J W Booth AUTOBIOGRAPHY C2

CHAPTER 2. SWANLEY
It had always been assumed that I would go into the Navy, probably by way of the Royal Hospital School, Greenwich. After the death of my father my mother had to consider how best to make ends meet. Dad's pension which he had earned by 25 years service, had died with him after less than four years and the widow's pension rate was ten shillings for the widow, five shillings for the first child and three shillings for each other child. My mother was thus entitled to a total 18 shillings (90p) per week. She obtained some domestic work and we carried on in Wickham until September 1930. At the insistance of the Naval Benevolent Trust I was admitted to the Homes for Little Boys, Hextable, Swanley in Kent. Soon after this my mother and sister went to live with my maiden Aunt Ada at Peckham in South East London.
I was taken to Swanley, via London, leaving home for the first time at the age of eight.
I remember my mother seeing me off on Portsmouth RailwayStation. I felt quite happy and rather proud of myself up to that point and was surprised to realise that Mum was very upset. In retrospect, I suppose that, apart from Dad's death, it was one of the worst days of her life.
My recollections of the first two weeks at Swanley are hazy and confused. It seemed a vast unfriendly place; lonely in spite of being crowded with boys and I was sunk in the hopeless misery of homesickness. We only went home once a year for the summer holidays at the end of July and having joined in September there was a full year to wait. When this phase passed, never to return, I soon became acclimatised to the place and was reasonably happy and content there for three years.
One illusion which I never lost in that time was that Swanley was not only an enclosed little world of its own, but that it was a vast distance from my home. It was actually about 14 miles from Peckham. The year was broken up by three visiting days, one in December, one in March and the other in June. We were permanently wishing our lives away ticking off the days to the next landmark, like men in prison, although I doubt if we were as well provided for as they were even then.
In retrospect it is quite clear to me that the home was under-funded and run on a shoestring. We did not feel under-privileged at the time, although I remember reading Jane Eyre some years later and feeling that she had very little to complain of at Lowood.
The home was made up of seven houses and a Main school building with a few auxiliary buildings standing in some acres of vegetable gardens, an orchard, and a playing field. Five of the houses each accommodated about 28 boys under the charge of aMatron and Sister. The sixth was the Sick Bay under a trained nurse, who was the terror of the place, with only enough fit boys to do the domestic chores. The seventh was the Headmaster's House presided over by the Superintendent, his wife and another woman and all the senior boys were accommodated there. The youngest boys at Swanley were six and the oldest about eighteen. The object was to place them at the Royal Hospital School, Greenwich at about eleven and a half or into jobs in their teens. The one essential was that these jobs were on a 'live-in' basis and they ranged from Merchant Navy apprentices at the top to kitchen boys in hotels at the bottom. I was in one of the five houses, called for some reason that was never explained Mother's Home. The matron had no formal qualifications and was responsible for food, clothing and cleanliness, and supervised the domestic work of the house which was all done by the boys. At the time I envied her having a position of such power and comfort, but I am now amazed that they ever got anyone to take on the job. As a cook/housekeeper I bet she could have got twice the money for half the work. The sister looked fully grown up to us, but was probably a country girl scarcely out of her teens.
We slept in three dormitories and occupied most of our waking hours in school, polishing floors if young, or scrubbing other floors if older. Any spare hour or two in the evening was spent in the Day-room where there was one large table, four long forms, two cupboards and precious little else.
The diet must have been enough to sustain life but it was monotonous to a degree.
Breakfast six days a week was a plate of porridge and two pieces of bread and dripping with cocoa. On Sundays we had three pieces of bread and no porridge. For dinner we had a main course of meat (hot or cold) and two vegetables (if you include potatoes) on five days a week followed by rice pudding. On Wednesdays and Saturdays it was a plate of soup (usually very good) and a piece of dry bread with bread pudding for sweet.
Tea was always three pieces of bread and margarine with a little jam when available, a piece of plain cake on Sundays, and tea.
In the winter, we sometimes got a mug of cocoa at bedtime, about 7.30.pm.
A slight element of variety was provided by occasional apple pies and surplus bits of sweets from the matron's table. Parcels from home were opened under supervision and foodstuffs from home were doled out over a period of days.
Moreover there were two annual breakfast treats provided by the 'management'. On Easter Sunday we got an egg and on Christmas Day we got a sausage.
The matron was very fond of reminding us that we should get up from the table feeling that we could eat a little more. We always felt that we could manage the same again.
The main school building consisted of four classrooms and anassembly hall which also served as a church and as a classroomfor the eldest boys. The Superintendent conducted assembly each morning and church on Sunday, at both of which he played a hand-pumped organ, but he was not a teacher (or a clergyman).
There were four male teachers and one woman who took the youngest class. I only reached Class Three and the syllabus wasvery much the basics, taught by old and tried methods, such as learning multiplication tables by reciting them like anthems each morning for an hour or so (in Class One). Great stress was laid on arithmetic in Classes Two and Three. The master of Class Two held a written test of five sums each Friday and caned each boy who got less than three right. One cut on the hand for those with only two right, two cuts for one right and three cuts for all wrong.
Class Three had an even simpler method. He conducted arithmetic daily by writing sums on the board one at a time, allowing time to work them out, and then writing up the answer.He marked our books after each one with blue pencil in one hand and the cane in the other; and if you had it wrong you held out your hand as he approached. I didn't find this as painful as it sounds as I was good at sums and the blows were mere flicks anyway but if a boy was thick headed he needed to be thick skinned as well. Some of them must have had hands like leather.
Caning on the hands for minor offences was commonly used by both school teachers and house matrons. Our matron also used a slipper on our bare bottoms, occasionally using it on all 28 of us if there was persistent talking in bed, for example.
More serious matters were dealt with by the Superintendent with the culprit bent over the organ platform in the Assembly Hall. I only had one experience of this and he was very good at it. If he played golf, which he may have done for all I know, he was probably a long hitter.
All this may suggest that we spent our time in a kind of subdued misery, but this was not the case. In a short time our circumstances came to be regarded as the norm and it never occurred to us to envy other children differently placed. We were happy or miserable, like all children, for all kinds of trivial reasons from one day to the next. Having such a drab basic routine made any small treat or variation seem much more important than it was.
One year we were walked into Dartford one December evening to do some Christmas shopping. None had more than a shilling (5 pence) and some didn't have as much. Most of it was spent in Woolworths where nothing cost more than 6d (2.5p).We finished up with so many little bottles of scent, Christmas cards and other knick knacks that the sympathetic girl assistants must have been fiddling the tills something wicked. We never did any shoplifting, for fear of the consequences rather than from natural honesty, so but for their benevolence we should have had an eight mile walk for little or nothing.
Then there was the Whit Monday when we went to Dartford Heath and some wealthy philanthropist, who probably earned about three pounds a week, lined all 28 of us up at an ice cream barrow and stood us a one penny cornet all round. Ice cream must have been cheaper on Dartford Heath than anywhere else in England, or else the vendor was as generous as our benefactor, and he fairly piled it on. God bless them both.
We were sent home for six weeks holiday each summer, except a wretched few who were complete orphans and had no homes to go to. Although we spent Christmas and Easter at Swanley we had a couple of weeks off school for each of these festivals. Apart from organised walks on fine Sunday afternoons we seldom got outside the grounds, but there was cricket (of a kind) andfootball outdoors and stamp collecting, painting Christmas cards and things like that indoors.
I was a voracious reader, even smuggling books into bed when there was sufficient light after bed-time. Apart from books, I was an ardent fan of the Wizard, Skipper, Adventure and Rover, all of which were full of stories of Empire Builders or mastercriminals. Some of their heroes were both. Comics such as theRainbow, Comic Cuts, Tiger Tims etc were banned. I thought this was very strange at the time but the authorities had a valid point. In the past some boys had actually imitated some comic characters who went in for such jolly japes as balancing buckets of water over doors and a member of staff had been injured by a falling bucket. (In 1930 buckets were made of galvanized iron). On the other hand boys addicted to the Rover were not likely to run off and join the Foreign Legion.
My ultimate favourites were the Magnet and the Gem though why an under-privileged boy should enjoy reading about the over-privileged snobs of Greyfriars and St. Jim's is a mystery to me to this day.
Films were widely believed to be a cause of juvenile delinquency, just as T.V. is today and we never got near a cinema except during the holidays when we spent hours in them every week.
I don't remember any special notice being taken of Easter except for the breakfast egg on Sunday and other more interesting eggs from home, but some effort was made at Christmas. For about a month before all parcels were intercepted and locked away. Christmas Day started with the annual sausage at breakfastfollowed by church, then Christmas dinner. The main course was beef, which was then far cheaper that turkey or chicken, and we had Christmas pudding and custard. Then the dining tables were cleared and the parcels brought down and laid out. At about 3.00 p.m. we were turned loose on them. For two to three hours we were free to gorge ourselves and play with new toys after which the remainder were cleared away and put under lock and key and Christmas was over for another year. Each year we had about half a dozen film shows, silent pictures of six reels each on a hand cranked projector in the Assembly Hall. Once or twice the reels were not in correct sequence but it did not seem to make much difference.
At regular intervals we were all dosed with Epsom Salts which caused problems with two toilets to 28 boys.
In the sick bay castor oil was the sovereign remedy for all ills and was given in warm milk. You had to drink it in one draft and return the glass with an audible 'Thank you, Miss’. Not that she cared whether you were grateful or not but she wanted to be sure you had swallowed it. I cannot stomach warm milk to this day. A huge dose was given before any minor operation and another couple of days afterwards. When I had my tonsils out a boy who had injured his leg was in the ward at the time of the post operative dose and she gave him one as well. He must have suffered agonies getting in and out of bed at ten minute intervals all day. It would have served her right if he hadn't bothered but then she would probably have killed him.
One final advantage of this Spartan regime was that when the time came for me to move on to the Royal Hospital School it didn't seem nearly so bad as it would have done if I had come direct from home, even at the advanced age of eleven.
Many years later my sister was working in the Children's department of the Home Office and saw files in which Inspectors had reported adversely on Swanley in the 30's. My own verdict must be that we had a small, under-paid staff doing their level best with inadequate resources and, taking the rough with the smooth, their best was really not all that bad.

Chapter Two: SWANLEY – My comments

Much of my father was formed by his early experiences at his boarding schools; although he defends them stoutly I have no doubts at all that they left him emotionally crippled. Any sign of weakness amongst a population of boys and later a population governed by boys is seized upon and exploited. When I say weakness anything which was sensitive or caring might easily be judged that way.

Dad, though healthy, was never robust and he endured the twin curses of being exceptionally bright and inept at sport both measures which made him a mark for bullying. Only by toughening up and appearing not to care did he survive.

All the above left its mark, he could be unfeeling in his first response to situations involving his children and later his grandkids but we worked out that there was nothing that he would not do for you and when his mind closed on a problem he solved it and you were sure that he would carry through in all he promised. These were I suspect the positive legacies of his childhood.