Scotch College

Archives

I wore my uncle’s cap badge.

A photo recently donated to the archives by Michael Robinson (’55) shows an oddity. One of these 1950s boys is wearing a cap badge that went out of use in the 1920s.

Bob Pitman (’55) explains: ‘The badge on my cap originally belonged to my uncle, Norman Stephens, who in 1917 had played in the First XI and the First XVIII, which he captained.

‘He gave the badge to me around 1950, in my final year in Junior School. I don’t think many people noticed it. The school didn’t react in any way. I wore it for several years until I lost it along with my cap. I always felt proud wearing it, knowing it was a relic from the past and had been worn by a man whom I much admired.

‘I do recall one other boy wearing a similar badge, but I can't remember who it was.’

Others in this photograph include Charles Goode, Colin Grant, Peter Henderson, Leigh McGregor, Michael Prentice and Michael Robinson.

Secret Grog Stash in Arthur Rob

A bottle hidden at the bottom of the lift shaft in which the dumb waiter runs – is there no end to boys’ deceit and depravity?

The school’s electricians, Ron Schneidruk and Colin White, recently found an old soft-drink bottle, covered in layers of ancient dust and grime. The bottle’s cork has a screw inserted, presumably to expand the cork more firmly in place. Even so, the contents evaporated long ago, leaving only a brown smear. Around the bottle’s lower outside rim one reads: The Property of O.T. Ltd Australia.

Would the boys concerned please own up.

Jersey and sweater: what’s the difference?

Among the papers recently donated to the Archives is a 1927 ‘Scotch College Day Boy’s order on The Myer Emporium Ltd. ... Please supply Master Barker with … ... Full House Colours (Rowing and Football) Lawson [and] 1/2 School Colours.’ Les Barker had played throughout that year in the First XVIII.

This ‘Day Boy’s Order’ is a small slip of paper with a pre-printed checklist that includes the following: cap, tie, blazer, jersey, bathing suit, sweater, ribbon, belt, rowing singlet, running singlet, athletic knicker.

Jersey? Sweater? Does anyone have photos illustrating the difference?

The 20 oldest Old Boys, according to our current records.

Alfred William Herbert Chandler,
b. 1 June 1905. Aged 99.
Melbourne Crutchfield Clayton, b. 30 Dec 1905.
William Balleny Howden, b. 14 Mar 1906.
Francis Campbell Stuckey, b. 14 Apr 1906.
Roy Riggall Prentice, b. 26 June 1906.
Charles Spencer Mann, b. 19 July 1908.
Robert Jarrett McCullagh, b. 17 Aug 1908.
Leslie Winsall Hall, b. 18 Sept 1908.
Ronald William Coto, b. 26 Jan 1909.
Leonard Denton Kemp, b. 6 June 1909. Prefect.
Keith McKinley Wilson, b. 16 Sept 1909. Prefect.
John Hewitt Pope, b. 18 Sept 1909.
Albert Alexander Willis, b. 29 Sept 1909.
(John) Alexander Lyne, b. 23 Oct 1909.
Prefect. Dux 1928.
Leslie Charles Blair Barker, b. 29 Dec 1909.
Walter Alexander Forbes, b. 21 Mar 1910.
Ross Alfred Love, b. 3 Aug 1910.
Michel Krizoz, b. 3 Nov 1910.
Gordon George Powell, b. 22 Jan 1911. Prefect
Sir (Joseph Robert) Archibald Glenn, b. 24 May 1911. Prefect

Cardinal and gold or just red and yellow?

The official colours are cardinal, gold and blue, but these days the colours used are red, yellow and blue.

Ian Teague (’52) asks when these changes occurred. Cardinal stayed on the caps till they went out of use in the 1960s, but it had already changed to red on everything else. When and why did that happen? Similarly, gold became yellow.

Ian believes that these brighter colours were on sports jumpers and singlets by the 1940s, and that the blazer was a bright red even before then.

Can anyone throw light on when and how these changes came about, and why? Does it have some significance? Should the official description of the colours be changed?

Who knew Bill Maloney?

William Maloney, who died in 1940, was the Labor member for Melbourne. Did you know him?

Dr William Robert Nuttall Maloney (1872) became famous for his work on women’s suffrage, and for running a medical clinic for the poor at the Queen Victoria Market.

He sat in the Victorian Parliament from 1889 and in the Federal Parliament from 1903, where he become the longest sitting member.

Does anybody have any information about this very interesting man?

Threat to staff tenure

In 1934, when Council appointed Colin Gilray as the new School Principal, it also decided that all staff would have to apply for reappointment when the new Principal took office

The staff understandably took this to mean that they were all dismissed.

Council assured them that they were not dismissed, it was just that their jobs were at the disposal of the incoming Principal.

The staff, in a letter signed by Bienvenu, Bowden and Jamieson, conceded the necessity of the Principal’s having power to dismiss teachers, ‘but would like to submit that inadvertently injustice might be done to a member of the Staff because a new Headmaster could not be aware of all the valuable services rendered by such member in the past’. Perhaps, they suggested, ‘the Council could see its way clear to reserve to itself’ the right to review the cases of any staff not re-appointed? Council declined to do so.

Gilray’s arrival in the latter half of 1934 must have been anticipated with some concern.

War cries

Telstra shares rose sharply in the last few weeks as Old Boys swamped the lines singing and shouting warcries.

‘You may hear a lot of the wily Scot and his independent air’ is sung to the old English music-hall tune, ‘The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo’, and appeared as a concert piece for massed choir in the first Foundation Day Concert in 1911, with words and arrangement by the concert’s creator, George Woods.

Entitled ‘A Scotch Mixture’, it was long a favourite at Foundation Day Concerts and was revived for the 1951 Concert and thus re-entered the boys’ repertoire so that Peter Hall (1955) recalls it ‘getting a good airing at the Head of the River’. It is still sung at the Old Scotch Collegians’ Masonic Lodge and at the Old Boy dinners of older Old Boys.

Text and music, as Jim Provan (1946) points out, were published in Flosculi Australes, the 1919 anthology of the School’s songs and poems.

‘All the Scotchies then did cry’ was written by James Burns (’14) and also appeared first as a song. In 1915 it went ‘All the Scotchies then did cry Hi! Hi! Hi Colonel McCay’, which fortunes of war saw change in 1916 to ‘… General McCay’, in 1918 to ‘Generals Monash and McCay’, and in 1919 to ‘Generals Monash, Smith, McCay’.

John Phillips (’51) recalls his teacher, Herb Engel (’15) telling class 5A in 1946, that the war cry had actually been printed as ‘Generals Monash and McCay’ for the 1918 or 1919 Foundation Day Concert when a ship brought home General Smith and the press reported how he had said he had been to Scotch, and they rapidly had to add his name. (Even so, Brigadier-General Smith’s photograph had appeared in the Scotch Collegian as early as 1917.)

‘Boom chicka boom!’, writes Dave Cowper (’56), originated when the 1955–56 First XI (which included John Winneke, Ian Law, Bob Cowper, Graham Whitford and Colin Youren) visited Scots College, Sydney, whose school warcry at the time was ‘Boom chicka boom...etc.’ As a joke on the team’s return, this warcry was chanted at some of the Scotch functions and somehow became a major warcry for many years, taking over from ‘Tunga tunga walla walla’.

$4000 needed to save this banner

Every time this handsome silk banner is handled it gives out a shower of tiny red particles. Quite simply, it is falling apart. Yet it is one of the school’s rare treasures.

The silk glistens with a lustrous sheen that no photo captures. It is at least 90 years old, because when the Great War broke out in 1914, Scotch inserted the word Patriae into the motto (and a second ‘t’ into Litteris).

The emblem is the one Scotch had used since 1861, a toga-clad young man reading the Book of Life by the Light of Hope placed on the Pillar of Faith, to use the eloquent description in the 1922 Collegian. It appeared on the school’s publications and badges, and was embossed on its prizes.

Even though Scotch adopted a new coat of arms in 1924, the old emblem has always retained a claim on the School’s consciousness, not least because it offers a single visual message more easily grasped than the current symbols embedded within the blue and white cross of Saint Andrew—how many of us can even name the item that sits in the bottom wedge of the present coat of arms, much say what it stands for?

This banner takes us back to the days when the toga-clad scholar was a living part of the school’s life. No doubt it was tied to a staff and carried into battle at ovals and rivers. No doubt rain and sun took their toll. The very off-centredness of the golden embroidered crest suggests that a whole outer edge of the banner has frayed away altogether.

What is to be done?

At a minimum the banner should be stored flat in a conservation box and never touched again. Literally never touched again. However, this would mean that it was never seen again.

If we are to display it, it needs heroic conservation. It needs to be carefully placed on a conservationist’s backcloth and each cotton thread of the warp fixed one by one in place. Then each strand of the silk weft, fragment by fragment, would be set in place and pinned down. The backcloth would be the same red as the banner and thus would help conceal its threadbare state.

Then the whole banner needs to be mounted in a strong conservationist’s frame so that it can be hung and displayed.

This work will cost an estimated $4000.

Such a figure is beyond the reach of the archives budget.

We are seeking a generous donor who can help preserve this remarkable piece of our history. Such a donor would be appropriately acknowledged and earn a special place in the heart of the school.

For further information, please contact

Dr Jim Mitchell, Co-Archivist, 9810 4293.