Den Childs wrote: ↑Mon Mar 29, 2021 8:55 pm
It's been mentioned that in other houses the punishment time included changing from, and back into, full housey dress. By my time this was regarded in Barnes B as unhygienic - you worked up quite a sweat on a run like that - and the times were adjusted to permit starting and ending in games clothes.
Dennis; "unhygenic"? By 2023 standards yes but those were different days. I left in 1961 (a bit before you arrived). The showers downstairs never worked and one was allowed a bath just once a week. No doubt we were hit by every bug around but getting ill (despite the conditions) was rare. In 9 years I got mumps, measles and one case of the flu but in each case they were country wide epidemics (There is a photo of 4 "Col A members" going into lunch - and one was an import!)
ISTR three other visits to the sicker; on one occasion I had come off my bike and skinned my face, shoulder, arm and hand. On another I had been smashed up by an older group of CH thugs and needed treatment. Don't recall why I went the other time - Dr Scott was away so one of the nurses decided to remove a number of warts painlessly. All that in 9 years. Hygene was not a factor in any of those.
IF you were weak enough then you got "Malt" which made every germ emigrate and the poor boy wish he could go as well.
Somehow that carried through to later life - I got malaria (and an attack camping in deep snow on top of the hills of the Brecon Beacons!) and I now have had another illness for 20 years which at last is improving despite the doctors.