St Matthew’s Infants School, Sturton Street National School

History of Sturton Street Infants School

1913

Miss Alice Bryant, head mistress

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Down Your Street, 1984, p81 includes the reminiscences of Miss D M Maltby of Mortlock Avenue who attended the Sturton Street National School during World War One. She  describes Miss Bryant: She wore a long trench raincoat reaching to the top of her button boots, summer and winter, and strode along to the school with her furled man-sized umbrella. When the children happened to meet her outside the school, the boys had to salute and the girls had to curtsey. Woe betide anybody who infringed that rule. A few hard smacks on each had soon put that right. Also in those days the girls mostly wore white starched pinafores, and the stiffer they were starched the posher you were – and being a spoiled only child I was one of the posh ones. Every morning we had to say our two times tables up to six times, in a sing song fashion, but how it stuck. Incidentally the pinafores came in very useful because if you so much as glanced round in class, out you had to come, go into the corner of the room, put your pinafore over your head and stand there, until the powers that be in the awesome shape of Miss Bryant told you to return to your seat.