Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

In 1954, having floated to the top of the RMS as a Maths Grecian, I was surprised to be awarded the Vidal Prize, I suppose because there was no one else in my year to give it to. I have always meant to try and find out who Vidal was. I now believe he was Alexander Thomas Emeric Vidal (1792–1863), naval officer and hydrographer. However his bio (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/38094?docPos=1) does not reveal any link to CH. This august website seems to contain an expert for almost any CH question so I throw it open: have I got the right man, and what was his connection to CH?

I can't give any information on Vidal, but was the prize associated with a buckle of a different shape from the usual Broadie (lobulated and slightly wider)?

No, that was a Travers buckle of which there were only a few and lent out on a seniority basis to Mathemats. I had the use of one I suppose for my last term or two but, as with Vidal, I still have no idea who Travers was or why his buckles.

But then there is loads of stuff that turns up on this site of which 8 years at Housey left me totally ignorant. I suppose in Sgt Usher's phrase I went around 'with my eyes wide shut'.

Another curiosity of the day was that the RMS plate was not worn with 'buttons'. I rationalise this today with a desire to recycle 'buttons' from one wearer to another.

postwarblue wrote:
Another curiosity of the day was that the RMS plate was not worn with 'buttons'. I rationalise this today with a desire to recycle 'buttons' from one wearer to another.

The reason for that was historical. Grecians were part of the old 'Grammar School' in London. So you couldn't be in two schools at once, and if you became a Grecian, you had to leave the RMS.

michael scuffil wrote:... if you became a Grecian, you had to leave the RMS.

Quite right too. The RMS was training you, at somebody else's expense, to be a navigator in the Royal Navy. By the age of 16, say, you should have been a useful midshipman. If you were still skiving about studying the classics, why would the RMS go on paying? That must have been the logic of it, and it would have made sense up to about the end of the nineteenth century.

I didn't leave the RMS when I got my buttons, it was just that the plate was no longer worn. However the distinction in London days is valid as the RMS then was a school within a school.

There were two doors to the RMS - children entering the school on the RMS strength, usually as orphans of naval people, and 'volunteers' who joined the RMS ion a vacancy after evincing a desire to join the RN.

What is the current mode of entry to the RMS?