Christmas Schooling 1883 - Manchester Grammar School The Archives

In 1883, Christmas at Manchester Grammar School didn’t mean entirely downing tools. A curious timetable shows optional, extra-cost lessons ticking along through the “Christmas vacation” — though, mercifully for the boys, even the Victorians kept Christmas week itself free. 

In this episode, Kate @ SDS talks to Manchester Grammar School 

Extraordinary and fascinating archives online!

Transcript

SDS Kate 0:11

Hello and welcome to the very first episode of Tales from the Archives, a podcast by the SDS Group. My name is Kate, and I'll be taking a deep dive into the fascinating world of archives. As we kick off this festive season, we thought it would be the perfect time to look back, way back, and explore how our ancestors recorded this time of year. But it's not just about the past. It's about how we enjoy the world of archives today. So to start, at this time of year, our schools are coming to the end of turn and looking towards the future. But have you ever wondered what school might have been like at Christmas in the 1800s? This festive season, we have set our Christmas Lane north from our offices in Dorset to the wonderful city of Manchester, risking ourselves on a journey through time. Manchester is steeped in history and has a remarkable record of world first. At the University of Manchester in 1917, Ernest Rutherford became the first person to create an artificial nuclear reaction in a lab, an achievement that won him the Nobel Prize. Even earlier, Charles Rawls and Henry Royce met for the first time at the Midland Hotel, sparking a partnership that would change engineering forever. And long before that, in 1761, Duke's cart became Britain's first man-made waterway. But reaching even further back in 1515, Manchester Grammar School was founded to educate the city's poor boys in godliness and good learning. It's here in the city of innovation and history that we settle into the extensive archives of Manchester Grammar School nestled within the SDS Mercury system. So welcome to our Christmas podcast, Rachel Kneale. Rachel is the most talented and knowledgeable archivist of the Manchester Grammar School and is joining us today to talk about a fascinating publication from 1883, one that advertises special classes held during the Christmas vacation. Hello, Rachel.

Rachel Kneale 2:38

Hi, it's lovely to be here.

SDS Kate 2:40

Thank you very much. So first of all, the MGS Life Portal has some wonderful stories and archives. Do you have some favourites?

Rachel Kneale 2:50

Yes, um, I've got a couple. Um the first one's quite a serious one. Um so last January um we had a man visit us at school called Martin Stern, um, and he's a Holocaust survivor, and he shared his story of uh being arrested at the age of five at his school in Amsterdam. And then later on after the war, he um he went to the UK and he joined MGS. And so he shared his story about his journey um and about how attending MGS was uh a really helpful environment for him to exist in. Um so that was that was a wonderful one. So we we did a post on his story, um, and and so that that was that was lovely to be able to share that. Um so that's that's the first one, and then the second one, um, which is a bit older and a bit more lighthearted, um, is it's a story that we've known for quite a long time that in 1688 the boys at MGS rebelled against the teachers. Um, so we've got this lovely account in the school magazine um written by a teacher at the time and it was later republished, um, explaining that the teachers turned up to the school one day and the boys had nailed a list of demands to the the school. Um and the demands included um no more Latin, everything to be taught in English, later starts, longer holidays, and no more caning. So that's those demands, and they locked themselves in the school and refused to leave and they wouldn't let the teachers in. Um, but what I think's particularly notable is it it went on for two weeks. So quite impressive, and apparently their parents and people in Manchester supported them and sort of gave them food and guns even to keep so very dramatic, um, and an absolutely brilliant story. And I mean, actually, from the 18th century, we don't have a huge amount about the school. So to have that story really, you know, adds a bit of colour and gives you a bit of information on what the boys were like. So that's a wonderful story that everyone enjoys hearing about. Yeah, how they felt.

SDS Kate 4:41

That's amazing. They're amazing stories. So um, for my Christmas post, um, I've seen that uh in 1883 um there's um a letter which offers extra lessons over the Christmas period. Do you know where this advertisement would have been placed? Would it have been an advertisement or would it have been on a notice board?

Rachel Kneale 5:01

Or so we don't have brilliant information on the full context of it because it's literally just a little leaflet. But my suspicion is that it was probably tucked into what were called the termly lists. So the school each term at the end of the term published lists of the boys, they would have done their exams and they would be ranked in their classes based on how well they'd done. Um, and parents would be sent these at the end of every term. So my suspicion is that this would have been tucked in with those. So if you're a parent and you spotted that your boy had done particularly bad at say maths or German, and then you had this little advert saying, Oh, extra tuition, I think that's probably how it was how it was um introduced to people in those lists.

SDS Kate 5:45

Amazing. So um I noticed it mentioned French and German lessons, and I was wondering if that would have been an unusual um sort of class to hold in 1883. I was thinking more Latin, you know, but um I can see there's maths and um sort of creative drawing, but um I was quite surprised to see French and German.

Rachel Kneale 6:07

Yeah, so by the 1880s, so Greek and Latin were still very much the kind of the core curriculum, um, and they were sort of seen as the kind of higher level subjects. But interestingly, um, MGS had taught uh uh French from the 1830s onwards. Um, it was initially quite a sort of niche subject. I think they had it for an hour a week, and then over the course of time it became more important. German was a little bit later, so I think German was introduced in the 1860s, so a couple of decades before this leaflet was created. Um, but certainly by the 1880s, they were they were quite sort of significant subjects. And actually, um, our first uh record of an overseas trip in 1873, that was to Paris. Um, so you can see that French and German by the 1880s they were quite embedded into the curriculum, but perhaps still not seen as quite as important as Greek and Latin. Um, but obviously by this point, um, you have a lot of commerce in Manchester, particularly a lot of commerce with Germany. So German had become quite an important subject for the voice to learn at this point.

SDS Kate 7:09

Oh, amazing. So um, so uh you touched on it a little bit earlier. So so were were they optional, or were they a bit expected if you had, you know, sort of fallen back a bit or I think they were optional.

Rachel Kneale 7:24

Um, partly I think why they're offered is at the time the teachers were allowed to kind of augment their income with these extra classes. So it was sort of a way of the school allowing the staff to earn a bit more but without actually having to do it themselves and pay them extra themselves. So I think partly that's one of the purposes of it was to allow the teachers to have a bit of extra income. Um, so I'm pretty sure they were optional. Um, and I think it was very much down to the parents as to whether the boys would be forced into these classes in the Christmas holidays. Yeah. So I have to ask that it's our Christmas podcast. Um, back in 1883, would the boys get Christmas lunch?

SDS Kate 8:06

We don't know for certain. My suspicion at this point is they probably didn't. Um, we do know we've got a newspaper cutting from 1937, so an awful lot later, which states that the school had celebrated its first ever Christmas dinner. Um, newspapers don't always get things right, and it may have been that you know, back in the distant past there had been a Christmas dinner. Um, but as far as we know, the boys in 1883 wouldn't have enjoyed a Christmas dinner at school, unfortunately. Yeah, oh well, thank you so much for sharing the life at MGS um um and life with the students in 1883. Um, and uh it's been really insightful. Thank you so much.

Rachel Kneale 8:45

It's been great to have a chat about it.

SDS Kate 8:47

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. After that wonderful Christmas visit, I'm heading back to HQ in Dorset. Our heartfelt thanks go to Rachel Neal, the archivist at Manchester Grammar School, for so kindly sharing these remarkable stories. If you'd like to explore the school's stories more, visit www.mgslife.co.uk and for these and other tales, head to www dot talesfromthearchives at co dot uk and I'll catch you next time for another Christmas podcast.