On Monday 26th March 2007, a group of six students were given the very special opportunity to meet a former Grey Coat pupil, Winifred Warburton, who had attended the Hospital from the age of 10 in 1917 until 1924, over lunch with the Headteacher, Rachel Allard.
At that time the Head Teacher was Miss Amy Trevor Steele (1910 – 23) and Winifred Warburton (nee Killer) had good cause to remember Miss Steele, who had once given her an order mark for the heinous crime of eating in the street. Whilst walking down Rochester Row en route to boarding the tram home, Winifred was feeling so utterly famished that temptation overwhelmed her. Holding the forbidden purchase in her hand, Winifred had just taken one mouthful of a delicious doughnut as she came out of the bakery when she came face to face with Miss Steele.
Though there had been a curt command to ‘see me in the morning’, by the end of assembly Winifred was beginning to feel that disgrace had been avoided. Then she was asked to stand up and to ‘explain what she had been doing the previous day’. Although the explanation was noted, there would still be an order-mark on her report and this would lead to trouble with her cruel great-aunt. Keen on self-preservation, Winifred decided to convert the figure 1 into a zero and successfully avoided punishment.
Brought up in Derbyshire, Winifred found a difference between the pace of education there and in London when she came to live in Clapham. In Derbyshire no one had seemed concerned when students fell behind with their work but in London Winifred felt sub-gifted in comparison with some of her contemporaries. However of the 2 permanent residents in her great-aunt’s guest-house, one was a lady concert pianist and the other was a gentleman who, recognising an unhappy child, made himself responsible for Winifred’s education. Contacting Miss Steele, this gentleman arranged for Winifred to enter the Grey Coat Junior School (now the Cafe and the Art room) so there would be no need to pass the entrance exam to the secondary school. Despite the efforts of Miss Starling, Winifred’s schoolgirl plumpness prevented her from being athletic on the wallbars. Nevertheless, “GCH had given her a good education for which she was truly grateful”.
In her first job Winifred worked for a chartered accountant as after Grey Coat her training, like Ethel Cox, was in Business Studies. Unlike Ethel Cox, a near contemporary who kept in touch for many years, Winifred thought that tackling numerical tasks in an office was ironic as she had never felt comfortable with numbers. English, her favourite subject, was put to good use when Winifred pursued a freelance career in journalism and on the Nottingham Evening Post. Her considerable conversational skills were well employed when she had a crochet course slot on ATV in the seventies.
Whilst touring St Andrew’s, Winifred showed great interest in the photographic display in the foyer and showed staff a panoramic picture of GCH in June 1919 and a photo of the Cordingley family with whom she was living in Wandsworth in 1924. One specific enquiry that Winifred made was whether the School Song,”This ancient foundation…” was still sung. She was pleased to learn that “and let the plant grow” was always the grand finale at meetings held by the Old Greys Association*. Now Winifred has returned to live in Derbyshire and is looking forward to being featured in a BBC2 series in May and to her 100th birthday in December.
BBC2 Series on Human Rights
After lunching at St Andrew’s, Winifred was to journey on to Ford Open Prison which will also appear in the BBC2 programmes on Human Rights. The series (which has a working title of Power to the People ) points out that, because human rights legislation does not include care home residents, they have fewer rights than offenders. Scheduled for three Monday evenings starting on 28th May at 9p.m., the series will also discuss rural issues and the situation of war veterans.
