From ‘Bootham Overseas’, Bootham magazine, December 1915
“THOMAS BINNS ROBSON (1858-1860) writes from near Adelaide of the recent experiences of JOHN F. HILLS (1882-1884, Master 1886-1889), who “has been making quite a stir lately owing to his anti-military propaganda, which he has been actively carrying on ever since our ‘Boy Conscription Act’ came into force. The military authorities have looked upon him as opposing enlistment, and have tried to stop him from speaking in Victoria Square on Friday evenings and the park on Sunday afternoons, as has been his custom. The first attempt was a charge of treason, changed to breaking a bye-law for chalking on the roadway where he advertised his meetings and quoted portions of the Sermon on the Mount. This failed, because the bye-law only referred to the footpaths and not the roadway. Then he was brought up before the police court charged with telling the young men not to recruit at a meeting held some two months previously. His lawyer got the case dismissed on the plea that the regulation under which he was charged went beyond the War Precautions Act and was ultra vires…. Probably J. F. Hills will be again charged and have to fight it out on its merits. He says he did not use the expression he is accused of, but after so long a time it will be hard to prove, especially against the military. The last two or three times he has appeared in public he has been mobbed by an organised lot of young fellows in khaki, who joined the mob against the police who were protecting J. F. H. to a place of safety; and the last time the police started the row by setting on to Hills to make him go away before he had done anything. . . The war spirit is rampant and seems to override all other considerations.”
Thanks to Kate, one of the volunteers in the archive, for researching and writing this post.
William Fryer Harvey
William Fryer Harvey was at Bootham from 1898 to 1901. He was born in 1885 into a prosperous West Yorkshire Quaker family. His father and brothers were also at Bootham and his sister a pupil at The Mount. Having studied at Balliol College Oxford, William then took a degree in medicine at Leeds. He joined the Friends Ambulance unit in 1914 and served until 1916. In 1918 whilst serving in the Royal Navy as a surgeon-lieutenant, he was involved in a rescue from the boiler room on board ship. For his bravery he was awarded the Albert Medal for Lifesaving and the full citation can be read in Bootham magazine, Summer 1918. Sadly this incident damaged his lungs and he never again regained full health, dying at the early age of 57. Amongst his many achievements the one for which he was probably most well known during his lifetime was as the published author of “supernatural tales”. One of the most famous was “The Beast with Five Fingers” and this was made into a film with Peter Lorre in 1946.
The archives contain a number of items written by him during his years at school. The collection includes letters to parents and his brothers both from school and whilst on holiday and a beautifully bound exhibition piece entitled “A collection of leaves”. There is also a volume of natural history observations and a two-volume diary of 1899. The handwriting is easy to read and there a number of very good pencil sketches and coloured illustrations of leaves, flowers, plants and the various churches and houses he visited. Reading through these it is interesting to ponder what hints there are in the schoolboy writings for the direction his life took after leaving Bootham. Certainly there is mention of many medical issues – scarlet fever, measles, colds etc are mentioned and in one letter he relates how a fellow scholar “ fell down in a fit during science going black in the face”. Happily after medical assistance, the boy recovered quickly enough to be playing football later in the day! He exhorts one of his brothers, studying in France, not to “catch smallpox from books” there and when his sister is taken ill, he writes to his brother that “her mind has given way probably from her studious habits” and says they should take this as an example “not to overwork themselves for fear of a similar fate befalling us”. However it is obvious that he has not taken this to heart, as prolonged study would have been needed to gain his medical qualifications.
From reading of his later life, his love of church architecture and the natural sciences seem to have been lifelong interests and I hope he kept the enquiring mind, which is illustrated, in the following extracts from the diary, written when he would have been around 13 years old.
Diagram of experiment from W F Harvey’s diary.
“June 26th. I performed the following experiment to show that flowers on respiring produce carbon di oxide; by respiring I mean the taking in of oxygen. I took a number of common garden flowers such as marigold, blue corncockle, rose and placed them in a flask, being kept in position by a plug of cotton wool. I placed the flask in an inverted retort stand and placed a cork in the neck of the flask through which a glass was put open at both ends; one end of glass tube dipped in mercury on the top of which floated a solution of potassium hydrate. This solution absorbed the carbon di oxide given out by the flowers and the mercury rose about half an inch and a half.
I took some petals of a red rose and boiled in water; after some minutes the petals completely lost their colour and the water was coloured green and still possessed to a slight degree the scent of the rose.
July 1st – 6th. When removing the flask containing the flowers used in the experiment, a drop of acid happened to touch the blue flower of the corncockle and at once it turned a bright crimson red. I tried putting some more of the acid (sulphuric) on the flowers again and in each case obtained the same result. I then took some red GERANIUM and blue CRANESBILL and placed a few drops of ammonium hydrate on the red geranium and some dilute acid on the blue cranesbill. The colours of the flowers were reversed, the geranium becoming a bright blue though the change was not so quickly accomplished as in the case of the cranesbill.
It appears that certain flowers have the property of acting as an indicator of acids and bases in the same manner as litmus.
When the coloured petals were boiled in water until colourless, the water was slightly coloured blue and red.
On one drop of acid and ammonia being added to each, the colours changed and when acid and ammonia were added in the reverse order, the coloured water went back to its original colour.
The flower of a FUCHIA I examined had two sorts of petals; -the outer being red, the inner purple. But where the base of the inner purple petals touched the red ones, it was streaked with red. These purple and red petals acted in the way as those of the geranium and cranesbill. Perhaps the nearness and greater acidity of the red petals had something to do with the reddening of the base of the purple petals”
Painting of Fuchsia flower from diary of W F Harvey.
In January 2015 I did a talk as part of the Thursday lunchtime recital room series. It was entitled ‘Memories from the Archives’ and I talked about a number of memories from Old Scholars. I’ll share the photographs and text from the talk in several parts on the blog. Below is the final part of the talk. Read the previous part here. On Thursday 25th February I will be doing another talk as part of the Thursday lunchtime recital room series, see here for the full programme of talks (the talk starts at 1.05pm, entry via the front door of No.45 Bootham).
The new swimming baths, opened in 1914
Henry Kenneth Fisher was at Bootham between 1909 and 1914, and remembers the then-new swimming baths. They were opened in 1914, so it was the centenary of the baths two years ago. “Then in my last year came the cutting down of the trees to provide for the building of the long awaited swimming bath. The teams of magnificent horses that dragged away the tree were the subject of my first photographs and I still have them. What a joy that splendid new bath was after the horrors of the old open-air Marygate Baths where the water was covered with leaves, soot and algae, and the surrounding slabs were so slimy as to constitute a veritable ‘death-trap’ to the unwary.”
The old Lodge (on Portland Street) after the bombing raid in 1942.
Moving a little further forward, Douglas Stewart Jackson, who was at Bootham between 1939 and 1943, recalled his time at school during the Second World War. He remembered that: “I don’t think life at school was affected to any great extent by the war. The school staff may have had different feelings about the situation, some were called up for service in the forces and some pupils got involved in routine jobs that could be handled safely by those with a limited knowledge of the work and necessary safety precautions. A couple of us became ‘school electricians’ and having learnt the skill required to change lightbulbs, moved on to mending fuses and attempting to find and repair the cause of the problem. I do not recall either of us receiving an electric shock, but I am sure we did many minor jobs that would have been considered far too dangerous by the modern ‘Health and Safety Executive’.” He goes on to remember the air raid on York in 1942. It happened while the school was closed for the Easter holidays, and the main damage to school buildings was the destruction of the old ‘Lodge’ (the Bootham term for the health centre) at the school end of Portland Street. Douglas says that “At about this time there was discussion regarding ways in which pupils could become involved in activities which could help the people of York to overcome some of the adverse affects of the war. This was looked upon as a Quaker equivalent to the Officer Cadet Training Corps run by most boys schools. It started off with a series of practical training classes in bricklaying, cement and concrete manufacture and on a more basic level an attempt to salvage a high proportion of the undamaged bricks on the site of the Lodge. I thoroughly enjoyed this training and I think it was some of the most useful skills learnt at Bootham.”
This has just been a few snippets from the memories of a few people about their time at Bootham, but I hope that it has given you an idea of the extra detail and insight that can be gained from people’s memories, particularly if you then integrate that with other records.
Henry Edwin Bown, Private, Royal Fusiliers, 23rd Battalion, fell in action on January 24th 1916. He was born at Boston Spa in 1882 and came to Bootham between 1896 and 1899.
Joseph Thorp Waite, Lieutenant, The Buffs (East Kent Regiment), fell in action outside Kut, January 21st 1916. He was part of the relief force trying to get to Colonel Townshend at Kut (in modern-day Iraq) during the Mesopotamian campaign.
He was born in Halifax in 1870 and came to Bootham between 1883 and 1886.
“This year, owing to the war, it was impossible to have our camp at Robin Hood’s Bay as on former occasions. Mr. Knight and Mr. Sturge therefore spent a Wednesday afternoon hunting round Kirby Moorside, and arranged for a suitable site near Gillamoor in Farndale. We accordingly applied to the military authorities for permission to camp there, but were told that we could not camp east of the main line. Another site was chosen on Widdington Grange Farm, overlooking Linton Weir and the lock. This site, which was lent to us by Mr. Tesseyman, the farmer, had formerly been an old plantation. The advantages of this place were manifold. It was much nearer York than either Robin Hood’s Bay or Farndale, and the equipment could be taken by boat up the river to the place. We lost the bathing in the sea, but we obtained a very good substitute. Round a bend below the camp was a sandy beach, which shelved into the water, forming an ideal bathing place as far as swimming and safety were concerned.
…Before we began to pack another difficulty had to be solved. Many of our tents and some of our camp equipment had been lent to the F.A.U., and were at that moment doing useful service in France. However, several of the campers lent tents, so that this seemingly difficult problem was soon solved.”
“It has been decided to continue the Ambulance Drill again this year, and with the experience of those who have already gained the certificate to command us we have quickly passed the more elementary stages, and hope to be working with a motor ambulance next term. One afternoon a week is devoted to it, and on the last Tuesday of November we were inspected by a sergeant of the St. John Ambulance Association, who expressed himself highly satisfied with the work that was done. Section eight, under the command of Hickes, was placed first with twenty-six out of thirty, but as the lowest was only twenty-two there was very little to choose between them. An additional twenty-one are taking the First Aid classes again, conducted by Dr. Craig.”
Belgian Refugees
“…The next [lecture] was an account, given by Mr. T. Cox, of the brush-making that is done by the Belgian refugees in their camps in Holland. Our own Belgians are still living and prospering under their new conditions, and though we fear they are not so much in our minds as of yore, we are reminded of them every week by the inevitable lightening of our pockets.”
From Bootham Magazine, December 1915
See previous posts from September 1914 and January 1915 about the Belgian family that the school supported.
“This year “Matric” came late, about the beginning of July, and so the period of reaction and reform was shortened. At this time the Yorkshire farmers were in need of labour, and the boys, hearing of this, immediately volunteered to fill the depleted ranks, and to do what they could to feed the pigs and hoe the turnips of unfortunate agriculturalists. Thus no reaction set in, and the School knew no post-matriculation slacker.
The work was undertaken in the following way : six boys, supplied with red handkerchiefs, blue cans, and other attributes of the farm-labourer — corduroy trousers and clay pipes were barred — set out on cycles about eight o’clock, not re-appearing until six. Then, having performed their ablutions, they came to the usual tea, where extra rations were served. As wages they received two shillings a day; of this they saw nothing, as it was handed straight to the treasurer, who in turn passed it on to the Old Scholars’ Wartime Service Fund.
Besides farming-work at the end of term, a few boys were privileged to share in clearing up that part of the Cocoa Works which was to become a military hospital with orderlies from the Friends’ Ambulance Unit. Having taken part in the setting up of the X-Ray apparatus they were amply repaid by having a closer knowledge of the bones in their fingers, chest, and head.”
