Schools

One of the most commonly preserved type of photographs to be found within family albums archive is the school photograph. Prior to World War II, most school photographs are group photographs showing the whole class. For the commercial photographers who took these pictures, this meant the possible sale of 30-40 prints from one negative. It also meant that the costs to the customer could be kept low, thus bringing the photographs within the means of the poorer families who could not afford individual portraits of their children.

The standard pose is of the group in the school yard, often flanked by the teacher, with a slate identifying the class and the year. The other common pose is in the classroom, with learning accessories conspicuously in evidence. In virtually all photographs, the children are seen looking directly at the camera, for a very simple reason. If the photographer wished to sell his pictures, the faces of all the children had to be clearly visible.

The photographs tell us more about the role and objectives of the school than they do about the children themselves. Schools used photographs as a means of promoting the values they wished to promote, such as good attendance, success in competitions, and achievement on the sports field. They also commemorated special events such as Empire Day and May Day by commissioning photographs.

>These photographs, therefore, were not intended to serve as a documentary record of school life. Whole areas of school activity go totally unrecorded, unposed or informal images are rare, and the daily routines of school life were rarely photographed.

 

Leigh Council School 1923 Some of the girls are wearing caps to cover their shaved heads. Ringworm was virulent at the time. Children with lice frequently had their hair shaved and wore caps until it had grown.	Domestic Science Room at Altrincham County High School for Girls, 1930. This was one of a set of 6 postcards produced by the school. They were sold to aid school funds.	May Festival at Longmore Lane Infants School, Liverpool, 1924.	Godfrey Erman Memorial School c.1908. Photographs taken inside the classroom reveal the sort of furniture in use. Sometimes, we see on the walls examples of the pupils' work, or teaching aids. We cannot judge the size of the classes merely from the evidence of a photograph alone. If a mother had two or more children at the same school, they were sometimes brought on to the one photograph to reduce the cost.	Mount Tabor School Rounders Champions, South Birkenhead, 1902. The girls have been "capped" for the honour of playing for the school.
The cricket team of St Cross School, Clayton, 1921 The families of these boys could not afford cricket whites. Their parents worked as a greengrocer, a miner in the Clayton pit, and a player for the original Manchester football team	Children's school band, Christ Church School Denton 1909 DPA Ref 1782/30	A policeman instructing schoolchildren in Eccles on road safety in 1938	Regent Road Council School, report on Frank Dean, aged 12, December 1938 Note the limited range of subjects available for Frank to study.	Children from Whalley National School 1906. Schools used photography to reward the virtues they wished to inculcate in the young. In the past, schools placed considerable emphasis on attendance, giving prizes and certificates to those who attended regularly and punctually.
Standard 7, Benchill School, June 1935. The 1930s saw the development of Wythenshawe, then an area of green fields, to provide decent houses for working people away from the city centre and its poor housing conditions.	Swedish Drill, Hague St School, Miles Platting, 1911 Drill was the favourite form of physical education in Victorian and Edwardian schools. It was frequently conducted in the school yard, and required no special equipment or facilities.	Staff of St Anne’s Roman Catholic Church School, Ashton, c.1910	The Nicholls Hospital School Cricket Club, 1916 Note that all the boys are wearing white shirts and striped trousers to the knee	Wassilevsky’s “Cheder” or Hebrew School The children are in fancy dress for the Jewish Festival of Purim
Kenyon Hall College, c.1912, a fee paying school. See 771-2 for an details of the subjects studied at this school.	Kenyon Hall College, report on D. Madeley, 1912 Compare the range of subjects being taught at this independent school in 1912 with those for the council school over 20 years later. DPA Ref 771/2	Empire Day at Grecian Street School, Lower Broughton, Salford 1911.	Boys from Ardwick School 1927 It was apparently a status symbol to possess a tie, so the better-off boys can be distinguished from those who were less prosperous. The bags round the boys’ necks carried marbles	An unknown class. Note the abacus on the desks and the pictures and flags on the walls. The latter may indicate that it is a special day, such as Empire Day, or a jubilee or coronation.