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Q. Did you get many scholarships from here?
A. The first year there was two boys and one girl, the girl was
Miss Skudder whose father kept the forge down here. The other
one was William Antrim, whose father kept the public house at
Hodsoll Street, and the other one was Cecile Fright, the police
sergeant’s son.
Q. It must have taken some time for some of the children to walk
to school. What time did they start out of a morning?
A. I was talking to a large family over at Southfleet, their
name was Johnson. I asked them how they went on with their small
ones when they were old enough to go to school at five.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘to |
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tell you the truth Fred, we put them in
those old tater boxes on two wheels and drew them up into White
Ash Woods, and we used to leave an old cart in White Ash Woods
till night so that the others shouldn’t know what we had
done.’
Q. I don’t suppose they were the only ones that did that?
A. No. Well they had the longest walk really. The children that
come from Hodsoll Street this way were a little better off.
There was a family up there and the publican’s boys and we
also had one or two children from Fawkham come up. I think
possibly because there was a master here, see. |