Wigan Album

It looks to me as
If it could be 1920s.just look how spotless and clean the ward is with the polished legs of the furniture reflected in the floor.

Thinking the same Vb...maybe early 20's. Could do with some Noddy or Felix the Cat posters about the walls.

Dont think Noddy had been created then Gw .....he was an Enid Blyton character. By the looks of the ward it would probably not have been allowed to put anything on the walls.

When I attended infant school, there were lots of interesting toys arranged along the shelf around the classroom. Unfortunately, none of the pupils, in my recollection at least, were ever allowed to play with any of them. What a waste. There was also a wooden rocking horse that no one was allowed to sit on. I'm sure Lyndon will back me up here. Although Sod's law dictates that Lyndon would have probably been the first kid in generations to have actually sat on the damn thing. The only things that we were allowed to do were 'A' play in the sandpit, or ' B ' play with a tray full of wooden blocks. I also remember some fruit shaped lumps of lead, painted with lead paint, also some cardboard money, designed to teach us miner's kids how to ' reckon up '. Well, I grudgingly have to admit that it worked, although I will personally never forgive Mrs. Aspinall for not letting me have a go on that soddin' horse. Incidentally, I wonder if it's too late to claim compensation for brain damage, due to my contact with lead based learning aids during my formative years ?

Also there would not have been parental visiting as now. The thinking was that children would get upset if their parents came and went so the only visiting time was usually once a week on a Sunday afternoon. A friend of mine went for his tonsils out on a Monday, was left and didn't see his Mum again until Saturday when he was discharged.At sixty five years old he still recalls the anxiety he felt that he had been left and forgotten about.His Mum also felt lost as she was worried as to he would be after the operation without her to comfort him.

It was a trick to keep us there Oz. When I realised that you couldn't play with the toys -one morning I escaped and ran home. My mother had to drag me back with a jam buttie in my hand! Mind you the school gates were always open and not much traffic about. The infant class was always known as the Babies' class.

Did i say Noddy.I should have said Biggles. What with all the fuss and bother about today he's due to make a comeback. Seriously, children are given much more respect these days .A good thing.

When I started at St.Georges I was put in the class immediately above the infants and bitterly resented not being allowed to play with or on the toys in the infant class. The school must have been overcrowded since my class was held in the open at one end of the downstairs hall- must have been freezing in the winter months.

Ozy. I only vaguely remember that rocking horse. I was only at St.Andrews for 12 months because my mother got a teaching post at Rectory School and as it was nearer to our house I moved as well. I vividly remember Mrs.Aspinall making me eat Jam Sponge with lumpy custard which made me sick. Even now 63 years later I still can't eat it.

What you experienced there Lyndon was an early form of aversion therapy, I believe it was later named the ' Ludovico technique '. I had a similar traumatic experience a few years later at junior school, when I was ' encouraged ' to consume copious amounts of sago pudding, or to give it its proper name, frog spawn. Believe me mate, lumpy custard and frog spawn aren't even on the same scale on the vomitometer.