Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

I live on a very far-flung island on the other side of the globe, so I'm rather out of touch, see.

Are today's dining-hall bokkers all East European or what?

Or have bokkers been phased out in favour of some load of old automated cobblers?

Is Richard Ruck a bokker, by the way?

And do bokkers (if still extant) still live in at CH and have jobs for life?

I look forward to RR's response with baited breath !!

Tell me, my children, ----- What, in the name of Heaven, --- is a "Bokker" ?

Enlightenment, please, for the Elderly

In my day, Neill, it was any (male) that was an estate worker or someone who did school maintenance.

Since then, as I understand it, it has been extended to include catering/house staff.

J.R. wrote:In my day, Neill, it was any (male) that was an estate worker or someone who did school maintenance.

Since then, as I understand it, it has been extended to include catering/house staff.

How things have changed.
We had Spanish girls cleaning the Houses in my time, and they could never be thought of as "Bokkers".
I know some who used to "entertain" these girls, and they would have been horrified to have it thought that they went out with "Bokkers".

So that explains it --- thank you !

The expression wasn''t current in my time, it would be interesting to know when it emerged --- Posts, perhaps on "Housey Slang " ?

Chrissie Boy wrote:Is Richard Ruck a bokker, by the way?

No.

This topic is elsewhere on the Forum and may well already be part of the Housey Slang topic...

J.R. wrote:In my day, Neill, it was any (male) that was an estate worker or someone who did school maintenance.

Since then, as I understand it, it has been extended to include catering/house staff.

When I was there I understood it referred exclusively to the catering staff, not any of the groundsmen or other workers. When I started it seemed loads of people used the word quite light-heartedly and in a way that was not necessarily intended to be offensive, but by the time I got to my Grecians it was quite frowned upon and considered derogatory.

Wuppertal wrote:

J.R. wrote:In my day, Neill, it was any (male) that was an estate worker or someone who did school maintenance.

Since then, as I understand it, it has been extended to include catering/house staff.

When I was there I understood it referred exclusively to the catering staff, not any of the groundsmen or other workers. When I started it seemed loads of people used the word quite light-heartedly and in a way that was not necessarily intended to be offensive, but by the time I got to my Grecians it was quite frowned upon and considered derogatory.

That's PC for yer !

My recollection is that in the early 1950s the term "bokker" referred not only to school groundsmen and maintenance staff, but also to any agricutural worker; ie, farmhands. I can remember travelling on the CH-Guildford line and four of us shouting at every farmworker we saw in the fields, "Ooh, ar, bokker." This struck us as incredibly funny at the time, but today I am severely embarassed by the memory; why we did it, I have no idea - definitely not something to be proud of.
Incidentally the maids - whether Spanish or Irish - would never, ever have been classified as "bokkers."

At the Hertford school - they were always 'Little Men".

Kim2s70-77 wrote:At the Hertford school - they were always 'Little Men".

Very true - but they were all little and totally interchangeable, I have no idea how many there were. They wore brown coats (like an old fashioned doctor's white coat but brown) We thought they were all war veterans, I wonder if they were.

Yes, I still recall the trundling of the trollies of the little men in their brown coats, and the way they brought in a ladder to put right the Dayroom clocks.

As far as I was concerned (see my dates) a bocker was a male rustic of a certain age, not necessarily employed by the school. It certainly didn't mean anyone in the kitchen, or the man who came to change the light-bulb. The school employed a few to sweep leaves, clean lavatories and that sort of thing. Martin Barker, housemaster of Maine A, urbane classicist, hall warden, was, on account of his name, nicknamed "Bocker", but you couldn't imagine anyone less bockerish.

I am amazed that the were no bockers in Neill's day. Does this mean a bit of Housey slang was invented c. 1950?