were not at school. Some tragic and some really funny. The punishments they got for the least little thing. And fun day's such as mayday etc. It also records how numbers dropped at the school due to a Scarlet fever epidemic. Realising that some desks will never see their occupants again. To sum it up you get a good feel of the village life and in particular school life in Victorian times.
The school your interested in may have done something similar. Worth asking or if the school is no longer there then you could try the local archives.
Anyway just a suggestion.
Susan

[Jan1954]

It is a good suggestion, Susan. I have a number of books about the villages in which my ancestors lived that shed light on what was happening at a given time. Excerpts from school registers have also been included in a couple of them, showing reasons for non-attendance such as, "John, Joseph and Elijah Smith absent. Harvesting."