off on Whit Monday and Tuesday. Sometimes Ascension Day and Michaelmas were holidays. There were also secular opportunities for days off. In 1853 it was the date of the opening of the Provincial Council. Three days were taken in 1855 because of the races and a ploughing match and in 1856 Her Majesty’s birthday was celebrated. George Augustus Selwyn declared a holiday on 12 November 1855 and Archdeacon Mathias let the school out at 10am on 29 August 1856, possibly because it was the Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist. Henry Jacobs was known as “Old Cobs” and he was “loved and respected by us all”. He “treated this savage young crew with benevolent firmness, and with the occasional contemptuous severity in any case of meanness or cowardly bullying”. He thrashed us pretty often…” 24 The Bad Conduct Register perhaps softens Brittan’s recollection of Jacobs’ use of the cane. The process for recording an event or action that acquired a bad conduct
mark was quite simple. The first time that a name was entered in the book for the week, whatever reason, it incurred a Number 1, and on each subsequent occasion during that week the number was increased until the Number 3 (and very rarely the Number 4) was reached. A Number 3 could be, but was not necessarily
In September, Dudley, Robert Simeon Jackson and Joseph Brittan were laughing, and why Dudley, Frank (3) and Herbert John (2) Mathias, Charles Hood (5) and David Theodore (4) Williams, John Henry Cridland (13) and Henry Bower Jackson (9) were “ late in school” on 12 November 1852, is a matter for conjecture. This misdemeanour shows up the inequities in the bad conduct mark allocation. The Williams’ brothers, Herbert John Mathias and Henry John Cridland each received a single bad conduct mark. Jackson, who had already laughed that week, received 2. Both Dudley and Frank Mathias were allocated 3. Dudley, who had already laughed and played, received 3 bad conduct marks and an imposition, while Mathias was punished. Was it because he had already been listed with careless writing and spitting in an ink stand earlier in the week? In March 1853 Dudley was out of his place, and exchanged signs with George Dye Draper. In May he “told Bowler his sum” and also played with Draper and Mathias
accompanied by, the word, “Punished” or “punished by imposition”. Within this confined space laughing and talking were
the most commonly recorded offences, along with idleness and inattention. Dudley’s record only covers the year 1852 and part of 1853 because, along with George Dye Draper (17), he was appointed a Monitor and was “exempted by privilege”. 25 From August to November 1852 Dudley’s name appears 14 times (Figure 6) and like so many of the others in the classroom, laughing and talking are recorded most often. Occasionally, joint offenders are named by surname.
Figure 6 – The Enrolment Book June 6th , 8th and 29th 1853 p 76
College Issue 41 2021
67
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs