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John Sadden

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Gosport Weather

Chapter 19  More About the Girls’ School

“J” was a pupil in the Girls’ School about the same period as Ella and Ida Smith.  She was the youngest of 9 children and started school in 1916.  Her father drove the floating bridge.

Sailors sometimes threw their trousers overboard and her father would pick them out of the water and bring them home.  Her mother made skirts from them for the girls.  Her father died when she was 7.  Her mother did “Barrack-work” to earn some money.  She used to make sailors’ collars.  She sewed the rows of tapes on by hand.  Before they went to bed, the girls used to thread needles for her and line them up, so that she could go on working.

J’s surname was ‘Oliver’.  During singing lessons she lived in dread of the possibility that they might sing “Polly Oliver”, because if they did, she got teased.

There was a bad flu epidemic after the first world war.  As a protection against it, the children at school were lined up by the basins in the porch to gargle with Condy’s fluid.

The children were all in the playground one day when a bull came rushing into the playground.  The children all went into school and someone shouted “Get down!”.  The animal was on the way to the slaughterhouse which was in the next turning from Moreland Road going towards the ferry.  The animals were brought in every Monday.

Mr. Jesshope was caretaker at the school for years.  Because of his ill-health his daughter helped him when she was 13-14 years old.  They lived nearby in Park Street.  Mr. Jesshope was probably verger of the Church as well.

Maisie was born in Gosport but then moved away and came back when she was 8 or 9.  She liked school and stayed at St. John’s School until she was in Standard V when she passed the scholarship examination and went to the Secondary School.  Miss. Johns, the Headmistress taught scripture to Standard V though Standard VII was her actual class

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