History Group Rescues the Records

The discovery of an original, hand-written document dating back over a hundred years, is always exciting but for the local historian there are usually layers of meaning beyond the obvious as well as questions to ask about who created it and for what purpose? What does it conceal and what does it reveal? This is as true for a love-letter as it is for a tax return.

In Benhall we are lucky to have the first Admissions Register and the first Log Books for Benhall School. These documents take us back to the last years of the nineteenth century, when a nation-wide effort by the state and local authorities created free compulsory education for every child in England and Wales. In 1861 there had been two million children without a place in any kind of school and many more who attended only briefly. Anyone who has studied their family history will know the frequency with which a marriage certificate was signed with an “X”, a sure sign of illiteracy. By 1914 there was a full-time place for every child and most took advantage of it, including the 700-plus children who were admitted to Benhall School between 1872 and 1892, whose names, addresses and dates of birth are in the surviving Register.

The landscape of childhood changed forever in these years. The Admissions Register was a rigorous exercise in the new bureaucracy, designed so that “the attendance and progress of every child might be tested with ease and accuracy”. The Head Teachers who made the daily entries in the Log Books were following a formula dictated by the Department of Education, intended to provide evidence of the working of the new system. There are few references to individual children, but we can read between the lines for some understanding of life in Benhall during that time.

Parents had been accustomed to having their children about the home, either caring for younger ones or earning a few pence. In the records of low

attendance we can recognise their reluctance to accept change, the difficulty and expense of sending children to walk to school in all weathers, the need to have extra hands at harvest time. Log Book entries mirror the farming year, the rain and snow, and the waves of infectious diseases which plagued Victorian childhood. There were other distractions too. In June 1893 we read: “only 42 children were present this morning, there is a circus in Saxmundham.”

Compulsory education was brought in against a background of worsening rural poverty, during the Agricultural Depression of the 1870s and 1880s. Movement

and migration, as families shifted about looking for better opportunities, are reflected in the column for “School Previously Attended” in the Admissions Register. Thousands emigrated too, using the modern railways and steamships to seek a better life far away. In the Log Book for June 1893 we read that “Mrs Chase called with her little boy Arthur to inform me that they were starting for London today and sailing for New York on Saturday.”

One Head Teacher used spare columns in the Register to record the later lives of some Benhall School pupils. Acting perhaps on a whim, he or she inadvertently created a rich resource and a window on individual lives.  There is a possibility here to match names with the census and ponder about what influenced the chances of a young man from Benhall becoming  a watchmaker in British Columbia or a timekeeper in the South African mines, as opposed to a footman in Aldeburgh and a cleaner of beets in Benhall?

Looking Back to School

From Benhall to Queensland?

Recently members of the History Group have been helping Benhall School to tidy up their seven crates of records - which range over a century, from a log book and a register dating back to 1893, to miscellaneous papers about school visits in the 1990s. The aim is to have the oldest records scanned before depositing them safely in Suffolk Records Office. Scanning will make them more accessible both to the School and to family historians. In their existing form they are too fragile to be handled on a regular basis.

Whilst tidying and labelling,we have had a peep at some of these archives. The Admissions Register is one of the most interesting, giving the names of the children in the order in which they enrolled. It starts with Charles Sawyer, signed up as Number 1 on the 1st of October, 1867. His father was George Sawyer. The family lived in Benhall Green. Charles was born on 3rd September, 1858 so he was eleven years old when he started school. He left school in Ocober 1874, aged 16 - unusually late for that time - perhaps he had started to help out as a monitor or pupil teacher?

The very last entry in this Register, at Number 733, was signed in on 13th February, 1893. He was Frank E. Chambers. His date of birth was 23rd August 1889, so he was barely four. As his father was John Chambers, address “Schoolhouse” this is perhaps because his father was the School Master and young Frank was getting an early start.

From Number 400 onwards, a different hand, often in pencil, writes in the column “Dates of Presentation in Successive Standards” (otherwise little used) an occupation, which seems to be what became of the child, where this was known, rather than the occupation of the parent or guardian. To confirm this, comparison would have to be made with the census for 1891 or 1901. For instance, against the name of Alfred Herring, the words “Grocer and Draper” are recorded; James Gibson,”Labourer and Bricklayer”; other occupations cited include Footman, Shoemaker, Upholsterer, Watchmaker and Ostler. There is some evidence of emigration in “Farmer, Queensland” and “Toolmaker, New York”. No occupations are written against girls’ names, consistent with there being little choice for women’s work in those days other than domestic service and after marriage, seasonal farm work. Or did Benhall young women leave school to become teachers, dressmakers and milliners, laundresses and nurses, but no-one thought it worth recording?

In the front of the Admissions Register is an alphabetical list of all the children enrolled, so family names are easy to find and there are many which are recogniseable today. When the Admissions Register has been scanned, it will become accessible, either in digital format or as a hard copy, to people researching their family connections with the school.

Days in School Life

When universal schooling was new in the late 19th century, and for many years afterwards, head teachers were required to keep a log book, much like a captain’s log on board ship, recording the daily life of the school - numbers attending, lessons taught, visitors, teachers off sick and any breaks in the routine. These accounts, meticulously hand-written, give us a glimpse not only into school life but the life of the village generally.

In the oldest log-book, dating from 1893 to 1936, we can see how farming dominated the year, as the Harvest Holiday began in August and ended four weeks later in mid-September, often with a complaint that the children did not return on time - attendance recorded as “unsatisfactory” and even “abominable”. Time off for blackberry picking was allowed, and time was simply taken for collecting acorns when needed. The chief causes of absence though, throughout this period, were extreme weather and sadly, infectious disease. We see frequent references to influenza, measles, mumps, scarlet fever, whooping cough and, most dreaded of all, diptheria. This often fatal illness sometimes led to the school being closed for weeks at a time by the “MOH” - Medical Officer of Health. We get a sense of how the teachers’ lives were made difficult by illness - both their own and the children’s - as well as a shortage of resources. The Head Teacher never really complains but the following entry strikes a plaintive note: “The stove in the Main Room has not been repaired. I am still without assistance in the Main Room. There are many colds and coughs and chillblains among the children.”

The Original Show?

This log book covers the period of the First World War but contrary to what we might expect, there are only three references to the effects of the conflict. On February 23rd 1917 the Head notes that the school was closed for a half holiday when “Lady Rendlesham’s tea for women land workers” was the reason. In March 1919 he notes that the woodwork instructor has been demobilised so is back on duty and on July 18th, 1919 a holiday is recorded: “to mark the celebration of peace.” That’s all, but as so often with historical records, it is a silence which is more telling. Every year, from 1893 when the book starts, to 1913, on a weekday in late September, the school year features a day’s holiday, sometimes a day and a half, for “The Benhall Cottage Garden and Allotment Show”. Nothing, else, just that one-line note. No further explanation was given, as if this were something so ordinary, so customary, as to be immediately understood - like the Harvest Holiday.

After 1913 the Show disappears from the school record. It just stops. The war appears to have put an end to it. Or was it moved to a Saturday? Or was the current Benhall and Sternfield Memorial Flower Show, instituted in 1946, in some ways a revival of the original Cottage Garden Show? When did it begin - perhaps sometime in the nineteenth century? What happened on Show Day that required the School to be closed? More research needed, maybe starting with local newspapers of the 1880s and 1890s?

The History Group will be fund-raising with the School over the coming months to pay for the costs of scanning and printing these records, so that they can be preserved and made available. Lookout for rundraising events in this connection. Taking part will help to keep our village history alive for future generations.