My blog disappeared from the web for close to 24 hours this week, which was a shock and a worry. Google removed it for breaking community guidelines, something I strongly dispute 😀😀😀. I asked for a review, and was re-instated without apology or explanation. Thanks to all who were concerned and contacted me. I very much hope this will not happen again, to state the obvious, but it it does I will try to update people on my Substack account - see box near the top of the home page: it costs nothing to follow me there (if you are asked if you would like to have a paid subscription just say no). And for now - it's so nice to be back! Glad to celebrate with one of the more obscure corners of my recent reading
On Your Marks by Gladys Mitchell
published 1954
St Kelvern's Launches Out by Carol Ann Pearce
published 1962
You never know what will turn up in the comments round here. Recently we got into a deep discussion on what schoolgirls wore for PE lessons.
Isn’t it obvious how that arose? For the post on
A
Bullet for Rhino by Clifford Witting
I used a John Verney picture of a 1949 cricket match: as it
happened there were girls on the pitch (there weren’t in the match in the book,
but the picture was so splendid I had to use it). So we all got into discussing
what they were wearing, and soon we were going over gymslips and PE tunics and suchlike. (And I
should mention that two knowledgeable readers are still discussing the book and
its philosophy - not PE clothes - in depth),
Marty mentioned a Gladys Mitchell book about trainee PE
teachers – so obviously I had to order it and read it immediately.
It is NOT a crime story – it is a 'career
novel' for what we would now call Young Adults. This was a very popular genre, looking
at career choices for (mostly) young women by means of following the story of a
fictional young woman (mostly – there were career books for boys, but it was
girls who loved them). I remember them in my own school, and in particular
there were popular series where a young nurse was followed through many books
in different jobs and probably romances.
These books were big in the UK and the US, and I
covered an American version in this post
Cherry Ames was quite the US institution, along with Sue
Barton – a remarkable comment from Birgitta
on the recent Little
House of The Prairie post revealed that Rose Ingalls Wilder
(daughter of Laura, and editor of the books) lived with Helen Dore Boylston,
who created Sue Barton.
But there were also books about for example air hostesses
(there would hardly have been ‘Jane Smith – Airline Pilot’ in those days) –
and, here, training to be a PE teacher.
There is a marvellous book by Kay Whalley,
who is plainly the all-time expert on this topic – she has an
unrivalled collection of the books, and writes about them entertainingly:
A Smart Suit and White Gloves | Girls Gone By Publishers
She looks in exhaustive detail at the career novel
for girls, and shows a huge number of covers, which are as fascinating as you would
expect.
Back to On Your Marks: This is the first non-Bradley book by Mitchell that I have
read, and I have to say that if I’d read it blind I would never have guessed
that it was by her. It’s an easy read, very much of its time, telling a straightforward
story. Of course training colleges featured in various Bradley books, along with
other educational establishments. It was her home ground, and there are
familiar items here: rags, a boys’ college nearby, teaching practice in
schools. As in for example
Spotted
Hemlock by Gladys Mitchell
There is a fire and brave rescue, as in the school in
St
Peter’s Finger by Gladys Mitchell
Other colleges in Orange
and royal blue: Laurels are Poison (a very early entry on the
blog, without much detail – I have become much more chatty over the years) and
a school in Death at the Opera
The
Detective wore magenta, orange and blue
These are the books in the Bradley series from just before
and just after, and honestly, the contrast is marked:
The Echoing Strangers 1952
Merlin's Furlong 1953
Faintley Speaking 1954
Watson's Choice 1955
I’d love to know more about how she came to write this book
The magisterial Stone
House site of course features and reviews the book, but doesn’t
really answer the question ‘what possessed her?’
They wear, by the way, a divided skirt to play hockey… we’d probably call that culottes now.
At Mitchell's college, when snow is on the
ground it is impossible to play hockey. But never mind! They play lacrosse,
because that is more up in the air. But what will they wear on their feet?
Nothing. They play lacrosse barefoot in the snow….
Now, for me the elephant in the room is Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey, one of my all-time favourite crime novels (and,
as regular readers know, the reason I was part of an Edgar-nominated writing
team, and went to New York for the ceremony).
That’s a book set in a very similar educational establishment – it was
published eight years earlier, though there is always a slight question mark over when Miss Pym is
set. There are unnerving similarities and huge differences. Would you ever
think that of two writers tackling the same subject Gladys Mitchell would be
the light-hearted one? Tey is about a million times darker. Mind you, the
Mitchell heroines, Lesley and Frankie, have maybe removed themselves from the
possibility of being murdered: in Miss Pym the Important Job at a Posh Girls’
School is at stake. Mitchell’s gals very creditably go to work in a new
Secondary Modern school, even though their qualifications could take them
somewhere more upmarket.
The book is an interesting read, either for social details
of the career choice and era, or for Gladys Mitchell completists. Count me in
for both.
I had a particular favourite book when I was young – St Kelvern’s Launches Out by Carol Ann Pearce, 1962 – which combined school story and career novel, I now realize. The heroine Elizabeth can’t decide what to do after school, so tries out a number of possibilities: she investigates acting and theatre, she applies for a job with an import/export firm that sounds very exciting, but then ‘we never send our female staff abroad’. She thinks about interior design and archaeology. At the same time, she and her friends join the school sailing club, and also try to help a shopkeeper who is being put out of business by a new self-service supermarket. And the girls join a local youth club to meet people from other backgrounds. The book is full of action, interest and humour: when I reread it because of this post I could quite see why I loved it so much as a child. Although the girls are posh and well-off, at a private boarding school, there is a definite attempt to look at the wider picture, and an implication that Elizabeth is going to continue her studies and try to do something good in the world. When someone says ‘You’ll probably be married within two years of leaving school’ it is clear this is not serious, and will be shouted down by Elizbeth - ‘And that doesn’t appeal to me either’ - and the others. Hooray for Elizabeth and her friends - young women with options.
P. Scotton playing hockey for Bundaberg in Bundaberg, 1933… | Flickr
Armagh Girls High School Hockey Team | Creator: H. Allison &… | Flickr
Great to have you back, sometimes you hear stories about appeals getting denied for no apparent reason. I guess some AI system reacted to something for inexplicable reasons.
ReplyDeletethank you! Yes I was nervous that the appeal would be refused and I would be challenging some AI system. It seems harsh that they did not tell me what had triggered the ban, and I had no way of looking at the blog to see if I could see anything problematic
DeleteI assumed the disappearance was some kind of glitch - glad you're back, though it all sounds a bit odd!
DeleteThank you! It was quite unnerving, because I thought Blogger was pretty safe, and I know I am respectable! Neither of those things protected me. We will just have to hope it doesn't happen again
DeleteGood to have you back, and quickly at that! I was long overdue a leisurely revisit of earlier postings to add (as always) a multitude of books gleaned from yourself and the comments. Always a joy, thank you
ReplyDeleteThank you for those kind words
DeleteSo good news! Welcome back! :)
ReplyDeleteThank you! Others' concern has cheered me up
DeleteSo glad your blog is back, Moira! How annoying for you! As for your post.... I remember the Cherry Ames books. I haven't thought of them in years, but I remember there were several of them .'Career books' are their own sort of niche, aren't they? There's something about them that fits in with the YA audience (even sometimes younger). And I shudder to think of the uniform I wore for PE....
ReplyDeleteThanks Margot. Yes, the more I think about the career novels, the stranger they seem - bu tthey were very popular.
DeleteThis is the first that I've heard of them and I'm 75. Nobody talked about careers to us.
DeleteThere were a lot of the books in most libraries (school and municipal) but perhaps it wasn't obvious what they were
DeleteIn response to Anonymous, I’m 81 and devoured the Cherry Ames and Sue Barton books about nursing, and the Vickie Barr series with an airline hostess protagonist. Also in my grammar school years I subscribed to a girls’ monthly magazine that regularly featured articles on careers for women. In addition, my all girls Catholic high school had an annual careers day with young women speakers, most graduates of the affiliated college, who were lawyers, bankers and so forth. Margaret.
DeleteThanks Margaret, that is so interesting. You were very lucky, I think there was obviously a large variation!
DeleteI wonder if Mitchell's PE training was behind the amount of walking that characters do in her books. Laura especially seems fond of long (multiple-mile) walks, and Mrs B herself doesn't flinch at going appreciable distances on shanks' mare.
ReplyDeleteVery true, and a likely connection. No-one is ever put off by the prospect of a long walk over rough territory - not true in real life!
DeleteOh yes, I remember those books. None of them suggested that I might do a Ph.d and become an academic, or even write crime novels, come to that ... And those school uniforms - nothing had changed by the mid sixties! As for the blog blackout, I wonder if Google took exception to that woman in a corset - though could anything be more sedate? Chrissie
ReplyDeleteThe expectations were definitely low, and Kay Whalley makes that clear in her book. A certain type of job, and then a boyfriend and then marriage...
DeleteThere've bene so many corset pictures on the blog, it's hard to see why they'd pick on that one. Also, if it was an image I'd expect them to take one post down, or ask me to - It was the disappearance of the whole blog that was so scarey.
Sue Barton does her training at Mass General Hospital (although I am sure it has a different or no name), just a few blocks from my office. Once when I was there visiting someone I happened into an exhibit which included the caps from the first class, even earlier than Sue! It is so deflating when you see something like that and there is no one by your side to appreciate it! I guess it was pre-blog.
ReplyDeleteThe worst online squabble my Betsy-Tacy discussion group ever had was one that began as a light-hearted conversation about the rival merits of Sue vs. Cherry Ames. I mean, yes, Cherry has exotic adventures but she's one dimensional! The Cherry fan left in a huff, never to be seen again.
I need to reread my John Verneys! I acquired the whole series but I think only the first three were published in the US. They make my head want to explode but I like them anyway. And I knew I owned a book by Carol Ann Pearce but unfortunately it is We're in the Sixth.
Solid gold student nurse content there Constance! I wonder if the sign of a true book afficionado (of a certain sort) is that you can get so excited by seeing a real setting for a fictional character. Speaking as someone who has chased characters all over the place, assigning houses where it wasn't defined byt the author: 'I think she lived in that one'.
DeleteI have a friend whose parents lived in a house where Katherine (from the Anya Seton novel) once lived - I have never envied anyting so much! Imagine...
I don't actually need to reread all the John Verneys I have to say, but February's Road I could read over and over. I got lost in the world-wide conspiracy plots of some of the later ones.
I'm off to look up that Pearce book - the only other one by her that I remembered was another St Kelvern book, one I no longer have. Never come across anyone else who knew of her...
Katherine is one of my all-time favorites and just Saturday I said I'd like to go to Lincoln to visit her grave. I would be VERY excited to even see a house she lived in. Periodically, I read Seton's other books but none is as good. I believe her granddaughter lives nearby and I sometimes think I should write to her and ask if I could interview her but then I chicken out.
DeleteI feel the same about the books - considering how much I love Katherine, it's surprising that none of her others made any impression.
DeleteI think my friend told me that the house had been hugely rebuilt, so only a small portion of it was Katherine-adjacent, but that's fine. You should so go and visit, and talk to the granddaughter... didn't you go off to see Dorothy Dunnett's Niccolo locations last year?
I may have said this before: near my house in historic Winchester there is a Beaufort Rd, named after one or more of Katherine's descendants, and every time I walk down it I think of her being the ancestor of all those English Kings and Queens, and what an extraordinary story hers was.
I read Friday's Tunnel - had NO IDEA there were others!
DeleteYou missed out! February's Road I thought was the best one. After that they were increasingly off-the-wall - but always with his lovely illos. His son sent me the set of magazine cover pictures that I use when I can on the blog, see the recent Bullet for Rhino post
DeleteWhile browsing through some of your earlier posts I’ve sometimes come across eg spam comments offering to sell you black market firearms (usually in Italian). Perhaps AI picked up something like that …
ReplyDeleteI can’t say I’m tempted by the Gladys Mitchell book but both A Smart Suit and White Gloves and St Kelvern’s Launches Out are going on the list (as is another book mentioned on the Girls Gone By website - Heroines on Horseback: The Pony Book in Children’s Fiction).
My PE teacher was very much in tune with the “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” worldview but even she never expected us to play outdoor games barefoot in the snow – we had cleated hockey/lacrosse boots! Along with very short, tight (but stretchy) navy blue skirts and white short-sleeved polo- style shirts, theoretically embroidered with our names, but most people just sewed a woven name-tag on at the top left.
Sovay
I'm usually quite sharp on deleting such posts - but even so it seems unfair to blame me for them.
DeleteI've just been looking up Carol Ann Pearce, and there are many copies of St Kelvern's around, but fewer of her other books, that must have been her bestseller. There is a book on how to dress for your career which is expensive but tempting. In St K, Elizabeth has a highly unsatisfactory interview in London (for the import/export job, see above) and stalks off in a rage. Then as she walks through central London she sees women dressed in nice summer dresses, and such dresses in shops, and goes and buys herself one. That made a huge impression on me when I first read it - I wanted to be that self-directed, independent young woman.
We had hideous gym tunics and yes we were supposed to embroider our names in red thread on the top left shoulder - I'd completely forgotten that!
Unfortunately fairness doesn’t seem to have been a factor! All alarmingly Kafkaesque - I take it you still haven’t had any feedback as to how Google justified either the deletion or the reinstatement?
DeleteI like the sound of Elizabeth more and more – St Kelvern’s may have to move up the list.
Sovay
No - all communication you would say is via an AI chatbot. No satisfaction, and for now I will just keep quiet.
DeleteThe St K book is very good fun - and I like Elizabeth because she isn't perfect: we see glimpses of her via the slightly-exasperated adults. I realized when I re-read it that a lot of it had really stuck in my mind for 50 years! The summer dress, how a small shop could become a deli to compete with a supermarket, the picture of the dreary rep theatre, Elizabeth accidentally writing a mad letter to a newspaper....
And I thought it was bad when playing soccer at my school; in order to indicate who was on which team, one side wore tops, and the other didn't - tops or skins. Actually, if I'm being honest, I just took it in my stride as being normal and even rational. As I suspect I have said before, the football match in Kes was close to being a documentary.
ReplyDeleteCombining Miss Pym and Gladys Mitchell in a single post does suggest a fascinating crossover where Laura and Kitty are sent undercover at the same time as Miss Pym is at the school and Mrs. Bradley turns up to cackle at intervals.
I remember the Kes comment! Despite my good solid city & state school upbringing, I only came across 'shirts and skins' later in life - it featured in an epi of Friends, so must have an American presence too.
DeleteOMG, the Tey/Mitchell mashup would be a work of genius. Love it. Please write it.
Of course Mrs B would latch on to the true culprit, being a professional psychiatrist and not an amateur in psychology as Miss Pym was! I think maybe Laura's other school chum, the quiet one, would fit in better than Kitty in the school. I just don't see it as Kitty's kind of setting, and she seemed so glad to get out of the teachers' school they attended!
DeleteI can also see Mrs B being rigorous with Miss Pym re: lack of qualifications, but then suddenly deciding that she might be better than some inadequate colleagues.
DeleteLaura would have cut a swathe through Leys, Henrietta wouldn't have stood a chance against her. She'd probably have been offered the all-important job at Arlinghurst - the summit of every ambition - and said she'd rather work for Mrs B
Alice, the quiet (but competent) one, does seem like the better option as potential sidekick for Laura – Kitty makes it clear from the start of Laurels Are Poison that she has very different plans for her future and is only at the teacher training college to appease her family. Alice might well have been in the running for Arlinghurst too, though she doesn’t follow through on the teaching career – in Watson’s Choice she’s a farmer’s wife.
DeleteSovay
I very much enjoyed The Worsted Viper, where the girls go on a boating holiday - completely incomprehensible but great fun. I note that in my post on it I say I have just read the book, I read crime books by the hundred, generally have a quick understanding to them – but I could not explain to you what was going on in this book. And I also point out that Laura is able to fell a villain because of 'the true aim and unthinking blood-thirstiness of her position as centre-half in the College hockey eleven.'
DeleteIn The Nodding Canaries, Alice is applying for a teaching position and has apparently had a different position at another school. There's no sign of the farmer, and not even an explanation as to the change in her circumstances!
DeleteVery Gladys Mitchell! Did Kitty want to be a hairdresser? Beauty therapist?
DeleteI remember Kitty giving Mrs B a fashion makeover in Laurels Are Poison! She just couldn't bear to see Mrs B in her usual wardrobe at whatever function it was. I don't remember exactly what Kitty's career goals were, but they definitely didn't include schoolmistress-ing. I know her business was mentioned in the Pageant book but my memory is letting me down on details.
Delete[To Kitty] “…a period of optional study was merely time spent in happy and, in a sense, profitable idleness, for she devoted most of the study periods to designing those fashions in hairdressing for which, five years later, she became famous …”
DeleteSovay
There we go. This is a niche complaint, but I always dislike god-like authors who put that kind of future moment in. 'She didn't guess as she sewed a simple dress that this was the start of...' and 'they started their business as a bit of fun, little suspecting...'
DeleteThough even worse are the authors who say 'as it happened, she'd ten years earlier thought to invest in a little-known company, just starting up...'
Can’t take GM’s word for anything, given that she’s disappeared poor Alice’s husband between 1955 and 1961!
DeleteSovay
Alice's husband suffered the same fate as Gavin's original given name--when Gavin first appeared his name was David, but somehow it became Robert in later books. Google's AI says the character of Alice is notorious for its "glaring continuity error"--which was pointed out to Mitchell, who admitted it as a "dreadful mistake". The disappearing farmer was apparently named Cartwright, which is kind of ironic to viewers of TV Westerns: if one of Bonanza's Cartwright men married someone, it was inevitable that the poor gal would be killed off, never to be heard of again. Some wags called this the Cartwright Bride Syndrome. In Mitchell's case it was the Cartwright Groom!
DeleteWriters are often not as careful about their characters as their readers are, and fail to remember vital facts...
DeleteThat's a hilarious linkup with Bonanza - I was thinking about that programme because of the Little House on the Prairie connection in a recent post.
I think the most flagrant Cartwright Bride situation was in three episodes each featuring one of Ben Cartwright's wives. The eps were each titled "[wife's name], My Love" and each ended with said Love's death, deeply mourned by Ben and existing son(s). And we heard no more about these women, as far as I know. I might have missed something along the way, but the wives definitely had no part in life on the Ponderosa!
DeleteOh my goodness, how surreal! So the boys had different mothers?
DeleteWe fondly remember visiting the US on a business trip - 1980s? - and saying to a local 'it was so weird, flicking through the TV channels in the hotel room, one channel was showing back to back epis of Bonanza' and getting the reply 'Oh yes, that would be the Bonanza channel.' It was all very un-English (limited channels, and Bonanza pretty much forgotten) (In England it would have been because one of the actors had died... )
What I most remember about my school uniform from the late 1960s was the heaviness of the fabrics - wool blazers, felt hats, heavy cotton blouses that demanded serious ironing skills, thick wool knee socks, and the fabled gymslips. We were required to buy winter and summer uniforms (gingham!!), hockey outfits, gym outfits, and art smocks, and all this for a not very affluent small town grammar school. For our first sewing project we cut out, hand sewed, and embroidered an apron for our cooking classes. Imagine having poor sewing skills and being forced to wear and display your lack of skill for years to come! By the time I left school, all this was changing. Gymslips, hats, and blazers became history, garments became more readily available and of lighter fabrics. However, some things didn't change - I wore a skirt to school from first day until last.
ReplyDeleteNerys
That all sounds so familiar to me, very similar experiences. I was one of the people who was really bad at sewing and couldn't even make an apron.
DeleteAnd yes - slow changes, but never anything but skirts. Ties and hats when I was first there, but they went quite soon. Chemistry overalls!
Things were starting to change when I arrived at the same kind of school in the earlyish 1970s – no gymslip (but skirt still required from first to last), no art smock, a single outfit for all PE. The gingham dresses were theoretically optional but not having them meant you were stuck in a pleated wool skirt and blazer throughout the summer term. Lower forms were still wearing ties and hats when I left, though they’d been done away with for the sixth forms. Sixth-formers had to wear the blazer but were allowed more choice of skirt style and the option of pale blue or lemon yellow blouses instead of white; also NYLON TIGHTS instead of the knee socks!
DeleteThe apron was clearly the universal first big-school needlework project, incorporating every process the teacher could think of in a single item. I made mine very very slowly, wore it in two or three cookery classes, then it mysteriously went missing over the summer holidays.
I was reminded of Kate Ruggles in The Family from One End Street, who gets a scholarship to a posh school; her family is pleased and impressed but they struggle to put together the collection of clothes she’ll need, and have to assemble an assortment of hand-me-downs and makeshifts and things that can be dyed or made over. My recollection was that the family didn’t get any help with the cost of this, but I checked and found I was wrong – the local council does give her a grant. The problem is they have no great sense of urgency and the payment won’t arrive until after the start of the first term.
Sovay
When I started at secondary school we actually had to wear gloves, and we had to prove this by showing our gloves to a nun on the way out of assembly every morning. (I find this hard to credit myself, but it is absolutely true). If you had forgotten yours, you would share a pair with your friend, trying to bulk out a single glove with perhaps a PE sock. We all became adept at this. This nun would also take you out of the line if she thought your skirt was too short.
DeleteMy great friend and desk companion in sewing was an amazing, very talented sew-er, and we sat next to each other for two years' lessons (after which I was happily able to give up). I like to say that during that time I failed to complete a very simple sewing bag (ie a sack to keep your work in) and she made amongst other things a coat, a proper winter coat. Still, we had endless very enjoyable chats.
I just had to flick through One-End Street and I too had completely incorrect memories of the getting and keeping of the school uniform. I had no memory at all of the trip to the seaside, the other girl wearing her full school uniform, Kate taking her hat and it getting blown away, earning money to replace it.... my goodness that book is action-filled.
I am astonished by the gloves! Not so by the skirt length issue – our headmistress used to do the checking in person, for skirt length and heel height. She also did spot checks for jewellery, which was strictly forbidden even if hidden under clothing. I recall a lecture from her one morning in assembly, informing us of a concession – girls who had had their ears pierced would be allowed to wear very small, plain gold studs. But she made it perfectly clear that having one’s ears pierced whilst still at school was NOT what she expected of her girls.
DeleteThe winter coat is very impressive – I became quite good at sewing at school and could run up my own gingham dresses, but I never considered tackling anything tailored.
I remembered Kate’s hat disaster, and the picking and selling of mushrooms to make money for a new one. I didn’t have time to look further on in the book and can’t recall whether there’s any mention of how she gets on at the new school, and whether her schoolmates accept the rather free interpretation of the uniform.
Sovay
I think the gloves might have been the one thing that was unique to my school. And really quite peculiar.
DeleteMy children's secondary school in the 2000s - a standard state comprehensive school - had bizarrely strict uniform rules: traditional outfit (no sweatshirts here), skirts for girls, ties for boys and girls, blazers at all times. The girls were not supposed to have their ears pierced, so in theory they had to get it done at the very beginning of the summer holidays, so that they could take the studs out when they went back to school in September without messing up the piercing.
At my convent school in the US in the late 50s-60s, we wore gloves to the daily 7:00 AM mass, really every time we were in the chapel. And when going home for a weekend, and on our return, we had to wear hats and gloves. No jewelry except a single religious medal and a watch; the many Latin American students were allowed to wear small gold or pearl studs in their pierced ears. Margaret
DeleteNot that much different when I was at school ten years later. Tell me, did you have mantillas? (for others: lace square which you could put on to go into a chapel or church if you weren't wearing a hat) - we used to have a box of them outside the school chapel, and my mother's generation always carried one folded up in their handbag
DeleteWe wore lace-edged netting veils that we kept folded up in our uniform blazer pockets, all nametaped in case of loss. I still have one as well as a beautiful black mantilla one of my roommates brought back from Spain for me, but that wasn’t for school use. Margaret
DeleteMany of us had our own mantillas, but we didn't name-tape them! I remember that some were sofft and drape-y, and others stiffer.
DeleteLucky you to have a lovely Spanish one
An uncle of mine "gained" a scholarship to a "major" grammar school in the 1930s, bur even with council grants it would have been impossible for his family to support him there. In the 1960s I was given council assistance with clothes at a direct-grant school, but there was still a "parents' club" which passed on clothes to one another. There wasn't the same obsession with "suitable clothing"" for particular tasks at the state grammar school, but there was the same concern with making it plain who went where - among students/pupils (were they distinguished by school?) as well as parents and teachers.
ReplyDeleteMine was a state grammar school, and they took it very seriously - though they did make a big effort to make some modernizing changes. Until the hats abolished (hooray!) it was a serious breach of school rules to be not wearing the hat outside school. (obviously, we all took the moment we climbed onto the bus)
DeleteThe comment about the uniform making it plain who went where made me think back. For American readers I will note that in the UK there used to be an exam called the 11 Plus. Those students who achieved a high enough score on this exam at the age of 11 went to a grammar school, a different secondary school from those who did not, with a distinctly different uniform.. I'm just now realizing (after 55 or so years) that these differences were not just of color but of quality of materials and of style. We must have looked like refugees from the 1930s with our gymslips and hats, the boys with their flannel shorts and tasseled caps. It was clear to those who saw us that we were the elite (sarcasm). I believe British public school students still wear uniforms that show exactly where they belong. I don't remember the year when the 11 Plus system ended, but it was while I was still in school. My mother never got over it. "You used to look so nice in that uniform." I clearly didn't, but now I see that she missed the social cachet of having a child at the grammar school. My children went to American public schools and never wore a uniform. The social and emotional impact of school clothes to a teenager is another subject and another can of worms.
DeleteNerys
Yes - similar experience. And we too moved to US - and for elementary school I thought it was wonderful to have no uniform, no downside at all. We came back to the UK so didn't experience JH or HS - were there downsides there?
DeleteI was commenting elsewhere about historians writing about eras I lived through: one of the things I get annoyed about is those who downplay the importance of the 11 plus in every area of life. They say things like 'it wasn't a big deal, children just went in one day & did a test, and they didn't really know what it was all about, and then they were just told what school they were going to.' This is SO FAR from the truth - of course the kids were completely alert to what was going on. And there were terrible injustices and mistakes in the borderline area - there were bound to be. And children minded and parents minded...
Weirdly, the only example I remember in fiction is in a book by Elfrida Vipont - she has someone fail unexpectedly IIRC, and she really enters into the feelings of the girl, the awfulness of waiting for the letter. I think in that case the solution is to send her to a posh private shcool, mind you, and Vipont was incredibly class-conscious and snobbish, but she did actually reflect what was going on for all those 11yo children.
I feel the 11+ must have featured in fiction of the era, I wonder if anyone else can pin down any references?
The 11+ crops up in J.L. Carr's The Harpole Report, set in a primary school like the one Carr himself was head of, and everyone - children, parents, teachers - hates it. It's even suggested that the results may be "fixed" by bureaucrats. Jean Hartley says somewhere that the "best" DG/grammar school in (or near) Hull had uniform items you could only get at a distant and expensive shop,
DeleteOur uniform used to be sold by the school, at the school, but then it moved into one of the major department stores in the centre of Liverpool, which at least made it available to everyone. In the summer holidsy older girls could get a job selling in that department, though they had to wear school uniform to do it.
DeleteI'm sure the 11+ is in Miss Read's Village School books, but the only thing I remember is a prosperous local farmer being outraged that his son doesn't automatically get a place at the nice school, but has to pass an exam (and - implied - may lose it to some less classy boy). This is seen as a reasonable view in Miss Read's eyes.
My mum encountered this issue as one of the first group of working-class pupils in a fee-paying middle-class school - there were girls higher up the school who had taken it for granted that their younger sisters would be joining them, only to find that they’d been out-performed in the exam and lost out. The older pupils were not at all happy that their sisters’ places had been usurped, and they let the new intake know it.
DeleteSovay
Regarding JH and HS clothing in the US - I'm sure cliques and bullying exist in all school systems, but clothing provides a convenient excuse to bother and exclude others. My three children aimed for invisibility, perfection, and notoriety respectively, both in their dress and in their larger school careers They are parents themselves now, but I taught for many years in elementary schools., and I think the one huge item of status and acceptance for younger children these days is footwear.
DeleteNerys
Sovay: that's a situation that no-one would think of unless they'd been through it. Makes perfect, if unlucky, sense, how awkward. My own mother was pre-11+, but won a scholarship to the 'nice' school (the other side of town and two tramrides away) but didn't ever feel uncomfortable.
DeleteNerys: I love your description of your children, we can all imagine!
There used to be stories here of the right 'trainers' (sneakers or sports shoes in US) being vital, but I don't think there was an issue with my children in the 2000s. (It's an issue in the Nick Hornby book About a Boy.) I'll have to ask some parents of younger children.
A shame if it's changed - I was hugely impressed by our US elementary school and the lack of emphasis on clothes and shoes. Everyone wore practical shoes,sneakers or boots and it didn't seem to be a subject for comment.
The 11+ results WERE fixed. They finagled it so that there were equal numbers of girls and boys at grammar school, by failing a lot of girls.
DeleteHow unfair
DeleteI suspect that in many other areas of the UK, they got to the same result in a less obvious way, where the local Boys' Grammar School and the local Girls' High School took an equal number of students. (worse, of course, if the numbers at the two schools were unequal)
DeleteI did get the impression that a reasonable number of women teachers honestly thought that having a single-sex schooling system worked best for encouraging women to reach their full intellectual potential in the sixties, seventies and early eighties without having to worry about their boyfriends' reactions to women who were their intellectual equals or superiors.
I would assume it varied in different areas according to the number of places, and varying balance of genders.
DeleteI think there are many people who still believe in single-sex education, and I certainly wouldnt condemn it.
There is a certain kind of posh rich person who wants their daughter to be locked up in a single-sex convent in the country until they are out of the danger zone, while the boys should go to a nice co-ed progressive school so that other people's daughters can civilize them. #justsaying
Air hostesses were pretty impressive then I think (no mere "stewardesses"), even if it was only for the possibility of "marrying well", but airline pilots were beginning their descent to becoming bus drivers with no way out.
ReplyDeleteNurses were a suitable profession for middle class girls (marriage again). This went on later: in the early 1970s a friend's old-fashioned parents wouldn't make up their share of her student grant (remember them?) if she went to university, but would help her financially as a student nurse. She qualified as a nurse and then went off to university as a mature student.
At my school, nobody told you that you couldn't do something: but all the careers advice, and higher education advice, was keyed to nurse/secretary/teacher. Nobody was able to advise on which university to apply to, what subjects to choose, what were the requirements. A lot of us made it, but entirely via our own efforts
DeleteWhere I grew up, the only schools that required uniforms were the parochial schools (lots of families with Catholic immigrant roots in that area). The public schools (not your British kind, but taxpayer-supported) had dress-codes that varied from school to school, but nothing like what you-all have described! At my secondary school ("high school" to us), girls had to wear dresses until a couple years before my graduation. And girls had to take "home economics" classes, so that we would know how to cook and sew and do other housewifely stuff. (Boys had to take "shop" classes with wood-working and mechanically-inclined subjects. One year a girl actually got to take shop class, which caused a little commotion and probably wouldn't have been allowed when I first entered the school.) I remember having to make and wear a skirt, supposedly a "dirndl" but looking more like a sack! Feminism was just beginning to have some influence, and I think the mandatory classes (for both sexes) were eventually changed to electives, This was a small rural school and not a lot of kids planned to go on to college, but counseling and other resources were provided for the ones who did, as well as career "guidance" for kids who planned to work right after leaving school.
ReplyDeleteI should have said that girls had to wear skirts, not necessarily dresses. Also, I think the general opinion at that time was that girls went to college just to find husbands! And that women shouldn't be taking jobs away from men who "had families to support"--as if women didn't often need to support themselves too. (And since when has hiring been done on the basis of economic need, anyway?!) At least we'd stopped letting only unmarried women be schoolteachers....
ReplyDeleteI suppose we're seeing that, among us, most schools did try to update their policies, even if they weren't moving as fast as outside life. At my school they did try, to give us more clothes freedom in Sixth Form, and to offer some options that might help us. They brought in someone to do a make-up demonstration, which I thought was quite advanced. Many girls were very rude about this - people who had been doing their own makeup out of school since they were 14 - but I thought it was helpful and was busy learning (though I'm sorry to say I probably pretended to be as blase as the others). I was always terrible at doing makeup, it was a good day when I decided to more or less stop wearing it, and threw most of it out. (Lipstick excepted)
DeleteInteresting to hear about different attitudes. As a comparison, one lady told me that when she went to (Swedish) school in the 50ies one female teacher suggested it would be nice to see her in a skirt, but otherwise she had no issues wearing trousers all the time.
ReplyDeleteI think it really wouldn't have been like that in the UK! When my children were at state comp in early 2000s, the female teachers had to wear skirts. I think that was unusual then, and has changed since. (Mad headmaster who finally retired)
DeleteWhere did you get On Your Marks? Has it been reprinted?
ReplyDeleteI got it from Abebooks. It was reprinted by Girls Gone By Publishing a few years ago, but they didn't seem to have any copies in print.
DeleteI think perhaps Greyladies, not Girls Gone By?
DeleteIt was my day for making mistakes 😀. Of course you are right. I had a moment's hesitation typing that - but thought, no that's right. I was probably thinking of the Kay Whalley book I mention - which IS a GGB book. (I've literally just picked it up to check to avoid more mistakes!)
DeleteI do love 1950s careers novels - I read "Air Hostess Ann" and "Jean Becomes A Nurse", both of which were lying about in classrooms at school (35 or so years after they'd been written so hardly up to date careers advice. There was "Margaret Becomes A Doctor" (though I think she decides on public health or something that she can combine with being a wife and mother) and I really would like to see what "Anne in Electronics" is like.
ReplyDeleteSo A Smart Suit and White Gloves is going on my wish list.
My mum still remembers with some resentment being spotted by a prefect in WH Smith after school, shopping with her mum, and being reported for not wearing her school hat. So petty.
Here in New Zealand traditional school uniform with blazers is still quite common, though they wear extremely sensible black flat open toed sandals in summer.
Miserable prefect! though not a surprising story for the era.
DeleteI read books for careers I had zero interest in (I wanted to be a test pilot, as a result of reading too many Biggles books) but I really enjoyed them, something about the combo of information and mild stories. I can remember explaining to girls at school who DID want to be nurses, how the qualifications worked, the age limits, and the difference between an SEN and SRN.
My sister and I devoured the Cherry Ames books as children. Cherry Ames, Student Nurse; Cherry Ames, Senior Nurse; then Army Nurse, Navy Nurse, Flight Nurse, Veterans' Nurse, Visiting Nurse, Dude Ranch Nurse, Mountaineer Nurse, Boarding School Nurse, Camp Nurse, Department Store Nurse, Jungle Nurse, and more. I did not make those up. Full list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_Ames. My sister grew up to be a nurse. I didn't. I'm an economist and an expert on retirement-income programs in the U.S. and elsewhere...including, how do they work for people who CHANGE JOBS A LOT? Is Cherry Ames, who apparently never married despite meeting a handsome doctor in each novel, and who appeared to spend mere weeks, maybe two months, at each job now living in penury? (By the way, I do not recall a woman doctor in any of the books. Nor a male nurse.) --Your blogfriend, Trollopian
ReplyDeleteWhat an extraordinary list. I only dipped a toe into those waters, but I did realize that the romances were never going anywhere after the end of the book, which I found unsatisfactory..
DeleteThere is work to be done on why the books were so attractive to girls who didn't care about the career - see my comment to Susanna above.
I love the idea that you could sort out Cherry Ames' pension!
I've just worked out (I'm so clever) that the careers were ones that upper middle girls couldn't follow. No "Juliana, Kennel Maid", or "Phillipa, Champion Three-Day Eventer". Also missing I deduce is "Wendy, Woolworth's Counter Girl", and "Hannah the Hair Stylist".
DeleteYou do them less than justice! Not as specific as three-day-eventing, but every kind of horse job, kennel maids definitely featured, and also retail assistants and hairdressers....
DeleteI suspect there were more medical books than all the others put together, but the Kay Whalley book lists a truly jaw-dropping collection of career novels
I remember reading 'Rennie Goes Riding' which was about a girl going to work as a groom. It covered quite a lot of experiences working with horses, as I remember, including a stint with a dodgy dealer who doped the dangerous horses so they could be sold to unsuspecting families with inexperienced riders. Rennie was left feeling very guilty when someone got hurt. I think she was working somewhere nicer by the end of the book!
ReplyDeleteI hope the horse-doping dealer was punished!
DeleteQuite the plot Ann - horse-doping features in adult crime fiction too. I think in the Gladys Mitchell book, Twelve Horses and the Hangman's Noose, featured here in 2024
Deletehttps://clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/2024/11/twelve-horses-and-hangmans-noose-by.html
has those elements
Rennie Goes Riding is by Monica Edwards of the Punchbowl Farm and Romney Marsh books. There is also a book called Airport Nurse which I assumed for years was another career novel by Monica Edwards, but in fact is by a DIFFERENT Monica Edwards.
DeleteYou have really detailed knowledge, it must have seemed like a reasonable conclusion.
Delete