Recently we received an email from Mr Alec Turner who was a pupil at Robert Clack Lower School (Triptons as it was called then) during the Second World War. He has recounted his experiences of his time at Robert Clack and they can be found on this page. They make fascinating reading.
Triptons School
Having returned home to Dagenham in mid October 1942, my father took me to Triptons Senior Boys School. After a short interview with the headmaster I with several other boys we were taken into a classroom and asked to write an essay so we could be graded and placed into one of the three class streams. My writing and English had not really suffered during the years of evacuation schooling. This was lucky for me as I was placed into the highest grade final year class, with Miss Shillingford as our form teacher. Had we have been given any mathematical questions to answer I don’t think that the same decision would have occurred.
All children at this school during these wartime years left at the age of fourteen.
There was no provision at this time to carry on any further formal daytime education
Many of the male teachers had been called up into the armed services, which left a greater burden on the remaining women and older men teachers in the school. Class sizes mostly had over forty pupils in them and at times over fifty. So I would remain here until December of the following year when I would become the age of fourteen.
I was generally happy in this school except for the every morning assemblies when the headmaster took religious prayers in the school hall. He then promptly caned every boy who was late and had been lined up outside the hall door by the prefects. Excuses were never accepted or even listened to. He caned all. I rated him the greatest of all hypocrites. There were some mornings when there had been noisy air raids during the night, many children had suffered from lack of sleep. This made no difference, they still received the cane if they arrived late at school.
I soon made good progress, as my school reports began to show. There was a Woodwork Room and a Science Room with their specialist teachers. This was my first experience of these types of lessons. Things of a scientific nature had and still are of great interest to me and Mr. Collins the science master must have observed my enthusiasm whilst in his class sessions. He appointed me as Science Room Monitor, replacing the boy who left school at Easter time.
My duties were to maintain the tidiness of the stock room chemicals and laboratory equipments, and to get equipment ready for the experiments he conducted at his class sessions. Another responsibility was that I recharged and maintained the lead acid batteries for the hand lamps that the night time air-raid fire watchers used when patrolling the flat roof of the school. This gave me some independence at school, which on one occasion I used to my advantage. As I had the key, I hid in the stock room after arriving late at school one morning, after a very long and noisy air raid during the night. I objected to joining the line of boys outside the hall door that would certainly be caned. When the assembly was over I just joined in the melee of boys in the corridors going to their respective classrooms and I went to mine. And, was never found out !!!
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I respected and got along well with most of the teachers in the school.
Miss Shillngford was our form teacher and taught all of the English and Literature related subjects. We read Charles Dickens, Tale of Two Cities and Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice and Romeo and Juliet. There were also poetry sessions which I hated. I did not enjoy learning to recite poems and never appreciated the purpose of doing so. She also tried to introduce some classical music to the pupils as there was a radio-gramophone in her classroom and she used to bring in records from her own collection. I remember listening to Handle’s Water Music and Vagner’s Ride of the Valkyrie whilst in her class.
Mrs. Totnam took us for mathematics. She was strict in the classroom but was a good teacher. Maths was my weakest subject but during my time at Triptons I progressed from being close to the bottom of the class to an above average position. Mrs. Totnam demanded full attention whilst you were in her class and since we were all in our final year of school she often reminded us if we failed to give her our fullest attention and work hard, we would finish up by joining the company of the out of work lay-abouts that frequented the pinball saloon across the road. At the same time she would point out of the upstairs classroom window towards the Becontree Heath Shopping Parade where you could often see gatherings of young men, some of which would be ex-Triptons pupils indulging in this non-activity, albeit that this was a time when full employment was at its best.
Miss Frain was the Art teacher. My drawing and painting efforts have always been fairly poor with results of drawing an object or something having life, being barely recognisable. This didn’t seem to matter too much as most of the lesson times were taken up by giving us boys lengthy lectures and discussions on worldly morals and of the great temptations abound in the night time black-out darkness of South Street, Romford, and other perils we might meet when we left school and faced the outside world.
History was taken by Miss Marks. She was elderly, probably close to retirement age and quite deaf, which the class took to their advantage and engage in noisy chatter amongst themselves throughout most of the lesson periods. She had great difficulty in controlling the class and frequently lost all patience with us. History as taught in schools during those days seldom sparked any enthusiasm with the pupils.
Woodwork lessons were under the very watchful eye of Mr. Allcock. Safety featured very high whilst you were in his class. Woe betide anyone seen using a chisel with one hand. “ Two hands on the chisel “ he used to boom. He had an oak rod, which he used to threaten us with if anyone was seen disobeying his safety rules.
On one occasion when the class was awaiting his return after the midday break we found this oak rod and one boy in the class threw it up and through an open entrance into the loft where it stayed. When he returned and looked for it he was most annoyed that it was
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nowhere to be found. We boys, all kept very straight faces for the rest of the lesson. He never found it or who hid it, and eventually made himself another rod, which caused a great deal of merriment with us. The wood store contained a number of hutches. Rabbits were bred and raised for supplementing the small meat rations. Some boys were chosen to regularly fed and keep the hutches clean. I don’t know who eventually ate the rabbits but I suppose they went to the teachers and their families.
Science was taught by Mr. Collins, who made his lessons interesting. He explained and demonstrated the principles of levers and pulleys, solids liquids and gases, temperature and thermometers. Some simple chemical and electrical experiments were performed. An experiment did cause some concern one occasion. Mr. Collins successfully demonstrated phosphorus catching fire when removed from water, and went on to show what happens when Sodium metal comes into contact with water. He placed a small pellet of Sodium into water in the laboratory sink. It sizzled, burned rapidly and unexpectedly exploded, showering everybody around. Fortunately nobody suffered any injury. As the result of my showing much interest in these lessons, I became the Science room monitor.
One of my tasks as monitor was to lay out apparatus on the front desk required for a demonstration that would be included within a lesson. At the start of one afternoon I had completed laying out some equipment and the class had assembled in the room waiting for Mr. Collins to appear. I was in front of the class at the desk with the stock room key in my hand idly fingering around the side of the desk. The key accidentally made contact with an electric socket and a large shower of sparks cascaded to the floor. This all happened in full view of the waiting class and resulted with cheers and noisy requests for an encore. Although the display was pretty spectacular I didn’t receive an electric shock, just a big surprise and applause from the waiting class. In those days electric sockets were not so well designed and any small metal object might easily make connection to the live parts inside a socket. Although there was some damage to the key it still operated the lock of the Stock room door.
There were other teachers in the school that I now don’t remember very well as I had very little contact with them. There was an elderly Welch teacher, a Mr Evans, I believe, and a Mr. Elcock who filled in for other teachers when they were absent.
There was no school canteen and as my mother was at work every day, I used to have a penny bus ride to the nearest wartime “British Restaurant” in Green Lane where I was able to get a self service two course meal for one shilling and twopence. It was a bit of a rush but I was never late in getting back to school in the afternoon.
The ground floor corridors in the school had been converted into air raid shelters. The windows into the classrooms were bricked up and offset blast walls had been constructed at intervals along the corridor. I don’t remember ever having to take cover in them due to the sounding of an air raid warning during school hours. German air raid activity at this
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time during the war occurred during darkness hours, with one exception during March 1943. I had just woken up at about half past seven on this morning, and was sitting up in bed looking out of the window when a flight of German fighter aeroplanes (I believe they were Focke Wulf 190s) flew very low just above the roof tops right in front of my view. They came from the direction of Ilford and flying towards Romford. The air raid sirens had not sounded and they were machine gunning as they went by. They had apparently flown up the River Thames, under the Radar Detection cover, then turned back over Barking and Ilford and firing cannon and machine guns at the busy traffic. People were going to work at that time of day. A trolley-bus was hit in Ilford High Road with several people being killed, and Romford Gas Works was set on fire. When we got to school later that morning it was the talk of the day, and during the midday break I remember walking up to the railway bridge in Whalebone Lane and looking along the railway line towards Romford Gas Works and seeing huge flames still coming from one of the large gas holders.
During the winter of 1942/3 my father became very ill with Pneumonia. He and I had been to the local “Regent” cinema where the film “In Which We Serve” with Noel Coward was being shown. It was a bitterly cold evening and we sat close to the entrance door. Every time the door opened a raging cold draught arose around us. A few days later my father was taken extremely ill and for a time, very delirious. Our family doctor came twice on one day and then he drove to London to obtain a very special homeopathic medicine for him. He returned after midnight with it. The next day father began to recover and the delirium abated. My mother, sister and myself had kept all night watch with him for several nights and I stayed home from school for a few days. Pneumonia was a serious illness in these times. Penicillin was not widely available then. Any available supply would have been allocated for military use. It took a long time for my father to recover and was several months before he could return to work again.
With the approach of summer and warmer weather the school class was able to march to an open air swimming pool in Valance Park. No heated water here. Swimming lessons were given, but I already could swim. The pool was 100 yards long and I gained my 100 yards swimming certificate by swimming a length.
At off school times I frequently was in company with Robbie Butler a school friend who lived not far along the road. His father encouraged us to get an old Crystal Radio set to work and we used to listen to the radio using the headphones. I also set about making a radio for myself. This lead to us getting ideas to improve the reception by making valve amplifiers from various radio components that neighbours gave to us. This was not very successful and we decided to trick a fellow classmate, John Yates who lived opposite, that we could receive radio signals from Australia. We arranged an old gramophone cabinet that was large enough for one of us to crawl inside, into the corner of the room. We wired up a morse key with a buzzer and headphones inside the cabinet and planned
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our spoof. The following Saturday morning I installed myself inside the cabinet and Robbie invited John to come in and see our radio equipment and listen to the signals from Australia. When he arrived into the room I started sending morse signals from my hideout, hardly daring to breathe or make a noise. Robbie showed him the radio equipment on top the cabinet and let him listen in the headphones, and he believed all. He went home very impressed and afterwards we learned he was telling other boys at school about Robbie Butler’s radio that could receive signals from Australia!!!
Most of my class pupils left school when the August holidays started but I had to stay at school until Christmas when I became the age of fourteen. An extra class was created from all of the class streams and Mr. Collins the Science master now became my form teacher. He took most lessons for the rest of the term. When poetry sessions occurred he held similar views to myself and said he saw no sense in learning poetry line for line but he did try to teach us the form and meaning within them. We read and discussed “The Ancient Mariner” which he thought would be more suitable for boys and likely maintain our interest.
Towards the end of the term I applied for a job and had an interview at May and Baker’s factory in Dagenham. They were a large manufacturer of industrial chemicals and pharmaceutical medicines. With my school science monitor experience I hoped to obtain a job as a laboratory assistant but was unable to convince their Personnel Department that I was suitable. Instead they offered me a job as a messenger in their Post Room. I accepted the offer with the hope that perhaps a transfer might occur at sometime in the future.
When Christmas came, I left school to start work at May and Baker’s in the New Year of 1944.
First Headmistress of robert clack
At our recent community Christmas event, we were given the following pictures from Mrs Bomando.. The pictures were taken in 1938 on a school trip to Bruges in Belgium and feature the very first Headmistress and Deputy Headmistress of the school.
Below: Miss Hughes (Headmistress) and Miss Goody (Deputy Headmistress), Bruges (1938)
Below: Miss Hughes (Headmistress) and Miss Goody (Deputy Headmistress), Bruges (1938)
Below: Tripton School pupils, Bruges (1938)
Below: Tripton School pupill, Bruges 1938
ROBERT CLACK SPEECH DAY 1961
wHO WAS rOBERT cLACK?
Robert James Daniel Clack was Mayor of Dagenham between 1940-1942.
The following is taken from the Obituary to Robert Clack in the Dagenham Digest in 1953.
Bob Clack is dead
This was the news that brought sorrow to hundreds of people when they learned that Alderman R.J. D. Clack, who had given most of his life to the service of others, had died suddenly at his work from coronary thrombosis on the morning of Saturday, March 7th. He was 51. He was born in Poplar in 1901 and the poverty that he knew and the injustice that he saw during his early years moulded and shaped his character. He saw life as a struggle and to it he brought a steady courage and an unflinching determination as he worked for those ideals of Socialism and brotherhood he believed in so strongly.
His service to his fellows took many forms. A staunch Trade Unionist, his brothers in the National Union of Railwaymen looked to him for leadership, strength and advice. He became a member of the Dagenham Council in 1934 and from that time his work for the people of Dagenham was untiring.
Chairman of the Highways and Works Committee, Chairman of the Road Safety Council, School Manager, to all these duties and to many others he brought a zeal that never flagged. As Mayor of the Borough from 1940 to 1942 he led the Citizens of Dagenham through 2 dangerous years, sharing with them the shock of air attack and the problems that the community faced during that time.
Every man has just so much time to live and he can use it or waste it as he wills. Here was a man who, like the George Lansbury he revered so much, poured out his hours and years without thought for himself. He knew that his ideal was a great 1 and to its service he gave every power that he could command. He was a patient negotiator but, when he thought he was in the right, he said so, direct and plainspoken, sparing neither friend nor foe. But his friends, and they were many, loved him - his enemies, and they were few, respected his strength of purpose. For he could compromise over details but never over principles and any threat to those principles he faced and fought ruthlessly. Happiness can be shared; grief must be borne alone. we can only hope that his wife and daughter may find some consolation at this time from the knowledge that so many, so very many, are grieving with them.
In the unending battle for a better life for all men and women everywhere the memory of the part he played will live long.
Robert James Daniel Clack, citizen of the Borough, fighter for social justice, loyal comrade, loving husband and father, is dead.
There is nothing more to say. |
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USEFUL LINKS
MEMORIES OF A ROBERT CLACK EVACUEE
Please click here to read an account of an ex- Robert Clack evacuee during World War II.
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This is an outstanding school. Students enter the school with standards that are broadly average; they make outstanding progress to achieve substantially higher than average results in national examinations in Year 9 and at GCSE. The school strives and is ambitious for students' success. Results in Year 9 and GCSE have continued to improve year by year. Students achieve outstandingly because teaching, learning and the curriculum are of a consistently high standard.
OFSTED, December 2007
