"ALL GIRLS TOGETHER"

[anniexf]

Another 8's at last, Annie!
Yes we all moaned about staff, food, rules etc but generally felt that to be only 40-50 years behind the times over 400 years was not too bad!

It was the entire mindset that was 40-50 years behind the times; the rules were just one expression of it, a stubbornly pre-war outlook. A trivial but eloquent example: even when jiving was well-established in the real world, we were still being taught the Veleta. When were we expected to use that particular social skill - in some imaginary situation derived from memories of DR's own girlhood? Or perhaps from her Cheltenham Ladies' College days?
The same objective comparison is valid for most of what went on during my years there.
I didn't have the knowledge, experience or confidence to deal with what was blighting my life, and there was certainly no-one I could confide in. When I began to disintegrate mentally in front of DR (bowling practice in the nets one evening), her immediate reaction was to send me to the Inf. for a couple of days' rest. I was prescribed little white pills, to be administered 3 times a day, after meals. Nobody bothered to warn me these were tranquillizers, & that they had side-effects! Result: I felt even more exhausted than ever but didn't know why, & felt guilty that I wasn't getting better!
What I now consider unforgiveable, but then thought normal, was that no-one felt it necessary to ask what was troubling me; & I certainly wasn't courageous enough to volunteer it, it seemed too awful. The attitude was "get her functioning again asap"; and if little white pills seemed to do the trick, so be it.
If there had been someone in authority who was perceptive enough to offer me the right kind of support, my difficulties might have been tolerable. "Tranquillizers and get on with it" was a cop-out all too typical of DR's tenure.

[kerrensimmonds]

Strangely, I had quite the opposite experience with DR. I've written about it elsewhere on this Forum. When I was 14 I went back to school a wreck, spending time curled up on radiators, crying. It followed a horrible holiday at home when my parents had been bickering the whole time and I think I believed that they would separate. I didn't talk to anyone at school about it - one just didn't.
Unbeknown to me (until my mother told me about it, around 25 years later....) DR phoned my parents and summoned them to Hertford. (I referred yesterday to the fact that they were scared stiff of her!). She told them about my distress and asked to know what was going on. They were mortified, patched up their differences, let me know that they had, and things improved for me from then on. I never knew they had been in the school that day. When my mother told me about it, all those years later, I was amazed at the remarkable extent of care for one silly little insignificant pupil.
I'd also add that I know of other pupils who experienced her rather more direct care and interest (e.g. taking them out in her car for picnics, if they had been left behind on a Long Saturday), and of others to whom she was incredibly generous out of her own purse - providing they were sworn to secrecy.
Regarding the little white pills, I am sure DR herself did not prescribe them. Dr Jory used to boast in later years that he could cope with all the ailments presented by little girls with one of two remedies - aspirin or the contraceptive pill. The former for aches pains and headaches and the latter for anything hormonally related. He was probably trying to shock his audience!

[Lizzyfrog]

This is my first post, though I've dipped into some of the Hertford-related threads with huge interest a few times since discovering this amazing memory-tickling site. I was only at CH for three years, in 7s (1968-71), but it was a very formative three years, and has a lot to answer for! I'm glad there are some lovely, human memories of DR from other people but have to say that the posts relating to her end of term interviews are closer to my own memories and actually had me briefly in tears for my 11 or 12 year old self (self-indulgent but couldn't help it). I remember very clearly the humiliating and depressing feeling of her telling me I was below standard (even the exact words, more or less), when I honestly thought I'd been doing ok and had been trying rather hard to get things right! Maybe she believed that criticism would spur us on to better things, but it left me feeling ashamed and miserable and thinking I didn't belong, feelings it took some years to overcome even when I was happily ensconced in day school. I never suspected that anyone else got anything less than glowing reports, I don't remember comparing notes afterwards. PS Does anyone know what happened to Elaine Woods? She was my house ma: a lovely, clever, girl, witty and funny. She once wrote, most articulately, to my parents, telling them some of the horrors that went on at CH and backing up my (successful) request to go to a mixed day school!

[fra828]

Hello Lizziefrog, did you have a sister in 8's?

[anniexf]

Strangely, I had quite the opposite experience with DR. ... I was amazed at the remarkable extent of care for one silly little insignificant pupil.

Regarding the little white pills, I am sure DR herself did not prescribe them. Dr Jory used to boast in later years that he could cope with all the ailments presented by little girls with one of two remedies - aspirin or the contraceptive pill. The former for aches pains and headaches and the latter for anything hormonally related. He was probably trying to shock his audience!

This example tends to underline DR's selective approach; some people were worth her attention, others weren't. Heaven alone knows what her criteria were.

No, I wasn't suggesting DR herself prescribed them! My point was that she was quite content to leave it at that. I wish she had possessed the vision to realise that some desperately unhappy teenage girls needed more than a pill or a pep-talk!

Nevertheless, I suppose the most positive way of dealing with the past is with Voltaire's adage in mind: To understand all is to forgive all.

[Lizzyfrog]

Hello FRA - yes, I did (and do!) have a younger sister, Alison, who was in 8s for a couple of years. Were you a contemporary of hers/ours? I remember she was friendly with a girl called Carina Williams... She and I both found boarding school very hard - if you remember her you may also recall that she managed to run away! Aged 12, and about four foot nothing, off she went, with nothing but some Ribena and a sandwich in a bag, over the wall to Hertford East, up to Liverpool Street and then on another train to King's Lynn where our father was already waiting for her, having been tipped off by me (I climbed over the wall, too, down behind the swimming pool somewhere I think, to a phone box - it never occurring to me to speak to a housemistress or DR)! I was later hauled into Dot's office where she was stern but actually quite kind - and Alison was "allowed" to leave at the end of term! I have some fun memories of midnight feasts in 8s, which I snuck into once or twice: we stuffed cotton wool around the alarm on the fire escape outside the dorm and I would nip over and join her for some delicious illicit tuck! We had "MF"s in 7s too, and I often wonder if Ma B (Mrs Browne) actually knew about them and turned a blind eye. She wasn't as bad as some of the HMs. I think 8s HM was called Priggers, but I might have that wrong - didn't she have a daughter who was there sometimes, who had a hole in the heart or some other problem?

[olefours]

Regarding the little white pills, I am sure DR herself did not prescribe them. Dr Jory used to boast in later years that he could cope with all the ailments presented by little girls with one of two remedies - aspirin or the contraceptive pill. The former for aches pains and headaches and the latter for anything hormonally related. He was probably trying to shock his audience!

Towards the end of my Upper Vth year, DR sent for me because my periods hadn't started. She said 'something could be done about this' if I was worried. I wasn't, but wonder now whether Dr Jory would have offered his aspirin or his contraceptive pill.
DR's 'Tampax' talk that year was one of the few times I was able to listen to her without feeling guilty.

[J.R.]

........And after reading that, I'm off for a pint

[olefours]

........And after reading that, I'm off for a pint

I could reminisce for hours about Dr Jory and Sister Summers' conversations JR, but I fear you might be tempted into more than one pint.

[englishangel]

He can resist anything but temptation

[kerrensimmonds]

Ho Ho! How many people remember the Tampax talk? I was too young..... I think it was the Upper IV upwards who were summoned into the School Hall after lunch, while the rest of us scuttled back to our Houses/Wards to wonder what was going on. The others came back chortling... and had to tell us that a gardener had found an empty Tampax box in the rubbish and had reported it to Miss West. She had immediately called the upper school plus a year or so to a public meeting to tell them that using Tampax would ruin them for their future husbands. Poor naive old thing....I realise that I am a lone voice, but I do feel that this shows not only her own naievety (which I witnessed for myself in abundance many years later) but also the extent to which she was worried for the wellbeing (not only then but later) of the girls who she saw as her charges.

Also, in response to an earlier posting on this thread which suggested that my recount of DR's calling my parents to task was evidence of her preferential treatment of some pupils, I would say that when I was at school I was NOT a preferred pupil! I was ever so mediochre, and was not made a Prefect, nor anything like that. I stumbled up through the school, an unespecial pupil in the lower realms of the A stream, quite good at sports, but became a Monitress in 2's only because there were two of us left in the Upper Sixth, so we both became Mons. I was never sought out for any preferential treatment - which is why I was so surprised, many years later, to learn of the action which she had taken to secure my wellbeing.

[anniexf]

That reminds me of a Scripture lesson where DR was trying to explain circumcision. She couldn't bring herself to say "penis" ( I expect we would all have tried to stifle giggles if she had, it was definitely not a word you'd expect from DR's lips!), so she rambled all around the subject, turning a deeper shade of beetroot by the second. Eventually she gave up & said that those of us with brothers would know what "foreskin" meant. Well, I had a brother & we'd been bathed together when were little, but I still didn't have a clue what she was on about!

[kerrensimmonds]

Maggie has already posted on this Forum about DR's inability to refer to specific aspects of the male body. I am sure that I am not alone in remembering that the Biology textbooks had whole pages removed, before we saw them. These pages related to reproductive systems - possibly even in rabbits, let alone humans. But I can't believe that DR alone was reponsible for those excisions... it must have been the Council of Almoners, of whom so was so terrified througout her tenure.

[Katharine]

I think I heard DR's first ever Tampax talk. As she says, if we used them we would be spoilt for our husbands, etc etc. I had forgotten that a box had been found.

Kerren may well say that she was not a preferred pupil but she was definitely a games star - how many first teams were you in Kerren? I would hazard Hockey, Tennis and Cricket but can't remember about Netball.

I was a Prefect in the end, but never considered myself a star pupil or a favourite in any way. I had narrow academic ability but NO ability in music and very limited in games. I was a Headmistress's Mon, but just because there were so many of us in 6s - there were 4 of us who stayed on after A levels for Oxbridge. It would probably have been unthinkable for us not all to be Mons for those last two terms, 2 had already been House Mons and so Susan Cottingham joined them as a House Mon, and I became DR's Mon. There also had to be an UVI House Mon so that there was one who slept in the House and not up in the Flat.

[olefours]

I am sure that I am not alone in remembering that the Biology textbooks had whole pages removed, before we saw them. These pages related to reproductive systems - possibly even in rabbits, let alone humans. But I can't believe that DR alone was reponsible for those excisions... it must have been the Council of Almoners, of whom so was so terrified througout her tenure.

Fair play to brave Miss Pye-Smith: in about 1959 we were shown two diagrams of the reproductive system of the rabbit, with very short notes on 'differences between the rabbit and the human'. That was our preparation for the '60s.