Great Scot Archive
Issues from 1998
Issues from 1998
 
 
 
 

Publications

The old school museum

We called for memories of the school museum, run by boys from the 1920s to the 1960s, and of items that might have belonged there.

Howard Brown (‘63) has donated what was called a ‘dead man’s penny’ (pictured), one of the bronze next-of-kin plaques issued to the families of those killed during World War I.

Britannia, holding a trident and a laurel wreath, is flanked by leaping dolphins and the words ‘HE DIED FOR FREEDOM AND HONOUR’. At her feet is the British lion, below which another British lion vanquishes the German eagle. Above the larger lion’s right forepaw are a spray of oak leaves and the initials ‘ECP’, for the designer Edward Carter Preston. The back of the plaque bears the mark of the Royal Arsenal Woolwich, ‘W’ within a circle.

The name of the dead soldier ‘DONALD GOLDSMITH ARMSTRONG’ is cast in raised letters within a raised rectangle.

Armstrong was born on 29 June 1893, the son of a solicitor in Kyneton, and boarded at Scotch from 1908 to 1911 after which he became a bank clerk. Enlisting in 1915 as a private he rose to lieutenant and was killed in action near Passchendaele on 9 October 1917.

Updated: Monday 24 June 2013