Childhood on the Isle of Dogs
These days, most East End children will study at school or college until the age of 18, and more than ever before are going on to university or some other form of higher education.
Extraordinary to think then that, little more than a century ago, most cockney kids wouldn’t have been going to school at all – their only option was to go out to work as soon as they were able.
Until 1870, there were a handful of private and church schools in the East End but most parents couldn’t afford the school fees – especially when the alternative was putting the children to work to augment the meagre family income.
All that changed with the 1870 Education Act, which created the School Boards. Among their powers was the option of making education compulsory in their area – an option the London School Board took up.
The Isle of Dogs was one of the poorest areas for children’s education. The Board set to putting this right by building three new schools. Arthur Joseph Hubbard, born in 1869, was one of the first pupils at Glengall Road School.
“There were vacant fields on the Island, one in Glengall Road… on which I have seen a flock of sheep brought there for pasture. This became the Board School,” he recalled.
The three-storey building – infants on the ground floor, girls on the first, and boys on the second – was a revelation to the poor kids of the Island. Everything was brand new – slates, books, pencils and coat pegs, even the asphalted and shell-coated playground.
3 Rs and the Drill
The new students learned the 3 Rs of Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic among other subjects – including the rather military sounding Drill.
The Island’s other Board schools were in British Street (later Harbinger Road) and Wharf Road (later Saunders Ness Road), and these were joined in the 1870s by three new church schools.
Frederick Pearson, born in 1899, went to St John’s Church of England School.
“St John’s School was a happy one,” he remembered.
“My first memory was threading long strips of coloured paper into a kind of small mat.
There were slates, too, with scratchy slate pencils. There was a lot of spitting,
with a rag to clean the slates. Hardly hygienic, but then it was the 1890s!”
“The school was gas-lit, in those days, by a naked flame. Three pineapple-shaped gas-holders hung from the rafters, nine jets to each pineapple.
“In the winter at lighting-up time, I sat fascinated when the school caretaker came in with his long pole on which was a lighted taper. For me it was all very wonderful.”
In 1902, local education authorities were set up to take learning a stage further. All primary education was now free and the LEAS set up secondary and technical schools, evening institutes and adult education.
A different world
Lily, born in Janet Street in 1897, remembers her daily trek to grammar school in Hackney as entering a different world.
“I wore a straw boater with elastic under the chin, which was very uncomfortable,” she said.
“Immediately I arrived home I changed into my usual clothes, as the other children would only play with me when I was dressed in ordinary clothes.”
Lily travelled to and from school by tram, but for most kids it was a long, and in winter very cold, walk.
Dick Waterhouse was born on the Isle of Dogs in 1911, and in his early walks to Cubitt Town School had to contend with Zeppelin raids and foul weather.
And there were no expensive Nike or Adidas trainers to pose around the playground in back in the early 1900s.
“A sound pair of boots was a must,” he recalled.
“In my last new pair, I had walked about a hundred yards in some snow and, by the time I got back indoors, the soles had fallen off!”
To read more about the early years of East End schooling see ‘Memories of Childhood on the Isle of Dogs 1870-1970’, edited by Eve Hostettler, published by the Island History Trust, 1993.