It was an irony in the last quarter of the nineteenth century that schools, which were proclaimed as vehicles of child advancement, were also standing accused of mental and physical oppression.

‘Overpressure’ was the in-word of the period in attacking the effects of the codes and ‘Payment by Results’ in the elementary schools, and the examination rat race in middle-and upper-class schools. Following studies of the causes of headaches and ‘brain exhaustion’ among Prussian pupils in the 1870s, British medical journals were beginning to publish articles and correspondence on the subject, and as the country moved towards compulsory education in 1880, so the issue came increasingly to the fore.1