ABSTRACT
While the celebrity of William Bateman Adams’ scholarship pupils and Louisa Walker’s kindergarten innovations convinced influential figures that a sea-change in elementary school provision was being brought about at Fleet Road, an equally important factor in building up the public image was the adroitness with which the two headteachers controlled external relations, whether in dealing with occasional visitors to their departments, or in laying on set-piece occasions. In the contemporary educational debate which advocated the importing of the public school spirit into the elementary sector, as a means of improving the tone, Adams could be regarded as one of the converted. Similarly Mrs. Walker, who introduced her young charges to this more privileged world through the action songs described in Chapter 6. The development of sporting prowess was an important part of the process. While success in this area was not one of Fleet Road’s chief claims to fame, the senior boys won local football competitions in 1898 and 1900. On the latter occasion, the winning team was ‘entertained by Mrs. Adams at her residence’,2 another derivative of the public school ethos. In 1899 Fleet Road was the champion school team in the Marylebone Athletic Association’s meeting.3 The girls won the London School Board swimming shield in 1902.4 In 1901 it was reported that over 350 scholars had joined the school swimming club, and 150 had gained certificates. Inspectors’ reports approved these activities as contributory to the corporate life of the school. As in the public school sector, and as Hampstead children, Fleet Road scholars were encouraged to regard themselves as privileged, and that duty was the other side of this particular coin. From the early 1890s, for example, the Junior Mixed school collected ‘spare halfpence’ to send as regular monthly remittances to the ‘Shaftesbury Homes’, while the Senior Mixed school annually collected used clothing to send to a poor East End school, Northey Street, Limehouse. Sometimes Adams recorded letters of thanks in his log book. ‘Your scholars may rest assured that some of their poorer fellows are warmer, their days made a little more endurable, and their comfort greater, by their kindness.’6 Contributions were also made, as appropriate, for charity overseas, as in a collection in 1899 for a fund for famine relief in India.7
