Barry Blades - Roll of Honour: Schooling and the Great War 1914-1919

To Private Horace Groom

And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them.

Ecclesiasticus 44:9

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by

Pen & Sword Military

an imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street

Barnsley

South Yorkshire

S70 2AS

Copyright Barry Blades 2015

ISBN: 978 1 47382 105 7
PDF ISBN: 978 1 47387 390 2
EPUB ISBN: 978 1 47387 389 6
PRC ISBN: 978 1 47387 388 9

The right of Barry Blades to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

Typeset in Ehrhardt by
Mac Style Ltd, Bridlington, East Yorkshire
Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd,
Croydon, CRO 4YY

Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the imprints of Pen & Sword Archaeology, Atlas, Aviation, Battleground, Discovery, Family History, History, Maritime, Military, Naval, Politics, Railways, Select, Transport, True Crime, and Fiction, Frontline Books, Leo Cooper, Praetorian Press, Seaforth Publishing and Wharncliffe.

For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact
PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED
47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England
E-mail:
Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

T he production of this book owes an enormous debt of gratitude to many individuals and institutions. The original research stemmed from my earlier work on the history of Deacons School in Peterborough, a project stimulated by former colleagues, friends and Old Deaconians Brian Anthony and the late Wilf Saul. I was equally fortunate to have other wise mentors at the University College London (UCL) Institute of Education (IOE), where the late Professor Richard Aldrich and Dr David Crook guided me through the broader contexts of the History of Education and the intricacies and demands of academic research. My thanks for such support and encouragement also extend to Professor Gary McCulloch at the IOE and to Dr Peter Cunningham at the University of Cambridge. The archivists and librarians at the IOE also deserve a special mention. Sarah Aitchison, Rebecca Webster, Jessica Womack, Alix Kingston and Kathryn Hannan have helped enormously by introducing me to their collections related to the London Day Training College, the National Union of Women Teachers and the Girls Public Day School Trust. The impressive collection of School Histories in the IOE Library has been a major source of research material. I thank the hundreds of authors of such works for providing so much rich detail about their schools and hope that in some small way Roll of Honour serves to tell some of their stories to a wider audience.

Additional material has been made available by archivists in other institutions. I would like to thank Richard Hillier and Elisabeth Kingston at Peterborough Library and Archives for allowing me to use images of Edward Adams and extracts from the Peterborough Practising School Logbook, and for retrieving material from the Deacons School Archive which is now safely deposited there. Thanks also to Paul Richards and the volunteers at Trues Yard Museum in Kings Lynn for material relating to Joseph Dines and St Nicholas Boys School, and to Janet Friedlander at the National Union of Teachers Headquarters in London for granting access to an original copy of the NUT War Record (1920). My thanks to all those school archivists throughout the land who do such an important job in preserving the essential links to the past for their individual institutions. Rachel Hassell at Sherborne School, Dr Christine Joy at Manchester High School for Girls and Peter Harrod at Christs Hospital School in Lincoln have all been especially helpful. I owe a particular debt to the archivists and historians of Harrow County High School for Boys who first told the story of the school and of its pupils and teachers, such as Bob Hart and Russell Wheeler, namely Alex Bateman, Jeffrey Maynard and Trevor May. My gratitude also to Adam Cree for permission to use his research material relating to Susannah Knight in Chorley, and to Keith Haines for his work on Corrie Chase at Campbell College. I am particularly indebted to Sir Anthony Seldon for writing the Foreword to this book and for giving me the opportunity to share my research with conference audiences. His recent Public Schools and the Great War A Generation Lost (Pen & Sword Books, 2013, coauthored with David Walsh), contained invaluable information and data provided by many individual public schools, which I have used to augment my own research and conclusions.

In addition to the aforementioned, the following have also helped in different ways by granting permission to use images and information in their collections or by providing links to other relevant material: Bruce Anderson (Rusholme Archive), Dr Charles Barber (Geoffrey Barber letters), Mark Dodd (Genealogy Forum), John Duncan (Newbattle At War), Brian Elsey (Wigan World), Jane King (Peterborough War Memorials), Maurice Palmer (The Wellingborough Album), Lianne Smith (Kings College, London) and Emma Wootton (World War I School Archives). To all the above, and to all those local historians whose websites have added to my knowledge of individual people, institutions and localities in the Great War, I extend my sincere thanks and appreciation.

The majority of photographic and other images contained in Roll of Honour come from my own collection of original postcards, newspapers, magazines and other ephemera from the Great War period. These are referred to in the photographic plate sections as (Blades Collection), and will eventually be donated to the IOE in London. Other images were kindly provided by individuals and organisations mentioned above. The Imperial War Museum in London granted permission to include the image of Lieutenant Commander Archibald Buckle. I have endeavored, without success, to contact representatives of Aberdeen University Press for permission to use the image of Ishobel Ross.

My thanks to current and former members of staff at Pen & Sword Books Ltd, including Eloise Hansen, Lisa Hooson and Jen Newby, for commissioning Roll of Honour and for agreeing to publish two future related volumes on Schooling and the Great War.

Finally, my thanks to family past; it was they who first stimulated my love of history with their early gifts of medals in toffee boxes and recollections of ordinary men and women doing extraordinary things in extraordinary times. Family present my wife Heather, sons Richard and Stephen, father Keith and grandaughter Daisy continue to be the most important sources of inspiration, encouragement and support today.