Havergal College - Magazine Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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Havergal College Magazine no speaking was allowed in the dormitories after we went up- stairs to bed. Anyone turning round to look at the clock in service on Sunday was severely taken to task. And no one might go upstairs during the day without leave. Quite often during meals, when we had been too noisy, we were condemned to spend the rest of the meal in entire silence. In byegone days it had been the custom for no speaking to be allowed at any meal. Certain traditions, relics of this age, reached down to my time in the shape of peculiar signs that were made instead of asking for the various things upon the table. When we were put under the silence rule we all resorted to these signs : the three middle fingers placed on the table meant, Please pass the milk, the little finger indicated the need of salt, all five fiingers water, and so on. The diet was exceedingly wholesome and exceedingly plain. For breakfast we had milk and bread, the only possible vari- ation was in the milk ; we could have it either hot or cold. Whichever we chose we had to drink half a mugfull — we had large mugs without handles — and in order to show that we really had no milk left in the bottom of the mug we had to turn it upside down on our plates. Twice a week we had porridge for breakfast. Dinner consisted of two courses, some sort of meat and vegetables and puddings or pies. Tea was like break- fast, milk and bread, but on Sundays we had a piece of cake each, and on the two half-holidays we had extras, butter or cheese or jam and tea, coffee or cocoa. On Friday nights we were allowed to have our own jam which we brought with us from home. The extreme plainness of the fare has been done away with by now, indeed the change began at the end of my time, when the sixty eldest girls had tea and bread and butter every evening. But in spite, or perhaps because, of the great simplicity of life, we were gloriously happy. The school was built of grey stone round three sides of a square. The west wing was the girls ' , the east wing the boys ' , and the centre contained the library and other public rooms and the Headmaster ' s quarters. Stretching between the two wings was the boys ' playground and the girls ' green. On the boys ' wing straight opposite to us was a large clock surmounted by a weather vane in the shape of a lamb. This clock regu- lated the time for the school and for the whole village. One of the jokes to have over a new child was to announce that when the clock struck twelve at midnight the lamb came down and grazed on the green. Quite true, doubtless, only the clock was one which never struck any hour at all ! A narrow strip of flagged pavement separated the boys ' playground from the green. This was neutral ground and was known as The Flags, and on the Flags brothers and sisters 21

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Havergal College Magazine ACKWORTH. Hurrah! Weekly pence to-night! You would have heard this remark made by many of the hundred and twenty girls at The School had you been there on any third Friday during the school year. The hundred and eighty boys each received their weekly pence on the Saturday following. It was given out to us at supper time. The mistress in charge came round the four large tables and deposited three pennies beside the plate of each one of us. I think we preferred three coppers to a silver threepenny piece, they seemed to suggest more variety in the way of investment. The supply of money from which this came had been bequeathed to the school by a man much interested in its foundation; each pupil in the school was entitled to re- ceive one penny per week. How we valued it ! We all of us had some pocket money from home as well, but that in no wise made us less appreciative of the weekly pence. We could get permission on the Wednesday and Saturday half-holidays to go across the road to Simpson ' s, or down the road to AA 7 alker ' s, the small shops where we laid out our money. You may guess on what our weekly pence chiefly went ! My own personal tastes led me to invest my three pennies thus, (1) a penny iced bun, (2) a penny bar of Fry ' s plain chocolate, (3) half a pound of Victoria plums at twopence a pound, when in season. Materials for sewing and letter writing could be purchased within the school. The Mistress on Duty kept an excellent vari- ety of fancy work, paper and envelopes, even postage stamps and birthday presents in a small chest of drawers kept in one of the form rooms. Sometimes we would say, Miss Taylor, may I buy so and so off you? She would look down at us with withering scorn and say, Can you see it on me? Is it on my sleeve? Gardens were a great feature of the school. A certain raised part of the grounds was laid out in small garden plots and the girls were allowed to rent these for half a year at a time. The rent of a garden was sixpence a half-year, and two girls usually shared one patch. Those gardens that had shades were the favorites; a shade was a square-shaped hole provided with a moveable sloping glass lid ; in this miniature greenhouse we planted ferns and water moss, and each shade was usually tenanted by a pet frog, the pride of the owners. Prizes were awarded annually for the best gardens. I never got a prize, but one year my shade received honourable mention. We went for a walk once a week, on Thursday, a grand scamper across beautiful country. This was the only time dur- ing the week that we wore hats. Some of the rules at Ackworth were very strict : for instance, 20

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Havergal College Magazine or cousins might walk up and down together. When a boy wanted his sister he had to stand at the top of the Flags and wait; sometimes there would be quite a little crowd standing, and the sisters would then go and join them ; or it might be the sister who had to wait fo r her brother at the corner of the green. Games were entered into keenly; we played cricket and tennis and croquet in the summer, and hockey and chivey (prisoner ' s base) in the winter. The playgrounds were very large, there were two of them besides the green and the ash tennis courts. The boys had their own playground and fields for cricket and football. When I was at Ackworth we had a fine open-air swimming bath, but we were never allowed to stay long in the water, as it was usually chilly until the end of June, when we went home for the holidays. As a result the standard of swimming was a poor one. I recollect well one day in our half-hour ' s recess going down to the bath with the only four other girls who could swim and we all five, one by one, attempted and succeeded in swimming the width ! We each received s ixpence, as a prize ! Since then the bath has been covered in and swimming and life saving and diving have gone forward wonderfully, and I have pleasure in recording the fact that within the last three years Ackworth has been awarded the Hundred Guinea Gold Cup offered by the Roj al National Life Saving Institution, in open competition over the two hundred other schools which entered for it. A number of visitors used to come to the school during the course of the year, some of them came frequently and we got to know them and to look forward to their coming. One old man in especial we used to find most entertaining. He was tall and had a very long snow-white beard. His hobby was elocution. He used to come into all the classes and give us demonstrations and then we had to try the passages after him. Out of school hours he would sometimes suddenly appear from nowhere, armed with a huge basket of oranges or apples ; when a crowd had collected he would say, Any girl who catches can have, and then he used to throw the fruit high into the air. Very often he recited to the whole school in the lecture room. Pieces after the style of Peter Piper had a fascination for him, he used to get the headmaster to time him and he always tried to beat his own record. There was one piece that began something like this, There were two boot-blacks, a white boot-black and a black boot-black. And the white boot-black said to the black boot-black, ' Black these boots black! ' And the black boot-black said ' No ! ' and blacked the face of the white boot-black. Another piece depicted the alarm of some ladies when a mouse ran across the floor. The old man used to have 22