Schooling in Newport

My sister and I were sent to St. Joseph’s, a Convent School. Mabs was in her element, but I couldn’t stand it. There were too many prayers, too many girls, and Mother Superior had whiskers! I think it cost 2/- a week to attend that school so my father did not object strongly when I asked to leave! 


Mabs, seated on the left
 This photo may be of Mabs's class at St. Joseph's 

There was no alternative other than to go to Bolt Street elementary school with all the ‘raggedy arsed boys,’ as my father called them, but it suited me. It was only a couple of miles to walk, and all my quickly made friends went there. 

Newport, like the rest of South Wales at the time was just into the throes of a terrible depression leading up to the 1926 General Strike. There was little work about, and Pill was particularly hard hit. 

I was one of the few boys at Bolt Street School who wore proper shoes. The vast majority work ‘daps’ or plimsolls – many were bare-footed. Discipline at school was very strict; the cane was very much in use, with a ‘sixer’ on each hand a certainty if one was hauled before the headmaster. 



No caption
AWH on the left - possibly a photo from his time at Bolt Street School.

Teaching at Bolt Street was very sound. So much so, that in my second year we had the top boy in all three examinations for places in the High, Grammar and Central Schools which were competed for by all the elementary schoolboys in Newport and the surrounding district. I was one of them, and should have gone on to the Grammar School. My father would in due course be moved on from Newport, and any boy leaving the Grammar before reaching the age of sixteen was subject to a fine. It was not a large sum, but enough to deter boys leaving before they reached the sixth from. It was evident that my father would be posted before I was sixteen, and rather than pay a fine, I did not take my place in one of the best schools in South Wales but instead went to the lower graded Belle Vue Central School, which was only about a quarter of a mile from where we lived. Again it suited me because most of my pals went there, but I did not realize at the time what a fine opportunity I was missing.

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