Reference
Z1288/1/2
Title
Typescript volume, dedicated thus: "To My Son William Henry in Cape Town on my 81st Birthday Mar 26, 1927", volume two of his memoirs begun at Z1288/1/1 and with chapters as follows:
- first chapter is untitled and contains: the author's return back to Turvey and his sister Mary's illness and death [buried 5 Apr 1859, aged 20]; the author visits his father's elder sister at Milton Ernest, his father's mother at Radwell and other relations; the author describes finding no help, but rather a desire to turn him away, in Turvey, and Charles Longuet Higgins' advice that he should be sent to the Bedford Union School;
- "My First Entry in School": with details on how the school at Bedford Workhouse was run;
- "Organising": the author relates how he set up a Corps for drill at the school; the author relates presiding at impromptu courts in the dormitory;
- "A Special Board Meeting";
- "I Have to Appear Before the Committee": the author describes a near riot in the dormitory over rifling through boxes of belongings in the Men's Casual Ward; Rev.Monkhouse agrees to give the author a day a week's tuition;
- "The Senior Head Boy": the author is appointed to this post;
- "Lessons": the author and seven others tutored by Rev.Monkhouse;
- "A Nocturnal Visit": the author met senior head girl Mary Arnold at night and discovered that she and previous senior head boy John Parrot were lovers;
- "A Day's Outing": to a garden party at Goldington;
- "Taking Mary into My Confidence": the author consults on how to afford Christmas presents;
- "Preparing for the Christmas Holidays";
- "Christmas Morning";
- "The New Year 1859";
- "Trouble Ahead": the author and senior boys plan a secret meal with the senior girls;
- "A Letter and its Sequel": the author tells of the Matron's harsh treatment of the senior girls and of a letter of support send them by the senior boys which was handed to the schoolmistress resulting in the author's absconding;
- "Reduced to the Ranks": in which the author describes how he was caught and dismissed as senior head boy;
- "Charged Before the Board": the author charged with absconding and sentenced to bread and water and the birch;
- "A Final Decision": the author stripped and beaten in front of an audience as punishment;
- "A Very Short Chapter": the author is apprenticed with a Bedford bootmaker, John Andrews of 19 Silver Street;
- "My Last Lesson with Mr.Monkhouse";
- "The Concluding Chapter"; the author leaves the Workhouse
Names index:
- Alney, John: a senior boy at Bedford Workhouse school;
- Andrews, John: Bedford boot maker
- Arnold, Mary: senior head girl at Bedford Workhouse school;
- Bailey: boy at Bedford Workhouse school;
- Bell, Elizabeth: sister;
- Bell, Mary: sister;
- Bell, Sarah: grandmother [buried 28 Feb 1864, aged 82];
- Bell, Sarah: sister;
- Cunvin: boy at Bedford Workhouse school;
- Edwards: teacher at Bedford Workhouse school;
- Higgins, Charles Longuet: Chairman of the Bedford Board of Guardians;
- Jackson: inmate of the Bedford Workhouse Men's Casual Ward;
- Manyweather: teacher at Bedford Workhouse School;
- Monkhouse, William: Vicar of Goldington;
- Parrot, John: senior head boy at Bedford Workhouse school
- Spence[r], Benjamin: headmaster at Bedford Workhouse school;
- Wilson, William: a senior boy at Bedford Workhouse school;
- Wing Samuel: Vice Chairman of Bedford Board of Guardians;
- Young, Jesse: boy with infantile paralysis in the Workshop hospital
Date free text
1927
Production date
From: 1858 To: 1927
Level of description
item