Not so with the "Monner" for I think that many of Goodall's 'attitudes' as catalogued by Barltrop were imitated by the younger patients in 'Speedy's' strange asylum in which groups of non-paying students from local schools, where they had known each other since the age of five, moved en bloc to torment those from schools unknown and different social,backgrounds! Although I was a poor scholar I never found Goodall anything but personally friendly as during the school trip to Switzerland in 1938 when I took the attached photograph of him on the quay at Stans and which he later endorsed 'but on holiday.'

The late 60's. That famous school skiing trip which culminated with the master taking the party of about 35 boys with only one parent to help. We thought that the trips were a riot, which they basically were, with Sir leading the party to the bar or what ever drinking establishment was chosen for the evening. Our party had very few skiing accidents, however our return from the trip at Victoria station looked like the battle of the Somme with so many legs in plaster, arms in slings etc all largely alcohol related. But the strangest thing by todays standards was that not one parent complained and the trips continued. I have a strong memory of being delayed at Innsbruck station for several hours and Sir leaving the main party and with a small group of boys going across the road to a bar where we all drank several tumblers of schnapps. On leaving the bar the tepmerature drop was so graet that my glasses snapped across the bridge but I didn't notice too much as my vision was by that time pretty impared!
The second memory which I only got as a rumour was a master overstaying his lunch at the Rose and Crown and bringing the Bar Maid back to class then sitting chatting to her for the afternoon - whether this is true or not it sounds like a likely story. This particular master took a great liking to GARLIC and used to eat it like an Apple until the office staff refused to have him in the school office which you will recall was a very small room. Ah happy days and good memories of times when we could grow up and not have to worry about regulations.!
R.

Mr Tomlin was the caretaker and I am sure was the role-model for the subsequent TV Grange Hill caretaker! He interrupted staff meetings that overran by popping his head around the staff room door and abruptly announcing that he was locking up in ten minutes. His array of garden gnomes was the pride of Chingford Road, and long before an episode in Coronation Street, some went missing with accompanying ransom notes. (I wonder if we had a TV script writer amongst the pupils at that time!). Perhaps the most memorable incident was when some fifth formers played a practical joke on him. He had a 'coal hole' at the north end of the school. As he was emerging one lunchtime, the pupils dropped a 2 lb bag of flour on his head. Instead of going back down and brushing the stuff off, he trailed all the way up the stairs, along the top corridor, leaving a long white line of flour behind him, to the old staff room in the south west corner, entered and stood looking like the abominable snowman and exclaimed 'Look what they've done to me'.
Jean-Pierre (Duncan) Kirkland, teacher at Sir George Monoux 1966 - 74 Click here to read his memories of the comprehensive conversion..

It was my last year at school. We were preparing for the General Schools Certificate exams. In English, one of the set books was Julius Caesar; so the whole year, about a hundred of us, were taken to the People's Palace to see it performed one afternoon. Other schools were there too, as they were doing the same; a full house of 14 to 15-year-olds.
Julius Caesar is a great play. Unfortunately, the company didn't do it very well. The chap who played Cassius with the "lean and hungry look" was actually rather bulky. The speeches were not given enthrallingly, and even the assassination - Act 3, Scene I - was tame. We talked and fidgeted.
It reached the final stages: Brutus's tent on the eve of the battle. Lucius, the boy who waited on Brutus, came in. Suddenly all the talking stopped. The schoolboy audience sat up, transfixed.
Just as they hadn't a suitable thin actor for Cassius, the company had not a juvenile male to play Lucius. He was, unmistakably, a comely young woman; wearing what the boy would have worn, a tunic (blue) which came less than half-way down the thighs. While Lucius said "It is my duty, sir", we gazed astonishedly and avidly at a pair of bare feminine legs.
In case this sounds not much of a cause for excitement, legs were semi-taboo in those days. At merry summer fetes a ladies' ankle contest might be a special attraction, considered slightly daring. Stage revues with dancing chorus girls were known as leg shows.
And here before our eyes was Lucius. We were supposed to give the play our close attention, and we did. Being already familiar with it, we knew when he left the stage that he would be back after Caesar's ghost had called; we waited eagerly.
When he said "The strings, my lord, are false" we felt like joining in. At the last glimpse, the actors lined-up taking their curtain call, we applauded fervently.
At school next day, Lizzie Hyde asked us how the play had been. Oh, terrific, sir! Ah, he said, it had a first-rate cast, had it? No, the cast were lousy: all except Lucius, we yelled.
Lizzie looked puzzled. Was Lucius an extraordinarily good actor, then? No, we said, he couldn't act for toffee. In chorus: "but he had smashing legs, sir." He muttered something about the Bible enjoining us not to delight in any man's legs, and changed the subject.
As a further contribution to our getting to know Julius Caesar inside out, we acted it ourselves. I had a small part, and can recall practically all the cast. One of my friends was Metellus, and we called him Metal-arse.
What I can't remember is who played Lucius; he didn't command attention as the People's Palace Lucius did.
Robert Barltrop 1933-38