The new school was considered a sister college to its elder until it formed its own character (the aforementioned “royal favor”) and became the school of choice for the aristocracy and nobility. By the nineteenth century, Eton had educated more sons of the upper classes than the other public school, and its reputation as the birthplace of the empire’s brightest and highest in the land was solidified by the number of statesmen, military heroes, athletes, and writers, among others, who came out of the school.

Unlike at Winchester, the lines between Collegers and Oppidans, or the poor boys whose tuition and board were supplied by the college, and the boys whose parents paid for tuition and lived in their own houses with a Master, were fiercely drawn. The Collegers, no matter what form (grade in US English), were consigned to the worst food, lodgings, and treatment, and well into the nineteenth century, “the sixteen senior collegers had no water except what they made the lower boys fetch in for them overnight from the pump in the yard.” The lower boys had no basins or water at all, and they bore the brunt of the system of fagging, where “any neglect of duty was met with brutal punishment.”

This state of affairs, as well as the neglect and greed of headmasters, raised public outcry in the 1860s, and a Royal Commission was created in 1861, the effect of which was the Public Schools Act 1868, which “removed these schools from any direct jurisdiction or responsibility of the Crown, established church or government, establishing a board of governors for each school and granting them independence over their administration. The Act led to rapid development of the schools, away from the traditional classics-based curriculum taught by clergymen, to a broader scope of studies.”

Under the act and the statutes of 1872, neglect and abuse at Eton lessened, but they had the adverse effect of ridding poverty as one of the qualifications for admission. Now boys from wealthy and aristocratic backgrounds could enter Eton as Collegers. This broke down the prejudice against “beastly tugs”, yet it barred access to higher education of poor and lower-class boys, for whose attendance these public schools had been founded! Now a disadvantaged boy had to be extremely clever and intelligent to beat the well-to-do boys (whose parents could afford “crammers”) in the entrance examinations.

However, life at Eton could be exhilarating and stimulating. The guiding force of the boys were education, sports, and morals, though not always in that order, and independence of thought and a questioning outlook were encouraged. In School Boy Life in England: An American View, John Corbin presents a pleasant view of a typical Oppidan’s life:

A boy enters his “house” at about twelve years old. From this time on he is carefully watched by the housemaster, with a view to checking his bad traits and developing his good ones. Most of the masters make it a point to find out all they can about a boy from his parents, and then carry on his training as it was begun; or if they think his training unwise, to correct it. The fact that most of the troublesome details of discipline are in the hands of the elder boys makes a master’s relations with his pupils unusually frank and affectionate. And as the masters are always well educated, usually sensible, and often famous athletes, they have a strong and very admirable influence. Much of all this, of course, the boy never suspects. He simply grows to respect and like his master without quite knowing why.

Perhaps the most important friendship a boy makes in his house is with his fag-master. His chief duties as a fag are to cook breakfast and supper in the house kitchen and serve it in his master’s room; but in many of the houses the boys eat all their meals together, except tea, which is always served in the separate rooms; so the fags have very little to do in return for the friendship of the older boys. In the past, to be sure, the system of fagging was often grossly abused; and even to-day it is, like all good institutions, liable to abuse; yet altogether too much has been said about its tyranny and brutality. Most small boys are glad enough to be with the big boys, and a Senior who plays football or rows well may have as many youngsters to wait on him as he chooses.

Fag-masters are often the fags’ best friends, and even at the universities afterwards keep a kindly eye upon them. Sometimes it happens that a fag turns out a great cricketer or oarsman, in which case his old fag-master is as proud of him as of a younger brother. Or, like as not, in after-life a country parson can look back upon the time when he fagged the bishop of his diocese. In a speech made in 1896 by Lord Rosebery, late Prime Minister of England, there is an amusing reference to fagging: “It is a long time since you and I, Mr. Chairman” (Mr. Acland, Minister of Education), “first met. I have always been a little under your presidence, because I began as your fag at Eton, and I little thought, when I poached your eggs and made your tea, that we were destined to meet under these very dissimilar circumstances.”

The Houses clustered around the college buildings were pleasant and cheerful. Unlike at Winchester, Eton boys had a room of their own, “seldom more than twelve feet square, and besides a folding-bed, bath-tub, and wash-stand, they contain not only a fireplace and a tea-table, but also a study table and chair, and sometimes a bookcase and an ottoman.” The boys spent most, if not all of their time, with the fellows in their house on a firm schedule of chapel, school hours, and “lock-up” in the evening. The result was that each house had its own debating society, cricket and football teams, and “house four” on the river.

On an average full day, the Upper and Lower Schools were called to the two Winter Halfs at 6:45 am, and had to be in school by 7:30 (in the Summer Half this was 6:15 and 7 am). Hot coffee and cocoa and buns or biscuits were provided before Early School, which lasted fifty minutes, after which the boys returned to their houses for breakfast (8:20 in winter, 7:50 in summer). Chapel in winter and summer was at 9:15 and bells began at 9:50. After Chapel, which lasted about fifteen minutes, there was School until 10:30, and then an interval where refreshments were provided in the houses (though most boys would venture to the “Sock Shops” in town); School began again from 10:45 to 11:45.

From 11:45 till dinner (1:45 in winter and 1:30 in summer), or “after twelve,” Lower Boys went to the Pupil Room for exercises, verses, etc for their division masters, under the supervision of their tutor. They remained there until they finished and their tutor provided feedback (“tear them over” or “rip”, and if well done, exempted the student of needing to copy their verses, etc). This was also the time when troublesome pupils were disciplined. Dinner was mandatory unless given leave by the House Master, and after it until about 4 pm, Lower Boys were free to do as they like. They returned to School from 4 to 5:45, with a short break at 5 pm. After this was “lock-up,” and the boys had tea in their Houses, where an “Order” (bread, milk, tea and butter) was provided for each (this schedule changed depending on Sundays, Halfs, which school, and one’s academic standing, but otherwise).

Sports and school societies characterized Eton the strongest. The most important society was The Eton Society, or “Pop.” Exclusive, self-elected and wielding enormous influence over Eton, election to Pop was the most coveted social distinction at the college. In The Children of The Souls, Jeanne Mackenzie tells of the anxiety and struggle of Patrick Shaw Stewart, scion of an old, but financially-strapped Scottish family, and a Colleger, to get into Pop. Once inside this hallowed society, Patrick was taken up to the highest pinnacle of the social ladder by new friends Julian Grenfell, Charles Lister, and Edward Horner, among others, who were the children of the aristocratic and well-connected “Souls.”

It is fitting that Pop, though wanting “first-rate fellows”, was filled with the college’s top athletes, for sports were the focus of all public schools during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. They were the cricketers who played against Winchester and Harrow, the boating-men who rowed for and often won the Ladies’ Plate at Henley, and the boys who represented the school at football. The Eton Wall Game, which was similar to rugby and football (soccer), pitted the Oppidans against the Collegers, fives were a favorite sport during the winter, and the annual cricket match between Harrow and Eton at Lord’s was so popular, it became a fixture on the social calendar from the 1870s on.

The height of the Eton calendar was the fourth of June, which celebrated George III’s birthday. On this day all Eton alumni visited the college, the boys’ mothers and sisters dressed in their finest summer gowns, and the Thames was filled with punts and house-boats:

Luncheon is served in the College Hall, and after toasts are drunk all gather in the playing-fields to chat, listen to the music, and, perhaps, watch the game of cricket. At four o’clock comes chapel, and afterwards the boys serve strawberry-mess and tea to as many guests as can be got into their nine-by-twelve rooms. Then all the frocks, parasols, brass bands, white waistcoats, and buttonholes swarm to the river to celebrate the departure of the boats for Surly. This is conducted with almost military pomp. When the boats arrive at Surly, dinner is served under tents on the meadow opposite Surly Hall. After this they all row back.

Sources
School Boy Life in England: An American View by John Corbin
The Children of the Souls by Jeanne Mackenzie
Eton by An Old Etonian
The World and Its People v5 by Larkin Dunton
Eton: Water-colours by Edith Danvers Brinton

The Hall was named for the recently-deceased Scottish mathematician and scientist Mary Somerville, who defied 19th century prejudices towards educated women and exhortations that women could not balance marriage and motherhood with a profession. A self-taught science writer and polymath, Somerville published The Mechanism of the Heavens in 1831, and her best-known book, On the Connection of the Physical Sciences in 1834, which brought the achievements of great contemporary scientists to the attention of a wider public. In 1835 she became one of the first women members of the Royal Astronomical Society, and in 1869, she was awarded the Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. She was also the first person to sign John Stuart Mill’s 1868 petition to Parliament in support of women’s suffrage.

The institution opened in the autumn of 1879 with twelve students and under the leadership of its first Principal, Madeleine Shaw-Lefèvre, sister of a Liberal MP, and daughter of Sir John Shaw Lefevre, a former Vice-Chancellor of London University. According to Miss Shaw-Lefèvre’s diary “for the first few years two cows and a pig formed part of the establishment, but these were later replaced by a pony and a donkey which might be seen disporting themselves in the field, adding to the picturesque and homely character of the place”. Under her ten-year tenure, Somerville Hall enlarged from a hall of residence to a large block of buildings erected to the west in 1886-87, from the designs of H. Wilkinson Moore. During the tenure of the Hall’s second Principal, Agnes Catherine Maitland, the number of students rose from thirty-five to eighty-six, and the buildings were proportionately extended. She developed the tutorial system with a view to making Somerville a genuine college and no mere hall of residence, and she urged the students to take the full degree course so as to prove their title to the degrees. Somerville was the Hall become the first of the women’s halls to adopt a qualifying exam for candidates (1891), and in 1894 it was incorporated as the first women’s college in England.

Miss Maitland (with dark bonnet) is surrounded by her staff and students, including future principal Emily Penrose (3rd from the right in the 3rd row), pioneering Indian lawyer Cornelia Sorabji (far left end of the second row from the front) Indian princesses Bamba and Catherine Duleep Singh (front row far left) and Clara Pater (on the right of Agnes Maitland).

Somerville and Lady Margaret Hall were joined soon after by St. Hugh’s Hall (1886) and St. Hilda’s Hall (1893), though women students had the option of belonging to the Society of Home Students, which comprised students who resided in private families and were supervised by the council of the association. In 1884, “honour moderations and final honour schools of mathematics, natural science, and modern history were opened to women, and from time to time admission to the examinations of other schools was granted, but it was not until 1894 that they were free to present themselves for examination in all the subjects in which men may take the B.A. degree.” However, women remained ineligible for degrees, and Congregation rejected a proposal, in 1896, to admit women to degrees or to grant them diplomas recording their success in the final schools examinations. Nonetheless, these colleges, and their sister colleges at Cambridge, Girton and Newnham, struck the first blows at the prejudice against women’s higher education, and prepared a new generation of women for a liberated life.

After Miss Smith’s death in 1870, her estate, appraised at $500,000, went almost entirely to the college for which she had designed it, and in September of the following year, the first building acquired by Smith College was purchased. A committee was formed to select a president for Smith, and Reverend Lauremus Clark Seelye, LL.D., was chosen. This careful, intelligent man enhanced Sophia Smith’s vision for her women’s college; after surveying women’s colleges and universities at home and abroad, and consulting with the leading educators of the time, he determined that Smith should have no preparatory department connected with it and decided that it should be a college where young women would have superior opportunities for increasing their education. Up to the founding of Smith, no other college for women had been founded without a preparatory department, none had required Greek for entrance, and the majority of them demanded little more, and often less, than that accomplished in the best secondary schools. But Seelye was determined that Smith be different, and in the summer of 1875, College Hall, the first academic building, was finished and dedicated, and at a quarter to nine, September 9, 1875, Smith College opened at morning prayers with four residing teachers and fourteen students. From then on, Smith College devoted itself to excellence in women’s higher education, and began to carve its own niche amongst its “seven sisters.”

The college year at Smith opened with a dance known as the “Freshman Frolic,” then in October, came the reception given by the sophomores to welcome the entering class. A new girl would be escorted to this occasion by an upper class partner, who, in addition to filling out her dance card and sending her flowers, saw to it that the freshman met the right person for each dance. The upper class partner entertained the freshman during refreshments and then saw her home. A dance of the same sort was given by the junior class members as a farewell to the senior class. Other important events were Mountain Day, where everyone took the day off for outdoor excursions, and Rally Day, which was held informally in the mid 1890s, and was celebrated in the Spring.

Since there was no preparatory department attached to Smith, its curriculum was vigorous and thorough, “a year’s work being required of all students in certain specified studies. A certain number of papers was to be submitted to the English department for criticism every year in which the requirement in English was not taken. All required studies except Philosophy must be taken in the first two years. Each student must pursue a main study which shall consist of related three-hour courses, taken consecutively through the Junior and Senior years, and based, so far as is specified by the several departments, upon preliminary work of the earlier years.” Physical training was also required, and each member of the first and second classes was required to take gymnasium work for half hours a week from November 1st to the spring recess. Juniors and Seniors were required four periods of exercise a week of not less than one hour each from October 1 to June 1. Neither were considered a hardship for Smith’s students, particularly the latter, when a mania for basketball and (field) hockey swept through women’s colleges in both America and England in the 1890s.

Tuition in 1905 was $100, and room and board, $300 a year, which was moderately expensive, especially since it was not yet fashionable for the daughters of extremely wealthy men to attend college. To help with the expenses, Smith not only had a many, many scholarships for students, but a Student’s Aid Society, which assisted those who lacked the means to finish their education by offering loans without interest to needy and worthy students of the three upper classes, allowing them three to five years for the payment.

Though women’s colleges in America later followed Smith’s lead in abolishing preparatory departments and increasing the rigor of their curriculum, Smith nonetheless remains dedicated to producing women of intelligence and achievement, and of broad outlook.

Though there were three more expositions of significance by the dawn of WWI (St Louis in 1904, Seattle in 1909, and San Francisco in 1915), the one held in 1900 was unique in that it was the first and last fair to bridge the gap between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This was also the pinnacle of imperialism, and the “nadir of race relations in America.” After witnessing the successful campaign for the inclusion of African-Americans in the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, African-Americans viewed the Paris Exhibition as another avenue to promote the progress of their people in the thirty-five years since the end of slavery. The year before the fair, W.E.B. Du Bois, a noted sociologist and activist for African-Americans, began to collect material for the display, and focused on “creating charts, maps, and graphs recording the growth of population, economic power, and literacy among African Americans in Georgia.” In conjunction with Daniel A.P. Murray, assistant to the Librarian of Congress, Du Bois was able to assemble a large collection of written works, which included a bibliography of 1400 titles, 200 books, and many of the 150 periodicals published by black Americans.

Du Bois stated that the objective of the exhibit was quadruple, and by displaying it he hoped to illustrate “the History of the American Negro, the Present condition of the Negro, the Education of the Negro, and Literature of the Negro.” he project was backed with a $15,000 budget appropriated from the American government and amounted to numerous artifacts, including “musical compositions, books by African American authors, and the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, their award-winning display of photographs, books, models, maps, patents, and plans from several black universities, including Atlanta, Fisk, Howard, Hampton, and Tuskegee, showed the world African Americans “studying, examining, and thinking of their own progress, and prospect.”

One highlight of the exhibit utilized nine model displays to depict the progress of Negroes from slavery to the present day. The models began with the homeless freedman and end[ed] with the modern brick schoolhouse and its teachers. Finally, to illustrate the increase in population of the race and to demonstrate other contributions, there were charts showing population growth, the decline in illiteracy and a record of the more than 350 patents granted to black men since 1834. Du Bois stated, concerning the exhibit “we have thus, it may be seen, an honest, straightforward exhibit of a small nation of people, picturing their life and development without apology or gloss, and above all made by themselves.” As a result of its great success, the Negro Exhibit was awarded with seventeen medals during its time on display at the Paris Exposition. Specifically, it received “two grand prizes, four gold medals, seven silver medals, two bronze medals and two honorable mentions” in the various categories of appraisal.

Further Reading:
About Du Bois and the Paris Exposition
The 1900 Paris Exposition
The Exhibit of American Negroes
W.E.B. Du Bois and the 1900 Paris Exhibition
Africans, Darkies and Negroes: Black Faces at the Pan American Exposition of 1901, Buffalo, New York
A small nation of people: W.E.B. Du Bois and African American portraits of progress from the Library of Congress with essays by David Levering Lewis and Deborah Willis.
The Exhibit Online

The role of the public school played a large part in the creation of the ruling caste. Though English law regarded education as a right, irrespective of poverty, the access and leisure time required to commit to education has frequently been only in reach of those from the upper classes. The product of these public schools were leaders not only by birth, but by the careful and deliberate grooming of the headmasters. Their status as elite schools for gentlemen solidified after the Industrial Revolution, from which grew the plutocracy, and the emergence of the British Empire, which allowed the sons of younger sons of aristocrats the opportunity to earn a living whilst serving and protecting their nation–which in turn strengthened the ruling elites.

John Corbin, in his 1895 book, Schoolboy life in England, An American View, stresses the role in which public schools played in English society:

To be a public-school boy means as much in the afterlife as to be a college man means here [America]…a man may leave Eton or Rugby to go to the Military College at Sandhurst, to go into business, to travel–or to do nothing, in fact–and his case is easily explained; but if he wants to be sure of passing current among strangers he must at least have been to a public school–even if he has never passed an examination, was flogged every day of his life, and expelled at the end of his first term.

Because of this importance, a boy of eleven or twelve would be shipped off to Eton or Rugby from far-flung places of the Empire by his Colonial administrator father, and millionaire industrialists did all they could to get their sons into these schools. By the 1880s, it was even difficult for the sons of Old Wykehamists or Old Carthusians to obtain acceptance, as for example at Eton, the examination for Election tested candidates on Latin Composition (Prose and Verse); Translation from Latin and Greek; Mathematics (including Arithmetic, Algebra, and Euclid), and “General Papers,” not limited to Latin and Greek Grammar and Parsing. As attendance costs for these schools seldom fell below £100, each school set up a Foundation from which boys chosen for the scholarships could offset the steep fees. So fierce was the competition for the few slots which opened each year (ranging from eleven to fifteen in number), special tutors were paid upwards of 100-120 guineas a year (~$500-600) to drill boys as young as ten in the examination subjects.

Of the public schools, the greatest were Winchester, Eton, Rugby, Harrow, and Charterhouse, with the first being the oldest existing public school.

Winchester College and Chapel

Winchester was founded at the city of Winchester in Hampshire, England in 1382 by William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester and Chancellor to both Edward III and Richard II. Wykeham’s purpose in found his school, or “college,” as it has always been called at Winchester, was to prepare boys to enter a college he founded at Oxford (New College). So rigorous was the curriculum at Winchester, graduates found themselves too far advanced for the teaching they found at Oxford. Wykeham’s solution was to employ a special body of tutors at New College, a custom which spread to Oxford’s other colleges. This innovation influenced the structure of the English university system, whereupon each college had its own set of instructors. Wykeham intended that all his scholars should be chosen from the poorer people, and left funds to support them. These scholarships were highly coveted, and during the late 19th century, it was common for the sons of university graduates–who were often rich–to obtain these openings; far from the disadvantaged boys Wykeham intended. Within the college itself there was keen competition, particularly as the five or six best students were granted scholarships at New College (which was called “getting off to New”).

However, not all boys were supported by scholarships. Despite the difficult examinations and quest to become “scholar” of Winchester, there were boys who parents paid the full tuition, lodging, and board, which amounted to about £3500 ($700) a year. These boys were known as “commoners,” and though paying students did exist in the early years of the college’s founding they grew too numerous to control. In 1740, Dr. Burton, the Head Master, created the “Old Commoners” to serve the needs of non-scholar boys. However, their undisciplined behavior threatened the tranquility of the college, and Dr. Burton discharged the “commoners” to create the “tutor’s house system.” In each house resided about thirty-five boys, all of whom were under the care of the Master, whose family lived in as well.

Discipline at Winchester was not as strict as other public schools, but the boys–or men, as they were called–were not permitted to enter the town, and needed special “leave out” to go out and about the countryside. The typical school day began at seven in the morning, and bedtime was around nine or ten. Constant attendance at prayers were required, and there were four services on Sunday. For breaches of discipline, a boy would be flogged. However, the main idea of discipline in an English public school was that much of it should be dealt by the boys themselves. At Winchester it was ordained that eighteen of the older boys, called prefects, would “oversee their fellows, and from time to time certify the masters of their behavior and progress in study.” The duty of a prefect was to deliver a “tunding,” that is, beating a disobedient student across the back of his waistcoat with a ground-ash the size of one’s finger. According to an old Prefect of Hall, the art of tunding was to catch the edge of the shoulder blade with the rod, and strike in the same spot every time. In this way it was possible to cut the back of the offending boy’s waistcoat into strips.

All the public schools had their own customs and slang. At Winchester, a “strawberry mess” was a meal of strawberries and ice cream; a “horse-box” was a desk; and “washing stools” were the prefects’ tables, which were placed in commanding positions. A boy would ask of his cohort, “Is Smith a thick, or only a thoking jig?” which would translate as “Is Smith a blockhead or is he a clever boy who likes to loaf?” Each house would record the slang and customs in a book, in which all “notions“, ancient and modern, were recorded. A boy’s first duty, upon entering the school, was to pass an examination before his superiors on the contents of the book, whereupon he would be accepted, quite easily into the fold of the school–save if he were a complete rotter. In a way, the public school served as conditioning for the adult life of these boys, and was definitely the source of their love for pomp and tradition, and their unflagging devotion to “queen and country.”

Further Reading:
Schoolboy life in England, An American View by John Corbin
Everyday Life in Our Public Schools by Charles Eyre Pascoe
Winchester Notions: The English Dialect of Winchester College by Charles Stevens
School Life at Winchester College by Richard Mansfield