Miss Sarah

I remember staying with my Aunt Winifred in the Weald of Kent for a few weeks many years back. She was feeling lonely after the recent death of my Uncle and my father had suggested that I go down to the small market town where she resided in order to cheer her up. Aunt Winifred’s cottage was fairly adjacent to a private school which, although a girls’ school in essence, did accept junior boys who would then go to their own senior school not so far away once they had finished there.

As a teacher in the making at the time, I must say that I was highly impressed by the demeanour of the girls whenever I saw them walking through the town or past my aunt’s cottage. The sixth formers were the very epitome of everything one might hope for in a young lady attending a traditional English school. They were very nicely spoken without being affected in their accents, they were self confident without being arrogant and their dress was impeccable to say the least. Hair was neatly tied back, blazers and ties worn perfectly and they still attended school in an age when formal pleated skirts and white knee length socks were the norm for many of England’s schoolgirls right through to when their very last day of school at eighteen; and quite rightly so as it made them look wonderfully smart and enabled them to set a good example right the way down the school.

These were sixth formers who were allowed to leave school premises when they so wished and seeing these smartly dressed young ladies around the town most certainly gave an exceedingly good impression of their school as well as of the area as a whole. It was only on Saturdays that one saw the younger members of the school who would obviously acquire the necessary exit ‘chitties’ from their housemistresses on condition of good behaviour during the week. Therefore, it was not until the Saturday that I noticed the young boys and the first thing that impressed me was their very polite and respectful attitude, especially towards the prefects. I noticed such details as caps being raised as they passed them and, on one occasion, whilst in a shop, a couple of boys were easily overheard addressing a prefect as ‘Miss Sarah’ which clearly showed the high level of respect that prefects were held in by the younger boys.

Even at the time, I was very much inclined to feel that having girl prefects in charge of younger lads is a very good idea indeed. Firstly, girls are far more mature than boys and far less likely to indulge in the heinous act of bullying those smaller or more helpless when power is granted to them. Moreover, it most certainly helped the girls to gain experience in how to deal with young lads and be well prepared for motherhood in later life. Indeed, I discovered some years later that a disproportionately large number of these girls went on to become matrons, governesses and, especially, schoolmistresses at boys’ schools in particular and I am sure that it is due to the enlightened thinking of their alma mater that they were so admirably well disposed to exercising their talents in these areas.

Over the years, I have managed to establish contact with a couple of the boys who actually attended the school and, in both cases, they were very eager to sing its praises and talk of the old place with great affection and I have recently been drawing their reminiscences together and would like to add them to this list at some time in the near future. The girls kept a tight ship at times, making sure that the lads were smartly dressed, walked in orderly fashion in the corridors, did their prep and such like. But they also had a great deal of humanity and genuine concern for their ‘underlings’ and were prepared to play a big sister role when required, acting as mentors, guides and confidants on many occasions and, upon others occasionally having to remind the boys of the necessary boundaries and reluctantly resorting to the prefect’s gym shoe or taking the odd erstwhile lad across their knees.