Dicipline at St Andrew’s – by GS

My next earliest memories would have been starting primary school in Ham which was the only school in Ham then, it was St Andrew’s School which is now St Thomas Aquinas Church.

Yes actually I was slightly late starting school because it was the only school in the village, St Andrew’s, and all my brothers and sisters went there and my family went there, for some reason or other I was almost 6 years old when I started school and normally you start at 5.  I don’t know the real reason for that was, it might have been because they were tight for spaces, because as I say it was the only school in the village, but that’s where I started.  It was a nice little school but very, very strict, a bit draconian really in comparison with today’s schools and there was six classes, two Infant classes and you had a small playground were we used to play with the Infants and when you graduated up to the third class you went into a bigger playground, but I stayed there until I was 11 years old and then I always remember as I said in my book it was a bit draconian and very strict there and the Headmaster lived in Ham Street and his name was Mr Gomm, and I know children shouldn’t be afraid of their headmaster but most of them were feared of Mr Gomm, and he was quite brutal for a teacher and so strict and his office was a little corrugated green sort of building in the playground and as a I said in my book when you were sent out there for the cane, it seems quite terrible when you think of it now but when you reached the age of about 9 he sort of deemed it fit for you to be caned when you misbehaved and I was no angel at school so I can remember being sent out to that little shed and you knew as soon as you went out there that it was going to be the cane.  It certainly instilled some discipline into your life but looking back on it he was rather brutal really.

It probably did it, there was a certain teacher there, Miss Webster was her name, she was like an Indian I think she was from that part of the world, India or somewhere round there, in those days in the very early 50s you didn’t see many coloured people at all, if any, it was a novelty if you saw a coloured person in those days, but she was quite dark, but she seemed to take a bit of a dislike to me and one or two of my mates and we were everlasting being sent out for the cane and I used to think why does she keep picking on us?  I always put it down to being some sort of dislike but so I sampled it on a few occasions but it must have done some good because it wasn’t the fact that you went straight back into the classroom and started misbehaving again, you went back and thought to yourself oh I don’t want to do that again.  If she decided to pick on you and send you out there you might not have been misbehaving to the extent where you deserved the cane but sometimes she used to think that you did deserve and that’s how you got it, I mean nowadays it wouldn’t be heard of, caning young boys of 9 years old would it?  All the teachers there were very strict when the whistle went at 9 o’clock and you all lined up in the playground to be sent into your various classrooms, we’re talking about just after the war years, post-war and people couldn’t afford very much and everyone was on the breadline and struggling and they used to inspect your shoes and if you had dirty shoes and things like that I can remember this Mr Gomm chap, the headmaster, would say go home and get your shoes cleaned and come back when you look respectable and things like that.  In the classroom they had finger nail inspections and if you had dirty nails they were very strict on those sort of things,