There’s a rich history to one of Britain’s oldest girls’ schools<\/p>\n\n\n
Once upon a time, I was deputy head of the oldest girls\u2019 school in\nthe country, The Red Maids\u2019 School in Bristol. On founder\u2019s day every\nyear \u2013 the school\u2019s equivalent of speech day \u2013 the head girl read to the\n assembled parents, pupils, staff and dignitaries an extract from the\nwill of the founder, John Whitson, a one-time merchant of the city and\nMP.<\/p>\n\n\n
Any deputy head will tell you, speech day is a nightmare of organisation, particularly when it comes to getting the right prize, cup or book into the hands of the right recipient.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
Mostly\n things pass off well, even if there is a small kerfuffle later while\nstudents swap the prize they didn\u2019t expect with the person who got the\none they wanted.<\/p>\n\n\n
Reading the extract was an important part of the\nday for the head girl and usually an ordeal. Scan any will from the 17th\n century and I am sure you will see why it makes for hard reading for a\nnervous young person in front of a large audience. <\/p>\n\n\n
And,\n unintentionally, it was not without its comic moment. The will decreed\nthat he left a sum to be used for the benefit of \u201840 poor women of this\nparish, their parents being deceased or decayed\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n
You can imagine\nthe ripple in the audience, \u2018deceased\u2019? Well clearly not, if we are in\nthe audience to hear it said. \u2018Decayed\u2019? Ah, well now, that may have\nvarious interpretations, and the audiences of (mostly) happy parents\nusually took the description in good part.<\/p>\n\n\n
Every\n year I heard the extract from the will and wondered what was behind it.\n What made Whitson decide to leave some of his wealth to found a\nrudimentary school for girls, who would originally have been the literal\n waifs and strays of the streets of the city? Queen Elizabeth\u2019s Hospital\n already existed for boys. Red Maids was the equivalent for girls, who\nwere, also according to the will, \u2018to go and be apparelled in red\ncloth\u2019, hence the name.<\/p>\n\n\n
I thought it was quite a wondrous tale,\nand I also thought that every year, it was sliding past both its speaker\n and its audience, with nobody paying it due attention. <\/p>\n\n\n
How\n could I bring it to life for a contemporary audience? These days I\nmight have been looking to a TV company to make a documentary: Who Do\nYou Think He Was?<\/p>\n\n\n
Then I wrote a play. I called it \u2018Whitson\u2019s\nWill\u2019 partly because his widow fought the will and its bequest for\ngirls\u2019 education for some five years after his death, delaying its\nfoundation. I tried to explore Whitson\u2019s life to see if there were clues\n to his particular benefaction and I invented scurrilous reasons. Maybe\nthe third wife, the \u2018hussy\u2019, who was much younger than poor Whitson, was\n very put out by his generosity to orphan children? But so far as I was\nable to research, no particular reason for his bequest emerged, though\nit was fanciful to imagine a scene in an inn where he might have played\none-upmanship with other merchants of the time \u2013 \u2018I\u2019ll start a school!\u2019\n\u2018I\u2019ll start a better one!\u2019 \u2018Mine will have girls, you never thought of\nthat, did you?\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n
The\nstraw in the wind and the strongest possibility I saw which might have\ngenerated his generosity, was the loss of his daughters. Two died as\nchildren and one in her early 20s during childbirth. Three girls and\nnone to survive him.<\/p>\n\n\n
Whitson dealt in wine and politics. He had\nthree wives, three daughters and the wherewithal, generosity and\nforesight to found a school for girls which thrives even now.<\/p>\n\n\n
So\nfar as I know he did not deal in slaves. He gave his age as 31 in 1589.\n100,000 African slaves were being shipped across the Atlantic by a later\n generation of Bristol merchants between 1672 and 1698. Had the slave\nmarket existed in Whitson\u2019s time, would he have been in the thick of it?\n And if the timing were different and he was involved in that trade,\nwould I have wanted to write about him at all?<\/p>\n\n\n
In my time working\nin Bristol, another independent school was named after its own\nbenefactor and founder, Edward Colston. Colston\u2019s fortune, which enabled\n him to be the benefactor to the city, was built up while a deputy\ngovernor of the Royal African Company. I am a realist enough \u2013 or I do\nnot know enough about Whitson \u2013 to believe that had he lived at the same\n time, he might well have been involved in the same trade. Could I have\nwritten such a story?<\/p>\n\n\n
I think the answer is no. I was content to\nconsider that he may have been a womaniser, who met his match in his\nthird wife, who fought his will for five years after his death, trying\nto prevent the foundation of the school and the loss of her inheritance. <\/p>\n\n\n
All\n good grist for the dramatist\u2019s mill, even if (really) a flight of\nfancy. But a slave trader? I think not. But even considering the\nquandary has been interesting. <\/p>\n\n\n
Generations\n of girls have benefited from the education they have received at The\nRed Maids\u2019 School, but the start-up money had to come from somewhere. In\n this case, I believe the trade in wine and wool, not human souls. So it\n feels laudable, altruistic and \u2018clean\u2019 for want of a better word.<\/p>\n\n\n
Colston\u2019s\n money was (apparently) garnered in a trade which is now abhorrent. But\nis there no redemption for the good use of the money in educating\ngenerations of children in Bristol? <\/p>\n\n\n
Indeed,\n Colston is a name to conjure with in Bristol, with his name on at least\n 20 streets, and in schools, pubs and a major concert venue \u2013 now being\nrefurbished for its opening in 2020 with a different name. The press\ntells me that last October, teachers at the city\u2019s respected Colston\u2019s\nGirls\u2019 School removed any reference to him from its annual service. What\n irony, when it wouldn\u2019t exist without him. Irony, but no redemption.<\/p>\n\n\n
The\n history of Britain\u2019s many independent schools, good, bad or\nindifferent, is part of our heritage. We bring modern sensibilities to\nbear upon schools with long histories reaching into different times. <\/p>\n\n\n
We might usefully reflect that however our forebears and founders got the money, many of us \u2013 indeed thousands of us \u2013 have benefited from what they did with their ill-gotten gains. We should be grateful.<\/p>\n\n\n
This article first appeared in IE-Today<\/a> on 2 May 2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There’s a rich history to one of Britain’s oldest girls’ schools Once upon a time, I was deputy head of the oldest girls\u2019 school in the country, The Red Maids\u2019 School in Bristol. On founder\u2019s day every year \u2013 the school\u2019s equivalent of speech day \u2013 the head girl read to the assembled parents, pupils,\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[94,110,232],"class_list":["post-498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ie-today","tag-founders","tag-history","tag-whitson"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}