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History of Merchant Taylors' School (Part 2)

There was no revolt or riot...

Bishop's wife claimed that the headmaster 'avoided all unnecessary severity' and 'there was no revolt or riot during the whole time of his continuance at the school'. It is more than likely that Matthews' account is true for there were at the beginning of the 19th century a number of rebellions in schools, some of which had to be put down by troops - at Westminster in 1791, 1801 and 1820, at Eton in 1768, 1783, 1810 and 1818, at Harrow in 1805 and 1808, at Winchester in 1770, 1774, 1778, 1793 and 1818, at Rugby in 1786, 1797, 1822, and at Charterhouse and Shrewsbury in 1818 - which left only St. Paul's riot-less from the so-called 'Great Nine' of the Clarendon Commission of the 1860s.

This behaviour may have been influenced by the French Revolution and the Gordon Riots in London in June 1780. (The Gordon Riots were fomented by Lord George Gordon following the Catholic Relief Act of 1778 which lifted some restrictions on British Catholics and angered fanatical Protestants.) In 1796 two pupils at MTS, John Grose and Richard Hayward, were expelled for hoisting a French tricolour over the Tower of London and for writing anti-dynastic graffiti on the walls near Suffolk Lane. On 11th April 1811 there was a pitched battle between boys of St. Paul's and Merchant Taylors' in Old Change at the western end of Cheapside as the boys met on their way to school. On the building of the City of London School in Honeylane Market, Cheapside, frequent fights took place between the pupils of that school and MTS.

Return of the 'Modern Curriculum'

In 1814 Cherry made a detailed proposal for the setting up of an arithmetic and writing school and for the teaching of maths and accounts. Again the proposal was first deferred and then dropped. It was to be a further 15 years before maths was finally admitted into the school curriculum. In 1811 H.B. Wilson was granted permission to write a history of the school but he was overlooked as Head Master in 1819 on the appointment of James Bellamy, OMT, Head Master 1819-45. In 1828 Bellamy advised the Company of the need to modernise to 'meet the daily increasing demand for a more general education', by which he meant in particular the founding of University College and King's College at the University of London. In 1830 education was as topical as it is today with writers like 'Christopher North' advocating its spread, though fearful of the consequences, 'from the classes to the masses'. The Court voted £200 towards the founding of King's College and in 1829 Bellamy once again pleaded that the school be placed on the same level as other places of education. Beginning in 1830 Classics was taught in the morning and Maths in the afternoon, specialist teachers were appointed and by 1845 French was being considered for two afternoons per week. The last proposal proved too expensive but the further success of the School began to make it clear that the current premises were too small and new ones should be found.

Still, in the 1870s, Sir D'Arcy Power comments on the curriculum he faced: 'It seems to me, as I look back on the education at school in my time, that it was conducted with the design of giving a broad training without any utilitarian object. Every boy gained a sound knowledge of the Classics, could write a little Latin and Greek prose and make a few verses; if he reached the higher forms, he learnt at least the Hebrew alphabet, but every boy was passed through the same mould without discrimination, no attempt was made to find out what his special aptitude might be. The best boys got on through sheer ability... The vast majority of boys went as stockbrokers' clerks, into merchants' offices or into business.'

Nor was there much teaching of English. Bishop Samuel Thornton wrote: 'Incredible as it may seem, we were left to pick up our acquaintance with the classics of our own language out of school, as best we could. I read my English poets in the street as I walked from school.' He adds however: 'In what was professedly taught there was instilled (and this is my deepest debt to Merchant Taylors') a passion for thoroughness and accuracy, and a contempt for all smatteriness and mere pretence of knowledge'. It is likely that many parents cared little what was taught as long as their boys did well enough to attain a scholarship to university.

Problems of an inner city school... even in the City of London

The city environment around it included a brewery which belched smoke and soot and a printing works whose apprentices fought with M.T.S. boys almost daily. According to the Rev. A. J. Church in 1857: 'there were no desks in the schoolroom. The monitors had a table; the prompters had a bench. Everyone else had to write, when there was occasion for writing, on his knees. And there were no lights. Every boy had to supply his own candle, which was required to be of wax...

For more than two centuries the only place where teaching was carried on was the Great Schoolroom; its dimensions were about 85 feet by 30 feet. It as lighted very imperfectly by windows on either side, large enough, indeed, but obscured by the heavy leading of the diamond panes and by the long-standing accumulations of dirt... The four classrooms were all more or less recent additions to the school accommodation. Bishop Samuel Thornton remembered the London fogs of his schooldays in the 1840s when 'little was done on those dark days, the dreamy and unwonted state of affairs generating an excited condition in the Forms, unfavourable to discipline and work'. There was also a constant din from outside the school which interfered greatly with the conduct of lessons. Until the 1860s no provision was made for feeding the boys at lunch time. In 1838 there were 58 boys in the Fourth, being taught in this room and without gas lighting - small wonder that the masters resorted to the stick to keep control.

The Oxford and Clarendon Commissions

James Hessey, Head Master from 1845 to 1870, improved many aspects of the school, increasing the number of masters, introducing school lunches and appointing a 'superior' teacher of mathematics. The rough practices of among the boys 'pulling' on clothes and 'bumping' against the pillars of the cloisters were banned, something which at first caused open rebellion among the younger boys but in which Hessey had his way by his firm insistence on more civilised behaviour. Hessey was also agitating for a change of location. Two Commissions of this time, the Oxford Commission and the Public Schools Commission (under Lord Clarendon), threatened the well-being of the school. The Oxford Commission restructured the arrangements for scholarships between the school and St. John's College so there was no longer such an easy path for boys to reach university. There had grown a general feeling that all was not well with Eton and other 'public' schools and the Commission was appointed to investigate and put this right. The Schools Commission visited M.T.S. in 1862 and published its report in 1864. It was noted that parents were increasingly reluctant to send their sons to school in London due to the overcrowding, the lack of games facilities and increasing accessibility to country schools. It was proposed that Charterhouse and Westminster, boarding schools, should move out of London and that Merchant Taylors' and St. Paul's, day schools, should increase their premises. It was also recommended that, while the classical character of the curriculum should be continued, science, German, music and more drawing should be introduced.

Charterhouse, developing character and the narrowness of excessive competition

Tuesday April 6 1875: the School opens at Charterhouse Square

In 1866, following reasoned argument from Hessey and the report of the Commission, the Company bought five and a half acres of estate in Goswell Street for £90,000 from the Governors of the Charterhouse. Building of the new school began in 1873 and was completed in 1875. Plans for the new school included immediate expansion to 350 and thence to 500, the development of a more modern curriculum to meet demand for 'Modern Languages, Science and Commerce', and the raising of fees from £10 to 12 guineas for the lower school and 12 guineas to 15 guineas for the upper. William Baker, OMT, Head Master from 1870-1900, wanted to develop the whole of the new site for games, 'to foster a corporate and public spirit among the boys of the School, by drawing them together in common amusements and giving them common interests'. On the development of playing fields around the school Baker wrote in 1872: 'Besides this, I regard such an arrangement as desirable for the healthy development of a boy's character and as furnishing a wholesome corrective to the narrowing effects of excessive competition'. These ideas were not radical for this time but they were fairly new and perhaps surprising from a venerable institution like Merchant Taylors' School.

The Prize Scholars with Dr Baker, 1898

Baker was conservative in his views, considering Classics as the best means of training the mind but he was almost equally keen on Mathematics and paid much attention to its development in the school. Also in his time Chemistry and Physics were introduced and a new science building was finished in 1891. Dr. Baker proposed the introduction of Biology which was introduced as an extra subject in 1900.

Charterhouse Square in 1875

The school at Charterhouse Square

The birth of the Examination Boards

French was still in a precarious position within the school curriculum: from a total of 3900 marks (from 78 scripts worth 50 marks each) in an examination in 1874 only 123 marks were actually scored and 53 boys submitted blank papers. The master in charge of the 'Modern Side' pointed out that boys joined his area not because they showed promise in French but because they had no obvious gift for the classics. On the appointment of John Nairn in 1900 to succeed Dr. Baker the new Head Master asked Professor Ernest Weekly to inspect the modern language teaching. He drew attention to the dominant role of Latin in determining a boy's promotion, to the beginning of Greek at too young an age and to the lack of systematic instruction in English. Meanwhile, Dr. Baker recommended the adoption of the newly established Oxford and Cambridge Schools Examination Board for examination of higher work which for the first time provided a means for comparison between schools. Until this point schools could differ considerably in the ways they assessed pupils and conducted their affairs; today we take for granted the existence of national standards and criteria and the use of public examination results to compare one school, however invidiously, against another.

The flight to the suburbs brings increased competition

In the early 1900s the number of boys at the school began to fall, due in part to the rise of good and not too expensive schools in the country around London such as Bedford Grammar, Berkhamstead, Tonbridge, University College School, King's College School, St. Dunstan's, St. Olave's and Latymer Upper School, amongst others. Science and technical subjects were being developed in institutions funded by public money and there was some pressure on the incomes of the class that sent its sons to schools like Merchant Taylors'. It became increasingly apparent that boys were travelling long distances to school each day, from as far as Hertford, Guildford and Leigh-on-Sea, the school needed a prep. school for boys aged 8-11 and a sports ground nearer than Bellingham. Nairn began to think that the school might be better placed on the outskirts of London. In 1914 the Oxford and Cambridge School Examination Board inspected the school and, amongst their conclusions, found the hours of the school too short and the homeworks too long, all of which limited their time for fresh air and recreation. The Board also said that the curriculum was too narrow, that the needs of a few potential classical scholars were dominating the needs of the many. Even at this stage the only education in English teaching was gained from the translation of Latin and Greek. In the 1860s the school had been 'one of the nine' but its premier position was threatened annually by increased competition. In 1925 the matter of the school's location was raised again but any suggestion that it should be moved was vetoed by the School Committee.

The Duke of York, later George VI, opens the new Science Block at Charterhouse Square, 1926

The Officer Training Corps and the Great War

In 1908 Lord Haldane reorganised school cadet corps, making them into a single body, the Officer Training Corps, which provided an essential source of officers for the First World War. In 1912 the London Rifle Brigade was permitted to billet three companies in the school and when war came the regiment was billeted there. The Old Merchant Taylors held a meeting at the Hall and 200 enlisted forthwith. In 1918 enlistment in the "O.T.C." became compulsory and in 1921 a House system was introduced with four houses named Hilles, White, Spenser and Clive.

The Lower Seconds in the Easter Term 1927

Spencer Leeson: rejoining the numbder of the great schools of England

The next Head Master, Spencer Leeson, served for just nine years but in that time he proposed and supervised what was probably the greatest single event in the modern history of the school: the movement from the city of London to the green suburbs of Northwood, Watford and Rickmansworth, an area bounded by branches of the Metropolitan Railway Company. Many of the pupils of the school in the city now came from north London and the movement of the school fllowed the pattern established by Charterhouse and imitated later by St. Paul's, to move the schools to a location where boys from London and its suburbs could enjoy the same advantages in their schools as they would enjoy in the rural boarding schools. Leeson made his mind up quickly, advised a move and the Company fell rapidly behind him. He invited an inspection by the Board of Education in 1928 and concluded from their report that the School must move: 'At Charterhouse Square we can never rejoin the number of the great schools of England'. He attached a letter from Cyril Norwood which included these words:

'In these next twenty years we shall see a belt of good secondary schools built all round London at a sufficient distance out to provide playing fields and space, and with all that is modern in equipment. These schools will be efficient and the middle class parent will send his sons either to boarding schools, if he can afford it, or to these schools. He will not send them to the noise and congestion of London, to premises which are congested and largely out of date, with playing fields miles away from the teaching centre...'

The site at Sandy Lodge was bought in late 1929 and plans were drawn up for the new school. The cost of the initial proposals was greeted with some dismay but the Court eventually accepted them. The site at Charterhouse Square was sold to St. Bartholomew's Hospital who had been previous owners, having bought the site in 1349 from the Master of the Spital Croft hospital. Both the senior partner of the architects chosen to design the new school and the prime mover of the Charterhouse sale to Bart's were O.M.T.s The move to Sandy Lodge was completed in March 1933 and the school was formally opened on June 12th.

The site at Sandy Lodge at the end of the 20th century 

The school at Sandy Lodge (built 1931-33): the price of greatness

The school had new facilities to promote its climb back to greatness, though at a price which would put it further beyond the reach of poorer parents; scholars from poor families were becoming less common at the universities.

Return to MTS History Part 1