Chapter 1

“You say in your letter that you are currently a teacher, Mr Small. You have only taught for four years, why do you wish to stop?”

“I will be honest, I’m not very good. I know the topics, I can see what information needs to be inculcated into the children, but I think teaching requires some specials skills which I can see now I do not have.

What I do have is a genuine and strong desire to improve the educational attainment of pupils in our county. I am originally from Dubford. I am firmly of the belief that a better educated workforce will be a better workforce. I know there is some debate on whether the workers need more than basic reading and writing skills, or even those, but I think our industry can only improve and grow with workers who can understand and comprehend more”

“I see you are passionate in your beliefs. Tell me, what then do you think of educating girls?”

“Yes sir, I know you have just opened five secondary schools for girls. Again it seems to me all to the good. How can education ever be a disservice to someone? If the girl concerned merely becomes a mother.” the older lady on the panel bridled “Forgive me madam, I do not use the term ‘merely’ in a derogatory sense, but in its truest sense, to say that that is all the girl does. In that case surely she can still be educated and thereby teach her little ones such things as may help them at school?

But women can be so much more. It seems to me that unmarried ladies” and here everyone knew intrinsically he meant virgins, not ladies of low morality “should be able to consult a female practitioner of medicine concerning their health” and again everyone understood this referred to her reproductive health, her sexual organs. The unmarried daughter of Sir Bellingham Bellingham, Marjorie, sat on the committee as an obligation to public service; she blushed prettily, convinced that the men would be thinking of her particular untouched state in that regard – as indeed two of the men were. The chairman shifted uncomfortably, he had found his ardour difficult to control ever since Miss Bellingham had joined the Education Board Committee. He was sure that blushing young women with their peaches and cream complexion, their narrow waists and swaying behinds, should be kept in places where lust was acceptably felt and not displayed – tea parties and dinners and the like.

The interview proceeded and he was invited to await their decision with the other three candidates. All the other three were substantially older than him, something he was sure counted against him. In fact it was a point in his favour. The retired inspector had been old, ill-tempered, critical and unwilling to consider female education. In an intemperate outburst he had once stated that women were congenitally incapable of rising above their natural child-bearing and cooking duties. His reports had, for the past five years, been critical of every school he had visited; with the result that since he criticised everything it was impossible to know if anything he wrote made a valid point. The board were scared of him since he pre-dated every one of them by many years. When he finally announced, suddenly with no prior warning, that he would retire at the end of the month (it being the fifteenth then), there was a sigh of relief across the county from the board, the teachers, the pupils (he was known to shout at them on his visits for the least reason), and the councillors. There had been no inspector for six months as other innovations were put in place; to whit: opening girls’ schools, firmly establishing the primary schools across the whole county, and enacting a local piece of legislation that required even the six private, fee-paying secondary schools (three boys’ schools, two girls’ and one mixed!) to be inspected. Having rebuilt the foundations, the board now looked to establish a worthwhile and useful inspection regime.

“He is very young, but I think we all agree that is not entirely a disadvantage. He has a clear passion for education; and, though the others have better teaching experience, I rather think it reflects well on him that he is both honest enough with himself and us to admit he is not suited to being a teacher.”

“And his own education is excellent” added Mrs Dolmaine, alluding to his degree from Oxford “I think we are all agreed Doctor Waite”

“Yes, I rather think we are. Are there any objections?” One committee member was less than sure that a young man should inspect girls’ schools; but could not think of a way to express that concern without it being obvious that he was thinking of pretty girls in white skirts himself.