Memories of a Blue Coat boy

The date was 1943. The boys were children from the Blue Coat School – an institution for disadvantaged and orphaned children in St Anthony’s Hall, Peaseholme Green. The man was the Lord Mayor of York, William Thompson.

The little boy with the blond hair examining the Lord Mayor’s chain of office was Brian Elsegood.

Now in his late seventies, he was then about eight years old. And he still remembers meeting the Lord Mayor as one of the highlights of his time at the school.

“He had been to the Blue Coat himself,” Brian says.

“And it proved that even though you were a needy little orphan, you could still get to be Lord Mayor of York!”

With his older brother George, Brian spent two years at the Blue Coat, from 1942 to 1944. And while he has fond memories of meeting the Lord Mayor, his time at the school wasn’t happy.

He and George weren’t orphans.

“But my father was serving in the armed forces and my mother working in a laundry, so there was no-one to look after us,” he wrote in a short memoir of his school days.

Life at the school was hard, teachers were unsympathetic – and bullying was rife.

Breakfast was “one and a half slices of bread with a spoonful of jam or marmalade, followed by porridge and a mug of tea.” But the porridge was lumpy: and woe betide the boys if they complained.

“I remember on one occasion my brother said ‘I’m sorry sir I can’t eat this, we’re not used to it like this, all lumpy’ – with this Mr Amos hit my brother so hard across the face his finger marks were left…”

The boys slept in dormitories – and were often tipped out of bed in the middle of the night by older boys. “If the prefects had a grudge against you this could go on all through the night.”

Saturday was bath night – in a big, communal bath chest high with water.

“The prefects forced us little ones to ‘monkey climb’ across the pipe going over the bath, but when you got half way you would be hit on the fingers with a sweeping brush to make you fall in and many a time someone nearly drowned.”

Cleanliness was always a problem and from time to time the boys were sent to the hospital in Haxby Road. There they were “stripped and put in a bath of white medication and then painted from head to toe and afterwards swilled down. We were told by the nurses this was to prevent scabies.”

Brian and his brother were taken out of the school when their father returned from the war. Brian worked for a while as a railway signalman, then became an apprentice plasterer, rose to become director of a firm, then set up in business on his own.

Now living in Osbaldwick, he has kept a number of photographs from his time at the Blue Coat. One, quite badly creased and battered, shows a group of children in their Sunday best – the young Brian is on the far right of the picture. In another, the children form a guard of honour for the Lord Mayor; and in yet another, they are seen having tea with him.

“We had a wonderful tea,” Brian remembers.

• Brian has a copy of a poem written by a girl called Dorreen Hope, who went to the Grey Coat School. He would love to get in touch with Dorreen, if possible. So if you are her, or know how she can be contacted, phone Stephen Lewis at The Press on 01904 567263.

Forming a guard of honour for election day on November 9, 1943