Horrific tales from schoolrooms past across Essex

As children across the country head back to the classroom, we’ve rounded up some interesting tales from schoolrooms past across Essex.

Some of them are very sad, especially the death of a little girl who was fatally burned in her classroom while trying to warm herself by the fire.

The poor lad who accidentally stuck a pencil in his ear and through his brain, is also a difficult read.

Here are some school room stories which demonstrate how classrooms of the past could be deadly places...

RAT INVASION

Forget the 3Rs, in January of 1935, St John’s School in Moulsham, Chelmsford was dealing with a fourth R – rats!

The school had become infested by the vermin to the extent the rats were destroying classrooms. A school source described: “During the night, when the school is closed, the rats enter the classrooms and books, maps, charts, and curtains (including large new one) have been gnawed. Special precautions are being taken to guard the children’s exercise books and reading books. Children have been told to take care not to leave any eatables in their desks.”

Bertie Harvey, the school headmaster, said that one evening at dusk saw a rat dash across the playground. “We work under great difficulties at this school and I hope this new trouble will soon be exterminated,” he said. Rats were evidently fond of education at this time. A plague of rodents had also descended on the Education Committee’s offices in Duke Street, Chelmsford and a professional rat-catcher had been employed to deal with them.

A PAINFUL EXPERIMENT

In September of 1914 the nation was just a few months into the First World War. At Holborn Boys School in Plaistow two teachers would be left with war-like injuries without even leaving the classroom. The two members of staff were left with severe burns after an experiment they were carrying out during a chemistry lesson went badly wrong. A bottle of sodium exploded during the experiment and left both teachers with severe burns on their faces and hands.

BURNED TO DEATH

In October of 1895 a poor little girl named Vera Turp was burned to death at her school - the Quarry Hill Board School in Grays, Thurrock, after arriving early at school so that she could warm herself up.

The five-year-old entered her classroom along with another girl, Alice Watts, but about 10 minutes later she was found by the schoolmistress lying near the door of the classroom. Her body was so badly injured by the burning clothes - which were still in flames - that death speedily ensued. It transpired Vera and Alice had come in early to keep warm. With the exception of one wing, which had only recently been added, the school was heated with hot-air pipes. This new wing, containing two classrooms, was fitted with fire grates. Vera was in one of these classrooms when the accident occurred. Ada White, a fellow pupil at the school, said she saw Vera standing in front of the fire warming her hands, when she fell forward into the fire, and her pinafore caught alight. Upon discovering the horror, Miss Louisa Patterson, the schoolmistress, threw her woollen shawl around the child and extinguished some of the flames and a doctor was called.

Vera was taken home but died within a few minutes of arriving. All the children at the school were dismissed for the morning as everyone tried to come to terms with what had happened. Vera’s father sued the local authority for compensation but his claim was thrown out.

PENCIL PIERCE HORROR

One day in March of 1888, 11-year-old schoolboy Chevalier Brown, who was from a wealthy and well-known Colchester family, was playing around with a pencil, as school children often do.

He was a pupil at the Catford School in Lewisham. One Monday, during school hours, while playing with a piece of slate pencil, he put it into his ear. Unfortunately it penetrated too far and a piece broke off inside – causing inflammation of the brain. As soon as the unfortunate lad realised what he had done, he told the schoolmaster, who promptly obtained the assistance of a local medical man with a view to extracting the broken pencil.

However the medical man realised how serious the situation was and arranged for Brown to be removed to Guy’s Hospital in London.

Brown was placed under chloroform so that the Guys Hospital house surgeon could find and extract the pencil which had gone in at least one inch. However it was all in vain because the schoolboy died a few days later. The jury at an inquest into the death returned a verdict of accidental death and the reverend John Bloomfield, on behalf of Brown’s mother, acknowledged the great kindness the deceased and she had received from the Colchester community.

A FATAL KICK

In November of 1892 young student Arthur Smith of Strood Cottage, West Mersea, died after a fellow schoolboy kicked him in the leg. Both lads were just nine years old and were known to get into petty quarrels but this one day Smith was left with a huge bruise on his knee. In the days and weeks that followed the bruise got bigger, his leg swelled up until the little lad could no longer get out of bed.

He eventually died of blood poisoning, brought about by the kick which caused acute necrosis to the bone of the left leg under the knee. The boy who kicked him was brought to court but due to his age and the fact there was no proof he intended to inflict harm, he was released.

DEADLY DISEASE

In February of 1888 an outbreak of diphtheria at Chelmsford Grammar School was proving to be fatal.

Two students had died because of the highly contagious bacterial infection which was spread by coughs and sneezes. The latest victim was the son of Mr James Tweed, of Little Baddow Hall, who was just 10 years old. The lad was reported to have been in remarkably good health until he awoke with a sore throat one morning. He did not get up, but was seen the doctor. The boy suffered hardly at all but died about 6.30pm the following Sunday from exhaustion in battling Diphtheria. In order that nothing might disturb him a message was sent to the bell-ringers at nearby St Mary’s Church asking them not to ring for the evening service.

However, before the messenger arrived the boy passed away, just after the ringing commenced.

DEMON HEADMASTER

In the spring of 1920, William Lucas, the headmaster of Southchurch Hall School in Southend, was summoned to court for an alleged assault upon a 10-year-old boy named Herbert West. The boy’s mother Cissie Rhoda West, aged 42, of Chinchilla Road Southchurch, brought the case after she noticed painful marks on her son’s legs.

The mother then took her son to a police constable who also saw the marks. The court heard how the boy had been seen by Mr Lucas ‘playing around with a comic’ with another pupil whilst in school. The headmaster took West upstairs to his office and “struck him four times on the legs and elsewhere”. Each of the blows left a mark for days and the cane used in the punishment was described as “a thick one”. PC Chapman, the constable who the mother had called, told the court in his opinion the blows were inflamed and the boy seemed to be suffering from shock.

He admitted that he personally considered the punishment far too excessive. Lucas, in defence said he had been headmaster at the school for three-and-a-half years but had held the power to inflict corporal punishment for the past 15 years - and had never had a complaint like this.

“A child usually tells half the truth and hides the other half,” he said in his defence. After a lot of debate and hearing statements from witnesses, the court found that the headmaster had not used excessive punishment and the mother’s charges against him were dismissed.

The acquittal did not go down well with the boy’s father, a seaman, who yelled at the bench: “Then your Worship I shall punish him as he punished my boy!”

He called the headmaster a vicious man and promised to mete out his own justice. The chairman of the bench replied to the angry father: “Very well we will make a note of this” and Mr Lucas was led out of the court under the protection of police officers.