The wider Catholic educational contexts in the mid-Victorian period

Research on the St Mary’s community c.1854-1914 needs to be set in the context of Catholic education in Britain in the same period. From the 1830s mass education became an increasingly important issue with political reform and population growth allowing previously excluded groups, including Catholics, a voice.Footnote ³⁰ The Victorian ‘spirit of charity’ had faith at its heart and Catholic philanthropy played a prominent role in the ‘battle for souls’.Footnote ³¹ However, a ‘coherent Catholic educational infrastructure was wholly lacking.’Footnote ³² In the 1840s, the education of the masses was given further impetus by Irish Catholic migrants fleeing the famine. The Catholic population of England rose from around 250,000 in 1825 to about 700,000.Footnote ³³ Catholic working-class Irish and English children ‘were attending non-Catholic schools or not being educated at all.’Footnote ³⁴ This crisis was met in 1847 by the creation of the CPSC.Footnote ³⁵ The first grants to establish Catholic parochial schools were made in 1847, negotiated by the CPSC from the COC, the first government department with specific responsibility for education.Footnote ³⁶ The CPSC ‘rapidly became the key vehicle for promoting Catholic schools, training future Catholic teachers, and overseeing the application of emerging legislation on education.’Footnote ³⁷ Education was seen to provide a route to salvation and material improvement for working-class Catholics and as a means of galvanising Catholics, regardless of background, towards a common cause.Footnote ³⁸ Recognising this, the bishops at the 1852 Synod declared educational provision their ‘first missionary priority’, especially for the children of the working class.Footnote ³⁹

A new wave of schools operated by both lay and religious emerged from the 1860s onwards, some of which were relatively short-lived.Footnote ⁴⁰ Concerns persisted about the provision of Catholic education. Cardinal Wiseman admitted in 1863 that ‘our weak side is the education of our children… whom our poverty prevents us from bringing up as we would desire’.Footnote ⁴¹ These two contradictory sentiments characterise the Church’s attitudes in mid-nineteenth century Britain. There was ‘enthusiasm and confidence’ alongside the ‘sober realization that… education, and namely education of the Catholic poor, was an issue in need of tireless effort.’Footnote ⁴² The 1870 Education Act provided much impetus and shape to English education in subsequent generations, as did the 1872 Scotland Education Act.Footnote ⁴³ These Acts led to fears that Catholic schools might face government interference in religious instruction and though this ‘proved largely unfounded’ it was not without impact.Footnote ⁴⁴ By 1902, ‘a strong secondary education infrastructure and important new Catholic contributions to scientific and technical education for a growing Catholic middle class, at least in England, were emerging.’Footnote ⁴⁵ According to Tenbus, this process achieved more than just educational results: ‘the English Catholic community evolved in its pursuit of the education question.’Footnote ⁴⁶ It was not an unequivocal success, however. Into the twentieth century, the bishops were still stridently working to advance education and ensure that it met the needs of Catholics.Footnote ⁴⁷ Overall, there had been ‘enormous financial cost’ to the Catholic laity in their support of Catholic education.Footnote ⁴⁸

From the outset, it was clear that ‘sustained high-quality Catholic education was unattainable without Catholic teacher training colleges.’Footnote ⁴⁹ St Mary’s, Hammersmith was the first such institution to address this and was founded by the CPSC in 1850. Though there were sixteen such colleges by the 1920s, St Mary’s remained the only Catholic men’s teacher training college in Britain until 1946.Footnote ⁵⁰ At the time of the 1870 Education Act, Thomas Allies declared there should be ‘Catholic schools for Catholic children, with Catholic teachers.’Footnote ⁵¹ This ‘remained the guiding principle on policy into the following century’, if not in practice.Footnote ⁵² The quality of these colleges generally appears to have been high. Susan O’Brien and Carmen Mangion note that Catholic female teacher training colleges provided a ‘superior education that was highly praised.’Footnote ⁵³ During the late nineteenth century, teaching was ‘upgraded to professional status’ with training becoming ‘more methodological and institutionalised.’Footnote ⁵⁴ Quantity of quality teachers, however, was an issue. Maurice Whitehead and Stephen Parker have both discussed the challenge of ensuring a sufficient supply of competent Catholic teachers and the anxieties this provoked.Footnote ⁵⁵ The Rev. William Hastings reflected back on ‘the great difficulties’ of St Mary’s ‘Training School’ (as it was then called) during its first three decades, ‘with crises and anxieties of all kinds, financial and educational.’Footnote ⁵⁶

Over the Hammersmith period of the college’s life, St Mary’s provided Catholic schools with over 2,000 male teachers, though only 901 of these were trained before 1900.Footnote ⁵⁷ This may be considered a success or failure, depending on perspective: it was a substantial achievement for one institution, but still insufficient for requirements. Recruiting and training sufficient numbers of quality candidates was a struggle for St Mary’s. Records show that in the early decades even amongst the small number interested in training for qualification, few possessed the knowledge and ability to gain entrance and scholarship to support study. By the 1890s, the numbers of students and their quality appear to have been generally higher, with St Mary’s able to recruit almost entirely from experienced pupil teachers. Certainly, college records show strenuous efforts to find and prepare students willing to take examination for entry, and the Queen’s Scholarship was a critical factor in determining future study, but only a small number of candidates passed. The high bar for scholarships therefore excluded all but the brightest, or those with sufficient personal or family means to support themselves. Explanations for the difficulties in recruiting sufficient numbers of quality male candidates also include wider issues within the Church hierarchy and the schools system, the social and economic status of Catholics, a greater labour market, and income competition for men comparative to their female counterparts, combined with the gendered culture of elementary school teaching.

Using a thematic approach to assess and present the substantial archival material consulted allows us to turn to the demographics of St Mary’s student body. Observations may then be made about the students’ experience, along the themes of home, faith, education, community, and leisure, thus giving us a multifaceted sense of student life at the time. These themes were deeply interrelated and should not be considered as discrete. As each theme is explored, a growing number of aspects of St Mary’s life are illuminated to reveal a sum greater than its parts. This is not suggesting one theme had precedence over another but instead this approach is used to illuminate a totality of experience. From these observations of the college’s student body, the nature of British Catholic education, and British Catholicism, at least through the masculine lens of the trainee teacher, can be illuminated. The overall sense is of a wide range of young men being drawn together through a shared faith and desire to teach, mostly having already worked as pupil teachers, and being chiefly of Irish descent from urban working-class areas in the north of England and the Glasgow area of Scotland. Many were intelligent and driven, if under-educated. Their experience was relatively austere, especially in the first half century, with a strict regime imposed upon them. Active Catholic practice, discipline, and rigorous dedication to learning was expected. At the same time, numerous ways were found to entertain. In this crucible, community was forged, actively and passively with close living, camaraderie, shared activities, and a sense of identity.

Demographics

St Mary’s was both for and of its wider community. Its student demographics reflected the changing nature of British Catholicism and the college’s position within this. The makeup of the student body also contributed to the character of the college. This present overview outlines student numbers and backgrounds to provide a sense of who these students were. Researchers are well-served by pupil lists produced both contemporaneously and retrospectively. The Centenary Record, for example, a history of the college published in 1950, listed all known students up to that point.Footnote ⁵⁸ This publication drew from the College Registers, kept from 1854 onwards, which recorded date of entrance, name, address, date of birth, previous occupation, date of leaving, exam results, and remarks, in varying detail over time.Footnote ⁵⁹ By entering the student lists into a database, it has been possible to search, and to carry out quantitative analysis. This data has been supplemented by reports, letters, and other documents within the Principal’s papers where the numbers and backgrounds of students has been reflected upon.Footnote ⁶⁰ Information from reports of the Catholic Poor School Committee and the Committee of Council on Education have been also drawn on as necessary.

Student numbers tell a key part of the St Mary’s story. Wall has outlined how the supply of teachers for Catholic schools developed ‘virtually from scratch’ in the 1840s through many setbacks and disappointments to be overcome by 1870.Footnote ⁶¹ In this, St Mary’s is a case-in-point and Nicholson identified the varying numbers and quality of students in the early decades.Footnote ⁶² While initially founded in 1850 to train male religious as teachers, by 1854 uptake was so slim that lay candidates were admitted. Such was the shift that an official college document later cited its ‘establishment’ as 1854.Footnote ⁶³ Admissions rose, but remained much lower than hoped, causing significant anxiety. Just twenty-eight students were in residence in 1857, across both years.Footnote ⁶⁴ Some more positive years were followed in 1860 by a fall to just seven first-year students.Footnote ⁶⁵ This precipitated a period of significant struggle to recruit. In 1861 Principal Rowe requested school managers bring suitable and willing candidates to his attention, noting that ‘the difficulties to be encountered at St Mary’s are as you are aware very considerable.’Footnote ⁶⁶

The College required quality and quantity. Applicants were insufficiently prepared for the Queen’s Scholarship examination whereby they would be provided a grant to train.Footnote ⁶⁷ Candidates for entrance were disappointing, as were results for those who were admitted.Footnote ⁶⁸ In 1857 over half failed the entrance examination.Footnote ⁶⁹ Rowe set out to rectify the situation, establishing a class for prospective entrants to reside at the college while studying for the examination. This was a success, and in years where the preparatory class ran, a large majority of applicants passed.Footnote ⁷⁰ This system ran on and off for several years, incurring considerable expenses due to housing candidates for several months before examination. In 1861 the CPSC justifiably complained that the proper role of St Mary’s was to build upon foundations already laid in secular and religious instruction rather than doing the groundwork that had been neglected by others.Footnote ⁷¹ A shortage of candidates was common to other Catholic teacher training schools at this time.Footnote ⁷² Working class boys were expected to contribute to family income, and they had a relatively wide range of jobs available to them; spending more time in education detracted from this. This context contributed to the limited numbers of applicants, let alone successful ones.

Neither numbers nor quality improved to a satisfactory degree, and by 1863 Rowe and Cardinal Wiseman were corresponding on the poor standard of candidates.Footnote ⁷³ 1867 was a crisis point with just fifteen pupils in residence.Footnote ⁷⁴ The preparatory class was reinstated, and the following year the college welcomed twenty-five new students.Footnote ⁷⁵ Rowe made clear to Wiseman that the poor numbers and quality of candidates were likely to cause the college to close and requested assistance in bringing the matter before the bishops.Footnote ⁷⁶ It was suggested that each diocese be asked to send a minimum number of candidates each year.Footnote ⁷⁷ Even at this point, almost twenty years after its establishment, there was a need to remind the bishops of their equal benefit from and obligation to the college, it ‘not being a local institution’ but for ‘the whole Catholic Body’.Footnote ⁷⁸ Additionally, a £5 incentive was proposed for every master who sent a successful candidate.Footnote ⁷⁹ Appeals at school level for candidates from 1862 were thus reinforced and aimed at the hierarchy. The 1869 Returns for St Mary’s recorded that, since 1854, 211 students had entered, excluding those currently enrolled.Footnote ⁸⁰ Not only were these numbers small, but of these, only around two-thirds had gone into teaching positions.Footnote ⁸¹ The contribution by St Mary’s to the provision of Catholic schools for the first two decades of its existence was thus very small.

The efforts of Rowe and others in the 1860s to secure sufficient candidates of good quality, however, slowly took effect. The Returns of 1873 record fifty-three present students; since 1869 St Mary’s had received 115 students, averaging twenty-nine per year.Footnote ⁸² Maintaining those numbers was far from plain sailing. During 1873, two students were withdrawn due to misconduct, and two had died.Footnote ⁸³ Expulsion was not uncommon; in the 1868-9 year, three students were expelled.Footnote ⁸⁴ The attrition rate of those who made it into the college thus exacerbated the acute supply issues. However, student numbers remained steady over the coming years.Footnote ⁸⁵ Later numbers varied but usually from the 1870s to the 1890s the yearly total number of students was in the fifties.Footnote ⁸⁶ The preparatory class continued to be employed at points, at least into the 1880s, showing its value.Footnote ⁸⁷ Standards expected for entry, and the Queen’s Scholarship, remained high and most applicants in the late nineteenth century failed.Footnote ⁸⁸ From the 1870s, the college grew in status, becoming seen as ‘popular and successful,’Footnote ⁸⁹ perhaps reflective of a more creditable student population. This shift also reflected the wider hold that public schools, to which St Mary’s can be broadly compared, came to have on the Victorian middle class from the 1870s.Footnote ⁹⁰ However, qualified male teachers were still lacking in the 1880s, to the point of critical shortage according to Cardinal Manning, due mostly to the low numbers matriculating from St Mary’s.Footnote ⁹¹ The annual numbers remained around fifty until the 1900s when growth was further driven by Principal Byrne, securing 112 students in 1909.Footnote ⁹² A great deal of variation in student numbers would have altered the experience for each cohort in that period.

Who these students were, beyond the headline figures, is pertinent to understanding the character of the student body. The pipeline of suitable and sufficient candidates into St Mary’s took twenty years and significant effort to establish. Analysis of the experiential history of students in the light of both overall numbers and the character of the college population is revealing. In September 1869 twenty-seven of the fifty students in the college—just over half— had been pupil teachers.Footnote ⁹³ The preparatory classes of the 1860s widened the recruitment base to those who had not been pupil teachers, as Nicholson has shown, although this was not necessarily a desirable development.Footnote ⁹⁴ The Pupil Teacher System provided for children aged thirteen to become apprenticed to the heads of grant-aided schools, which had been favourably inspected. These pupils remained at the school for five years, teaching while also preparing for an annual examination. Pupil teachers received maintenance grants and heads were paid a small sum for each. At the end of their apprenticeship, pupils were entered for the Queen’s Scholarship Examination, which would enable them to train as teachers in elementary schools, supported by a grant.Footnote ⁹⁵ In the quarter of a century from 1869, pupil teachers went from just over half of entrants to a near monopoly in a strong experiential shift; 95% by 1895 had been pupil teachers.Footnote ⁹⁶ One student of the 1890s recalled that practically all the students were ex-pupil teachers from Catholic schools.Footnote ⁹⁷ This potentially reflects greater applications from, or perhaps greater preference for, a higher ‘class’ of candidate.Footnote ⁹⁸ The remaining 5% was split evenly between students who were not pupil teachers and those already working as teachers who were now joining as students, indicating the perceived value of St Mary’s to status and pay.

Despite the large proportion of rejections, and the regular need for a preparatory class, it appears those who came through the pupil-teacher system were driven and skilled.Footnote ⁹⁹ Catholic schools could not afford expensive staff and so pupil teachers ‘had to teach all and every day, not study’, and heads neglected their training.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Pupil teachers who survived the rigorous work and passed the scholarship examination were clearly valued by the college, as demonstrated by their growing proportion in the student body, and the ongoing desire to support them with preparatory classes. The teaching technique of Catholic pupil-teachers was so good that it was cited as the reason headmasters of London schools strongly welcomed Simmarians onto their staff, associating one with the other.Footnote ¹⁰¹ There was a strong relationship between the route into elementary teaching and the social background of those who took it. Detailed studies of trainee teachers demonstrate that in the second half of the nineteenth century, both men and women trainees were predominantly drawn from either the aspirational upper working class or struggling lower-middle class.Footnote ¹⁰²

According to both popular understanding among the Catholic community and published histories of the college, St Mary’s students fit into this general picture. Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, expressed it in this way in his preface to a 2020 history of St Mary’s, ‘The early students were young men, from families who were themselves not at all well-off, who trained as teachers for what were then known as Catholic Poor Schools. They knew they would earn very little money and would work under difficult conditions’.Footnote ¹⁰³ At the same time, the collective memory in the Catholic community, reinforced by the published histories of the college, has celebrated as distinctive the idea that its students came from the rapidly growing Catholic urban populations of first-generation Irish migrants or families of Irish descent.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Building on earlier research into the background of St Mary’s students in the period up to 1870, this article extends the timeline, confirms important distinctive characteristics about the student profile, and adds nuance to the existing picture, while acknowledging the constraints of the data from which it is drawn.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

In 1870, the CPSC estimated that out of 244 pupil teachers who had entered the College since 1855, 15.7% came from the London area, 17.8% from Scotland and 46.6% from the North of England.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ None were noted to have come from Wales, underlining the poverty of Welsh Catholics and the challenges to parishes of affording lay teachers.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ A further investigation of students’ places of origin was undertaken in the mid-1890s, probably by Principal Graham. His demographic investigations calculated that over the previous decade 54% of the students came from the ‘South Lancashire District’, 13% from the ‘Glasgow district’, 9% from the London Metropolitan area and 23% from the rest of England.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ At least two-thirds of students in this period were assessed to have been from Scotland or the north of England, especially the two industrial conurbations around Glasgow and South Lancashire, which had seen the greatest Irish immigration following the Great Famine of the 1840s and 1850s. That this pattern had continued into the 1890s suggests some students were, by this time, second-generation Irish immigrants, hailing from the urban working classes.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ That over half of pupils came from South Lancashire is a strong suggestion that the modern understanding that the college attracted Catholics of Irish descent during the nineteenth century is somewhat borne out. The strong Lancastrian character of Simmarians in this period is reflected in the college song, recorded in 1910 as beginning, ‘I am a simple country yokel, and from Lancashire I came’.Footnote ¹¹⁰ This is not the whole story, however. Scotland was well-represented in the student body, reflecting their high Catholic populations and, according to Noreen Nicholson, the high standards of their schools.Footnote ¹¹¹

Analysis of student records for the most part supports the broad sketch provided by the complier of the 1890s note. Certainly, Lancashire provided the largest proportion of students. They were almost entirely drawn from large South Lancashire towns and cities, especially Liverpool, Manchester, Preston, and St Helens, which were known for their large Irish Catholic populations (Figure 1). Around 40% during the first decades were from this area, rising to nearly 50% by c.1900. The Glasgow district and London Metropolitan area each accounted for the next largest contributions, at around 10% each. The Newcastle area, including Gateshead and South Shields, was also a substantial contributor, with around 5%, though this had not been acknowledged in the 1890s sketch. Additionally, around 4% came from South Wales, another fact not noted by Principal Graham. The remaining students were almost entirely drawn from across England and Scotland, especially the major cities of Edinburgh and Bristol as well as West Yorkshire, and the cities of Leeds and Bradford, County Durham, and particularly Middlesbrough, and the Birmingham and Black Country region (Figure 2).

Figure 1.

Student locations at registration, 1854-1901.Footnote ^{112 a}Especially Edinburgh in the earlier period and Dundee in the later; ^bEspecially Bristol, Birmingham and Leeds.

Figure 2.

Lancashire student locations at registration, 1854-1909. ^aIncluding Bootle, Birkenhead and the Wirral; ^bIncluding Salford, Swinton, Ashton-under-Lyme, Oldham, Stalybridge and Stockport; ^cLancaster, Chorley, Bolton, Thurnham, Garstang, Pendleton, Ashton-in-Makerfield, Leigh, Kirkham, Ormskirk, Oswaldtwistle, Accrington, Burnley, Clitheroe, Brownedge, Widnes, Warrington, Blackpool, Newton-le-Willows, Heywood, Bury, Ince and Longton.

The outline provided here must be taken with some caution as evidence of student origin. The enrolment process recorded student addresses at the time of their entry to St Mary’s, which may have been different from where they had been living until a short time before, amidst the highly mobile nature of Victorian Britain. Nevertheless, together, the information gleaned from student registration, and the snapshot estimations from contemporary secondary sources (which may have better reflected student identification rather than the addresses given at the time of entry) provide a clear sense of the student population which can be confidently stated as urban, primarily from the north of England and Scotland’s major cities, and with a strong contingent from South Lancashire constituting the largest bloc —c.40-50%—throughout. Furthermore, while analysis has not been conducted on the family origins of students within the present study it is clear that the student body was significantly drawn from areas where Irish Catholic immigration had been strong during the middle of the nineteenth century. The Catholic community between the 1840s and 1880s has been simplistically described as comprising three important groups: the old English Catholic gentry, the Oxford Movement converts, and Irish Catholic immigrants, all with consistent points of dissension between them.Footnote ¹¹³ Only one of these groupings—those from an Irish immigrant background—appears to have been strongly represented within St Mary’s student population. This suggests that the Catholic teaching workforce was similar to the wider teacher workforce of the period, comprising individuals from upper working-class and lower middle-class upbringings.

Some students came to St Mary’s with personal links. James Cassidy entered thirty years after his father and was amused to discover himself occupying the same cell in the dormitory.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Other students chose St Mary’s perhaps because of friends. Charles Quinn, it seems, followed in the footsteps of two friends and former Simmarians.Footnote ¹¹⁵ One striking connection, transcending both family and friendship, was between St Mary’s and Malta. Simmarian Daniel Fallon became a professor at the University of Malta, likely initiating the long relationship between St Mary’s and that island.Footnote ¹¹⁶ In the 1880s, the colonial government of Malta, a predominantly Catholic country, decided to train male primary school headteachers at St Mary’s.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Geographic and familial ties were a key aspect to the feelings generated amongst the young men in those early decades of the college.

Home

The domestic regime at Brook Green was a crucible in which Catholic masculinity and communal identity were enacted day to day. Routine was strict and domestic arrangements sparse, but the college was a home. Initially, members of the ‘religious institute’ occupied the eighteenth-century Brook Green House, then in 1856 accommodation for fifty lay students was built.Footnote ¹¹⁸ A chapel, refectory, and a large lecture room had been built by 1850.Footnote ¹¹⁹ There were few significant changes over the following decades. The buildings, while ‘handsome’, were apparently unfinished, lacking some internal features. In 1897 a new wing was added to improve the space for science teaching, and a new dining room, common room, and library were also added.Footnote ¹²⁰ What provision there was for communal spaces beforehand is unclear. The domestic space was austere. Students slept in ‘cells’, which they tidied weekday mornings.Footnote ¹²¹ One student of the 1890s described the ‘somewhat severe monastic rule and Spartan simplicity.’Footnote ¹²² Looking after this space in the 1880s and 90s were Xavierian Brothers, who, according to one former student, ‘were all Belgians or Germans’.Footnote ¹²³ These Brothers undertook domestic work until Dr Graham appointed the first matron in 1898.Footnote ¹²⁴

Following the 1902 Education Act, which created Local Education Authorities and sought to reduce the funding divide between voluntary and non-denominational schools, there was steady student growth. The premises had to be ‘considerably enlarged’,Footnote ¹²⁵ a process that included demolition of the old house.Footnote ¹²⁶ Other developments included renovations to the lavatories, heating system, chapel, and accommodation as well as a new manual training room and a second Fives court.Footnote ¹²⁷ By 1910, there were four Junior dormitories called, by students, Kennels, Pups, Dogs, and Mongrels, with a separate dorm for Seniors.Footnote ¹²⁸ Around eleven boys slept in each Junior dormitory, in bunk beds.Footnote ¹²⁹

Routine provided familiar, if unbending, rhythms of life. An Order of the Day from the early 1890s shows expectations of what students did and when.Footnote ¹³⁰ On weekdays, they were to rise at 6am followed by religious observance before breakfast at 8. The rest of the day had meals, learning and recreation at set times. 10pm was night prayer and bed. Wednesday and Saturday afternoons were half-holidays. One former student of the 1880s recalled that ‘we had little free time.’Footnote ¹³¹ Students were given leave to go beyond the college on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday afternoons. In the 1890s, they had to be back by 7pm with late passes sparingly granted and only then after an interview with the Principal.Footnote ¹³² Phil Doyle, a student of the 1880s, recalled that he enjoyed his time, ‘only that I never seemed to get enough sleep.’Footnote ¹³³ Timings for waking and sleeping were strictly enforced, but were also challenged by students. In 1895, silence was expected after lights out to such a degree that talking in the dormitory could be used as a reason for expulsion.Footnote ¹³⁴ In 1910, students were expected to be in and out of their beds at certain times, but could stay up later at night.Footnote ¹³⁵

Food was a key feature of the daily routine and prominent amongst student concerns. Lecturers and students ate meals together, although staff sat ‘in state on a platform at the end of the refectory’.Footnote ¹³⁶ Meals were taken in silence, at least until the 1880s, when dining was accompanied by a religious reading by a Senior.Footnote ¹³⁷ The students’ set diet at this time consisted of ‘a cubic inch of butter, and tea, bread and dripping’ for Breakfast and Tea.Footnote ¹³⁸ Dinner was ‘meat (two-helpings), potatoes and cabbage’, perhaps with bread and soup but ‘never’ green vegetables.Footnote ¹³⁹ Pudding was twice a week with the ‘Sunday sweet… delectable and renowned in song and story.’Footnote ¹⁴⁰ Apparently, ‘supper consisted of a glass of milk or beer, but nobody took the beer since it was simply vinegar.’Footnote ¹⁴¹ Students sought further sustenance, beyond the set meals of ‘meagre fare’ with long intervals between, which, noted one student, ‘made us ravenously hungry.’Footnote ¹⁴² In the 1880s, saveloys were a favourite, being both cheap and filling, with these ‘succulent morsels’ available to buy nearby at seven for sixpence.Footnote ¹⁴³ The markets at King Street had ‘very cheap fruit’ including cherries and plums for 3d. a pound.Footnote ¹⁴⁴

By 1910, dining had become an opportunity for conversation in the Refectory, or ‘Ref’.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ Students were also similarly well-fed, as demonstrated by a weekly schedule of meals drawn up by student John Seddon.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ Breakfast was porridge three times on alternate days, interspersed with boiled ham, cold beef, eggs, and sausages. Dinner on weekdays was either meat, meat pie or potato pie with fish soup, bread and butter on Friday and pudding or fruit at weekends. Tea was plain, currant or seed bread on alternate days. Bread and butter were supplied at breakfast, tea, and supper, with hot milk at supper. Additional sustenance was still prized, with a student-made rule that any of them receiving cake was to share it with his dormmates.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ Certainly, students were not starved and Cyril Thompson, whose diary records his regular walks and gymnasium visits, noted ten weeks into his stay that he had gained a stone in weight.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ On special occasions the food could be excellent. In the 1880s the Seniors’ farewell feast in their last training week was sanctioned by the authorities, ‘nor was the wine list censored’.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ All Seniors contributed for a good supply of meat and vegetables which the Brothers cooked and ‘at 10pm we sat down to a goodly spread’ with songs, stories and speeches.Footnote ¹⁵⁰ This was a far cry from the usual meagre fare and silence. The 1910 end of term supper consisted of, ‘wines, trifle, ham, jelly, sweets, fruits, cigarettes etc.’Footnote ¹⁵¹

Not every domestic experience was positive. There was an infirmary for sick students, and some died.Footnote ¹⁵² Discipline was strict, as has been observed for a contemporary Anglican institution, the Lincoln Diocesan Training College for School Mistresses, which was described as being run with the strictness of a mid-Victorian family with the rule of the father (Principal) and the regulation of the college day paramount.Footnote ¹⁵³ In 1861, incoming student Charles Quinn was advised by friend and former Simmarian James O’Hanlon that, ‘I have ever observed the regulations to press most heavily on those who least exerted themselves to comply with them’.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ Indeed, a year later Quinn’s acquaintance William Gallagher was expelled.Footnote ¹⁵⁵ There were just seven dismissals from 1871 to the early 1890s.Footnote ¹⁵⁶ Reasons include ‘disobedience, misconduct, insubordination, intoxication, public houses, drunkenness, staying out, stealing fruit, sloth, and neglect of studies’.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ In 1895, John McCarthy was the first student to be dismissed in eight years, apparently for talking in the dormitory.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ According to his fellow students, this was a ‘most common and slight offence’ compared to the previous year when four pupils had scaled the walls and spent the night out without leave but had only been ‘merely reproved for gross misconduct.’Footnote ¹⁵⁹ ‘Authority was very much in evidence’ but, it seems, with uneven execution.Footnote ¹⁶⁰

A letter to Principal Graham by McCarthy’s fellow students in his support fell on deaf ears, Graham having ‘treated us rather as children than as men’.Footnote ¹⁶¹ The strict hierarchy of the college sat uneasily on many of the now mature students, who by the 1890s had already lived and worked before entering their course of study. Everything was decided for the students without consultation or representation.Footnote ¹⁶² However, the petitioning regarding McCarthy’s expulsion shows their desire to be heard and to resist emasculation. Indeed, students of this period established a method of making requests to the Principal. For example, for a half-day holiday or a double beer ration, they would cry ‘first two, see the Principal’ and two students at the top of the table would go to make the request, followed by the next pair and so on.Footnote ¹⁶³ In 1899, management of St Mary’s passed to the Congregation of the Mission, a transnational religious institute of priests and brothers founded in France in the seventeenth century and known in Britain and Ireland as the Vincentians. The Vincentians had only a small presence in Britain but were established providers of teacher education in Ireland. In the first decade or so of Vincentian administration, there appears to have been a softening of discipline, and greater interest in the happiness of the students.Footnote ¹⁶⁴ Strictness had certainly dissipated by 1910 when John Seddon recorded not only plentiful discussion in the dormitories but much rowdier behaviour, discussed further below.Footnote ¹⁶⁵ By this time, if not before, there is evidence that shared living saw the Simmarians ‘articulate, maintain and compose’ their ‘homosocial relationships’ in a more adult fashion than previous generations had been able.Footnote ¹⁶⁶

Education

The purpose of St Mary’s Training School was to prepare young men to teach in Catholic schools. Classroom, examination, and private study were intended as intellectual and practical instruction in the subjects and methods required to teach Elementary-age children. Many young men gained their St Mary’s experience through their examination for entry and the Queen’s Scholarship. From the 1860s, many pupil teachers attended the preparatory school and, by the 1880s, about a hundred candidates lodged and boarded free for a week before their examination.Footnote ¹⁶⁷ Only about twenty per cent of applicants qualified for admission.Footnote ¹⁶⁸ The taxing entry process was followed by a ‘strenuous’ education.Footnote ¹⁶⁹ J. M. Duffy, a student in the 1880s, recalled that, ‘it was arduous work, for our grounding was poor; we soon discovered the depths of our ignorance and that spurred us on to make good our deficiency.’Footnote ¹⁷⁰ Students were taught via lecture and textbook from which they were meant to take notes and not expected to exercise independent thought.Footnote ¹⁷¹ These notes from lectures were on slates.Footnote ¹⁷² In Duffy’s Junior year there were twenty-five students with a (teaching) staff of six, which meant a high student-teacher ratio.Footnote ¹⁷³ Students would have had attention from, and familiarity with, their teachers. The small teaching staff were required to ‘cope’ with a wide curriculum.Footnote ¹⁷⁴ Wall noted how the St Mary’s teaching staff and the quality of the students, and therefore the curriculum offered, were regularly liable to change in the early decades.Footnote ¹⁷⁵ However, from 1854, St Mary’s followed the core prescribed syllabus of examinations for male students set out by the government, with subsequent additions.Footnote ¹⁷⁶

Two timetables from the archives give a sense of the education provided. Timetables were key to the tight regulation of the day in a nineteenth century Christian teacher training college; they ensured that the day was ‘very well filled’.Footnote ¹⁷⁷ In 1869 students were expected to be in classes thirty-two hours a week, with a further eighteen of private study and six for written examination.Footnote ¹⁷⁸ A list of subjects with time allocations shows first years were to take Religious Knowledge (4 hours per week), School Management and Writing (3), Grammar and Composition (3), Arithmetic and Algebra (5), Reading and Repetition (3), Euclid (2), History (2), Geography (2), Economy (2), Drawing (3) and Music (3). Second years took identical subjects with a slight adjustment in weightings: arithmetic was reduced by one hour in order to allow an additional hour for school management. The accompanying timetable provides some sense of the college day. The first hour of each day from 7am was for private study, followed up to lunch by most of the core subjects, varying daily. Afternoons were given mostly to private study, though with catechism and history classes and for Seniors time in the practicing school. There were half-holidays for all on Wednesdays and Saturdays; this was altered by the 1880s as mentioned above, when Sundays were included. Evenings alternated between written examinations, twice weekly for Juniors and three times for Seniors, with music and drawing on the other nights. All activities finished by 10pm.

Another timetable from 1888 shows some change and continuity.Footnote ¹⁷⁹ Classes now ran from 8:45am, with breaks, until 9:45 in the evening. Up to lunchtime, lectures covered a range of subjects, changing daily and from first to second year. Afternoons for Juniors were still largely private study (and recreation), combined with four hours in the laboratory, while Seniors had eight hours in the practicing school; evenings again consisted of drawing, written examination, and then private study. The subjects studied had changed slightly. Juniors and Seniors now took two hours of Scripture a week and two hours of physiography. Juniors took two hours of Chemistry and Seniors three hours of Physiology. All students took History, English, Reading, Geography, Music, School Management and Grammar Exercises. While Juniors took four hours of Mathematics, Seniors had three hours each of Euclid and Algebra. Altogether, while the core subjects remained similar from 1869 by 1888 there had been some developments, especially in the inclusion of sciences and the increased differentiation between first- and second-year study.

There was some fluidity in the education provided.Footnote ¹⁸⁰ Phil Doyle recalled that during his studies in the 1880s he and three other students had such high marks in History and Geography in the first year that they were excused from taking these subjects in the second year, with Dr Graham insisting they take Advanced Mathematics instead.Footnote ¹⁸¹ In the 1890s the curriculum widened to subjects students would later teach, with some elementary work dropped.Footnote ¹⁸² The 1902 Education Act allowed the opening of more Catholic schools and the extension of secondary education, and the college adapted its curriculum accordingly.Footnote ¹⁸³ Correspondingly, standards at entry appear to have improved.Footnote ¹⁸⁴

The very purpose of attendance at St Mary’s was to qualify as teachers. Many students had already been working as pupil teachers. A student of the 1880s recalled:

The onsite practising school had a permanent intake of pupils taught by their own staff of masters at the college and, at times, the present students.Footnote ¹⁸⁶ When students taught in the school their efforts were judged and recorded in a line or two, such as: ‘Taylor. Slow and unimpressive. But anxious and industrious’.Footnote ¹⁸⁷

Some education took place outside traditional classrooms. Physical fitness and discipline were stressed and students were drilled. In the 1880s, a Crimean War veteran ex-guardsman ‘came once a week to give the students an hours’ drill’.Footnote ¹⁸⁸ In 1909-10, a gymnasium was built, and a Physical Training teacher was appointed.Footnote ¹⁸⁹ Another activity outside the traditional classrooms consisted of substantial private study. By 1910, and likely earlier, books could be taken out of the library.Footnote ¹⁹⁰ Students could make use of public educational facilities. From the early 1870s students could access the nearby libraries at the South Kensington museums, which proved very popular.Footnote ¹⁹¹

Education was all in aid of qualifying, though students applied themselves unevenly. Former Simmarian William Moloney wrote in 1861 that the start of the year should be ‘spent in an industrious manner’ and that ‘there would be far better results attained each Xmas.’Footnote ¹⁹² Writing to their friend Charles Quinn, Moloney and James O’Hanlon, both former students, expressed great interest in Quinn’s examinations.Footnote ¹⁹³ Students sat many examinations, and good records were kept of results. In the 1880s, students had to pass a Government examination at the end of each year with additional exams for Science, Art Departments, and most importantly Religion, ‘which every student was expected to pass with credit.’Footnote ¹⁹⁴ So imperative were they that a Senior’s pocket money was augmented if he had secured a First Class in the Religious Examination or the Government Examination.Footnote ¹⁹⁵

Simmarians appear to have successfully applied themselves. By 1879, the Education Department apparently ‘thought more and more highly, as the time went on’ of the college according to the Marquis of Ripon, chairman of the Catholic Poor School Committee.Footnote ¹⁹⁶ It seems that from the 1880s onwards Hammersmith was on more solid ground, and St Mary’s was keen to celebrate. It did so by involving the wider Catholic community with a grand annual prizegiving. At times this was presided over by prominent Catholics, including the Duke of Norfolk, the Archbishop of Westminster, and Lord Howard of Glossop.Footnote ¹⁹⁷ Large sums of money, up to £4 each, were awarded to the students with the best Religious Knowledge and a silver watch called ‘Lord Howard’s Prize’ was presented to the student with the best general good conduct and proficiency.Footnote ¹⁹⁸

Community

James Cassidy, who attended the college in the 1890s, recollected later in life the ‘marvellous spirit amongst the students, largely because numbers were small, and they became like a large family.’Footnote ¹⁹⁹ Rituals, jokes, songs, and clubs all played their part in the formation of community, often binding men as Simmarians across cohorts and, in the words of J.M. Duffy, led them to offer ‘protestations of undying friendship’.Footnote ²⁰⁰ Male bonding at St Mary’s paralleled what Lucinda Matthews-Jones, in her study of the Rugby Club in the same period, has described as ‘social performance’.Footnote ²⁰¹ Homosocial communities, such as St Mary’s and the Rugby Club, were established passively through close living and shared experiences but also actively through rituals of religious and non-religious kinds —some of which may be disturbing to twenty-first century readers—to co-create an emotional ethos of place. Scholars have noted that some emotional communities value hostile and aggressive interpersonal relations and many incorporate existing social hierarchies.Footnote ²⁰² This insight can be applied to examples of communal rituals at St Mary’s that reflected xenophobic and racist attitudes embedded in nineteenth century Britain.

Students valued and held on to relationships and identities from their own communities. Homesickness was experienced, especially upon arrival: it featured in letters to student Charles Quinn in 1861 and in John Seddon’s diary of 1910.Footnote ²⁰³ Former Simmarian William Moloney wrote to his friend Charles Quinn requesting him to ‘remember me kindly to the Coatbridge lads’.Footnote ²⁰⁴ Some of these associations were carried into college life, such as students from Lancashire who could be found cheering ‘Lancashire’ when a group got together.Footnote ²⁰⁵ At the same time, students quickly became part of the St Mary’s community. John Seddon described how on his first night ‘the way the Kennels [his dormitory] behaved that night might have given anyone the impression we had been in college for months’.Footnote ²⁰⁶ A sense of community was actively fostered. At their first evening meal the Seniors greeted Seddon and his fellow newcomers with a shout of ‘welcome juniors’.Footnote ²⁰⁷ Seddon observed that ‘all college shouts are organised. That is to say that every one shouts at the same time’.Footnote ²⁰⁸ Such ‘shouts’ appear to have been quite common. A vocality carried across into the singing of the college song on numerous and spontaneous occasions, especially sporting ones, to help forge a sense of togetherness.Footnote ²⁰⁹ One ‘special’ song was ‘The Coll Chorus’ recorded by John Seddon in 1910, and elsewhere, which had to be sung while a procession was formed.Footnote ²¹⁰

A key occasion for identity and group formation was the initiation ritual that took place at the start of the academic year. Seddon was explicit about ‘being made a Simmarian’ in ‘that eventful ceremony’, which for him took place on the first Monday of the 1910 academic year.Footnote ²¹¹ His description is recorded in full here for the insight it gives into the deliberate construction of homosocial male culture at St Mary’s. A highly choreographed event, it moved participants between excitement and fear, violence and release, incorporating elements of racial and religious mockery and caricature but culminating in inclusion on its own terms through shared experience, song, and procession:

Emmanual Tonna recalled his own initiation at which he ‘like all the Juniors, had to swear fealty to the great god Rocco whose name is derived from Mr Rocco Farrugia, a fellow Maltese Simmarian, who introduced the swearing-in ceremony.’Footnote ²¹³ As Tonna was a student in 1935-7 and Farrugia in 1904-6 we know the initiation, or at least a form of it, lasted at least thirty years. The chaotic and seemingly irrational nature of this ritual exemplifies what Rob Boddice has identified as the power of the history of emotions lens to undermine or destroy the ‘reason/emotion’ duality which has been a cultural touchstone of Western masculinity.Footnote ²¹⁴ The making of Simmarians was emotional much more than rational, deliberately engendering a wide range of feelings.

There was also exclusion. A student of the 1880s recalled how one Junior would dress ‘immaculately attired in frock coat and glossy top hat’ and the other students proceeded to ostracise him.Footnote ²¹⁵ Seddon recorded many instances of Seniors picking on Juniors but also recalled how his Maltese peer Joseph Arena was sometimes made fun of in ways that involved ‘othering’. The Maltese acts rather simple’, he recalled, ‘he has a funny foreign way with him so he was nicknamed Signor Gondittori. Signor Gondittori had never seen snow. He seemed very interested when he was told that boiled snowballs and snow pancakes were excellent for dinner, poor Joe’.Footnote ²¹⁶ The students of 1910 displayed other racist attitudes.Footnote ²¹⁷ Ironically this included Thompson teaching Arena, apparently to his delight, the song ‘My Name is Solomon Levi’ about a stereotypical Jewish man.Footnote ²¹⁸ British students were also divided. According to James Cassidy in the 1890s ‘those worthy northerners were continually reminding us’ of their ‘superior attitude’.Footnote ²¹⁹ How far this attitude ran and whether this related to a wider cultural sense or more specific Catholic differences is not clear.Footnote ²²⁰

Staff cannot have been unaware of the large-scale initiation ritual and while their attitudes to it are not known, some of the activities undertaken by students suggest a degree of permissiveness on their part. Indeed, the Editor of the college magazine, The Simmarian wrote in 1910 of his hope that one day the ‘tales and golden histories’ of the college would be written as ‘a new “Tom Brown”, not of Rugby but of Hammersmith.’Footnote ²²¹ However, there were limits to disruptive behaviour. Cyril Thompson described hiding from the Dean in another dormitory while Seddon notes on one occasion that pupils waited until the Dean was away for some activity to take place.Footnote ²²² This was also a self-policing community, for example, a meeting was called amongst the students ‘to discuss the matter of pilfering’ in September 1910.Footnote ²²³

Regular meetings were held amongst the student body at this time, potentially as part of a longer tradition. In September and October 1910 there were a total of eight meetings, four a month, as recorded by Seddon.Footnote ²²⁴ These do not appear to have been regular, but were called to discuss specific matters of business amongst the students, such as upcoming sports events and quality of food. However, they do seem to have been somewhat formalised, with some ‘general’ meetings as well as some for just juniors or seniors as well as election ‘committees’.Footnote ²²⁵ The construction of such modes of authority demonstrates the strong self-regulation and self-fashioning amongst the Simmarians by this time in the effort to exercise their autonomy. On occasion, they were able to support each other against the authorities, as evident in the case of John McCarthy, mentioned previously, whose expulsion in 1895 his fellow students, and some staff, petitioned against.Footnote ²²⁶

The sense of belonging to the Simmarian community was to persist beyond students’ time in College, evidenced informally through letters back to the staff from former students, but most powerfully through the establishment of local ‘Simmarian Clubs’ for the purpose of ‘organised social reunions’.Footnote ²²⁷ The strength of ties combined with the increased pool of former students by the early 1900s enabled such clubs to be established in Liverpool, London, Manchester, and Salford, and also an annual Simmarian reunion in 1910.Footnote ²²⁸

Faith

Alongside its focus on teacher training, the defining feature of St Mary’s College in the Hammersmith period was its Catholicism. In fact, the continued importance of faith at St Mary’s might be contrasted with evidence of the decline of the founding religious ideals at Church of England religious teacher training colleges in the same period.Footnote ²²⁹ In its earliest years, as already noted, Brook Green housed students who were training as teachers for religious orders. Records from this period are slim, but numbers were small and, judging from later sources, life would have looked and felt monastic. The arrival of lay students brought a different type of young man. By 1860, the relationship between the college and its co-founders, the Brothers of Christian Instruction, had been severed because students had shown so little interest in entering religious life, despite the Brothers’ hopes. While the new lay students were all Catholic, their knowledge and commitment were varied. In April 1862 Cardinal Wiseman wrote to Principal Rowe that the bishops had been ‘sorry to receive most unsatisfactory accounts of the religious knowledge with which Pupil teachers arrive furnished at the Training School’.Footnote ²³⁰ Students may have been less informed about their faith than their recent predecessors, but so too expectations may have been slow to adjust.

From the outset the atmosphere of the college was strongly influenced by the presence of members of religious lay brotherhoods and priests from religious institutes and the diocese who served on the staff in domestic, teaching, and spiritual capacities. After the Brothers of Christian Instruction, the Xaverian Brothers or Congregation of St Francis Xavier played an important role on the staff from 1861 to 1897, including in domestic affairs where they would have had daily contact with students. Several of the brothers who worked in the college also gained scholarships to study there.Footnote ²³¹ It was assumed by the CPSC that a member of a religious institute or a priest would lead the college.Footnote ²³² In the 1860s the Principal, Father J.B. Rowe, an Oratorian, established a close connection with the nearby Brompton Oratory, which lasted for several decades. During Rowe’s term of office, two of the Oratorian Fathers went regularly to instruct students in the Catechism and in Scripture History, and, even as late as 1899, a priest of the Oratory visited weekly for the spiritual direction of the students.Footnote ²³³ In 1899 an agreement was reached that the Vincentians would take on managing the college; from then until the early 1990s the principal was a Vincentian priest, as were some members of the teaching staff.Footnote ²³⁴ An early Vincentian spiritual initiative was the introduction of a start of term retreat which in 1910, for example, ran across a Friday and Saturday; it involved two days of silence except at recreation.Footnote ²³⁵ The retreat programme comprised the regular 6.30am start which was followed by prayers, Mass, a sermon, and Holy Communion before breakfast. In the late morning, there was a spiritual reading by the Dean, preparation for confession, then the Angelus, and a second sermon. Dinner and recreation preceded another spiritual reading by the Dean with rosary being said in the chapel before tea at 5pm. A visit to the Blessed Sacrament took place after tea, then a final sermon and Benediction. Supper was at 8pm and the day ended with the usual night prayers. Students would have been left in no doubt of the centrality of the active practice of their faith in their St Mary’s experience.

Seddon described a wide range of activities, but very few related to faith. This is likely a reflection of the continuity of this experience from home, and so was less novel and worthy of recording than his other activities. Indeed, faith was a key part of Seddon’s life, as noted by Cyril Thompson. Thompson regularly recorded his own religious activities, some of which were attended by Seddon.Footnote ²³⁶ These were an intimate part of Thompson’s daily life at St Mary’s. For example, the entry for 4 December, a Sunday, is as follows, ‘Sermon by Principal. Choir Practice from 11am till 12’. The following Saturday, he attended confession between a concert and supper.Footnote ²³⁷ Thompson records his approval on hearing that the former Lord Mayor of London, Sir John Knill, was a Catholic, while Seddon recorded mock shock at the prospect that one of his teachers was possibly an atheist.Footnote ²³⁸

As previously noted, active practice of the faith was expected by college authorities and was an integral part of daily routine. In the early 1890s, the expected activities of St Mary’s students included religious observance each weekday morning and night.Footnote ²³⁹ They were mandated to rise at 6am. This was followed at 6:30 by Morning Prayers, Meditation, Holy Mass, and Hymns after Mass. At 1pm was ‘Dinner, and Short Visit to B.[lessed] Sacrament’, while each night there were prayers before bed. On Sundays, the students were to rise at 7am with Morning Prayers, Meditation and Holy Communion before Missa Canata at 9. In the afternoon from 1.45-2.45 was ‘watching’ before the Blessed Sacrament which was optional and then at 3pm a sermon and benediction. Communion would not have been received at the later, sung Mass, as at the time Church rules decreed that anyone receiving Communion should fast from midnight and therefore was received each Sunday, separately from the Mass.Footnote ²⁴⁰ Students were expected to attend religious observances. A student of the 1880s recalled that ‘at 6.30 am the bell rang, and everyone was in Chapel for Mass at 7.Footnote ²⁴¹ Another remembered that students who missed daily Mass were punished by being made to stay in ‘on the next half-day.’Footnote ²⁴² Each night they assembled in the chapel for prayers before heading to bed.Footnote ²⁴³

Such an immersion in the practice of prayer, sermonising, and devotion seems to have co-existed alongside a lack of knowledge of doctrine, Scripture, and the Church’s teaching. The concerns of Principal Rowe in the 1860s about the poor level of religious knowledge among his students was echoed by the first Vincentian Principal, William Byrne. In 1900, he complained about the candidates’ backwardness in religion and secular knowledge, with only twenty per cent passing the diocesan religious examination.Footnote ²⁴⁴ The religiosity of Simmarians may have manifested itself more clearly in practice than in theory, but it was nonetheless quotidian, part and parcel of the lived experienced through language and routine. Letters between current and former Simmarians in the early 1860s made use of religious language when discussing non-religious topics.Footnote ²⁴⁵ At least until the 1880s, daily dining was accompanied by a reading from the Gospel of the day or from the lives of the saints.Footnote ²⁴⁶ Life at Brook Green, where domesticity was infused with faith, reflects the late Victorian cultural shift for men’s religious activities to be conducted in the home.Footnote ²⁴⁷ Perhaps the most striking example of the everyday infusion of religion is a small notebook, probably belonging to a member of staff. The first pages are used to record daily numbers of eggs (either collected or consumed) in 1891-2, but the volume was reused in 1894 for extracts of devotional works.Footnote ²⁴⁸

Students were perhaps so familiar with their religion they could be irreverent; one might speculate as to the emotional significance of these communal performances. The initiation to become a Simmarian was in many respects a subversion of Catholic practice. Many seniors dressed up. Of the costumes were the aforementioned ‘red Indian’, a Parson and a Cardinal in a ‘red gown and cap carrying a wooden cross’.Footnote ²⁴⁹ The latter, naturally, took a leading role in proceedings. The Simmarian initiation referred to earlier contained a procession, a form of baptism, satisfaction as ordered by their confessor (the wizard), and the swearing of allegiance to the idol head of Rocco.Footnote ²⁵⁰ The students were surely conscious of these parallels to Catholic practice. This was not the only time students of 1910 dressed up and aped religious activities. On one occasion they wore the Vincentian’s hats and gowns, while on another they gathered round a sick John Seddon with crucifixes to perform a mock burial service.Footnote ²⁵¹

Leisure

Life extended beyond the College and the rigid schedule imposed upon students. In their free time Simmarians undertook a range of activities such as sports, music, jokes, and explorations of London. This aspect of the St Mary’s experience was important, and they dominate first-hand accounts. In this way, the students of St Mary’s followed the pattern identified in studies of contemporary women’s teacher training colleges where, within the rituals and rhythms of life, students forged their own identities beyond religious pedagogy.Footnote ²⁵² At Brook Green there were few facilities for recreation so students made their own amusements. In the 1890s these were ‘largely by means of card games and a Sunday evening concert between supper and bed-time.’Footnote ²⁵³ Music was a key entertainment into 1910 when regular concerts were still being put on by students.Footnote ²⁵⁴ At this time there was a grand piano which students could play.Footnote ²⁵⁵ There were some standout moments in the calendar. Apparently ‘the brightest days of the year were Quarter Days, when pocket money was doled out’.Footnote ²⁵⁶ In the 1880s this consisted of a portion of the students’ entrance fee.Footnote ²⁵⁷ Card debts were ‘booked’ to be settled on that day, and, though they played for ‘very small stakes’ some unlucky students would enter the new quarter quite badly off.Footnote ²⁵⁸ Another date in the calendar was Bonfire Night. On Saturday 12 November 1910, after supper, the students had fireworks and a bonfire and ‘got in a row for burning college property such as forms, doors, platforms etc.’Footnote ²⁵⁹ The students’ observance of this tradition shows how national identity may have trumped religious identity in this instance, or perhaps simply reflects the rebellious undercurrent within the student body.

A lot of activity was rowdy by the turn of the century. Students constantly played jokes on one another, bordering at times on bullying, especially when older students targeted younger ones. Jim Cassidy recalled that on the day of arrival in 1895,

The Juniors that year also ‘had to undergo at the hand of the Second Year’ a mock oral examination and mock fire drill.Footnote ²⁶¹ In 1910 near-constant ‘japes’ were played by fellow students on one another, especially by Seniors on Juniors, and between different dormitories.Footnote ²⁶² Belongings could be moved, bedding hidden, and furniture relocated.Footnote ²⁶³ ‘Raids’, especially with water, were so common that Cyril Thompson’s dorm held a meeting to prepare for them.Footnote ²⁶⁴

Sports were very popular. Outside space was scarce, and with no proper playing fields for organised games, space was used wherever possible.Footnote ²⁶⁵ Some accommodation was, however, made for student sport and leisure. In the 1880s a handball alley was apparently always occupied, in contrast to a horizontal bar, parallel bars, and flying rings in the open which were seldom used as the ground was hard with no grass.Footnote ²⁶⁶ A keen interest in athletics developed in the early 1900s, and a gymnasium was built which students appear to have made great use of.Footnote ²⁶⁷ Handball, also called Fives or Alley was one of the only sports to be played regularly in the late nineteenth century, being a very popular pastime which kept students fit.Footnote ²⁶⁸ Cricket was also apparently played by all.Footnote ²⁶⁹ The lack of grass was also a problem for cricket: the ground was so hard it could give a batsman a black eye. It was therefore also played at the old Half Moon Ground at Putney, with the Principal paying £5 for eight games.Footnote ²⁷⁰ St Mary’s at this time used to play other London men’s training colleges and a few other teams at cricket, but apparently won very few matches.Footnote ²⁷¹

Probably the most popular sport in the decades around 1900 was football, which was played by all on the grounds outside the College.Footnote ²⁷² In the nineteenth century everyone was roped into games against other training colleges, and by the 1890s St Mary’s had established a reputation for football prowess.Footnote ²⁷³ This was attributed to the fact that many students came from Glasgow and Lancashire and were, therefore, good footballers, thus leaning into a stereotype of the day.Footnote ²⁷⁴ By 1910 football was an integral part of college life. On the first Friday of the new year a football ‘test match’ was played by the Juniors, arranged and presided over by the Seniors, with another match the following Monday.Footnote ²⁷⁵ Football was also a spectator event which took students beyond the college grounds to support the team at an away game.Footnote ²⁷⁶ In the 1900s the new student magazine the Simmarian regularly reported on sports fixtures and results.Footnote ²⁷⁷

Brook Green was central to the St Mary’s student experience: most activities centred around the site. However, the college was situated within a wider environment. While in the 1850s Brook Green could still be thought of as a hamlet on the western outskirts of London, the capital was never far away and during the nineteenth century it swallowed up the area. The metropolitan experience was new to many students; some took to the city, while others were less enthusiastic. ‘London did not impress me much’ recalled one former student.Footnote ²⁷⁸ By the 1880s, Hammersmith was a bustling suburb with horse cabs and buses, steamers that went down the Thames, and King Street, ‘a market-place filled with costers’ barrows.’Footnote ²⁷⁹

Students were ‘given leave’ to go outside the College from at least the 1880s for Wednesday and Saturday ‘half-day holidays’, and on Sundays between scheduled religious observances.Footnote ²⁸⁰ They had to be back in by 7pm (6pm on Sundays); as noted, late passes were sparingly granted and only after an interview with the Principal.Footnote ²⁸¹ Exceptions were made for special occasions. Permission was given to attend Queen Victoria’s Golden and Diamond Jubilees, for which some students travelled into central London, and in 1887 they were allowed out all night.Footnote ²⁸² There seems to have been considerable desire amongst students to escape Brook Green. In the 1890s, at least, some students were known to have climbed the walls to leave at night.Footnote ²⁸³

The geography of the St Mary’s student experience had broadened by the late nineteenth century. One student of the 1880s recalled they ‘often walked to the Strand and back’.Footnote ²⁸⁴ Thompson encapsulates the roaming Simmarian: he undertook a range of trips with fellow students to visit places across London. He left the college almost every day, sometimes twice a day in his first term.Footnote ²⁸⁵ His diaries record his trips, mostly walking with others, around the Hammersmith area and further afield across Westminster, West London, the City and into the East End.Footnote ²⁸⁶ Thompson’s explorations included many visits to concerts, often with others, usually to the nearby Albert Hall.Footnote ²⁸⁷ While music was a particular passion of his, this was an aspect of the student experience that was not unique to him, given their own concerts.

The student experience beyond St Mary’s could be lowbrow. Some students naturally patronised London’s drinking establishments. During the 1880s the ‘vinegar’ beer served at supper to students was made up for by the local pubs which could be visited during ‘walking out time.’Footnote ²⁸⁸ Duffy recalled that,

Some of course did find excess. Reasons for the few expulsions in the 1870s and 1880s, as previously noted, included ‘intoxication, public houses, drunkenness’.Footnote ²⁹⁰ Other vices were also in evidence. As well as drinking and gambling, as an enclosed male-only student community, women were sometimes on the minds of the men. For instance, the College song celebrated being bought drinks by a woman in London town, and one meeting of the Juniors, in 1910, was said to have discussed ‘girls in short skirts and hair loose’.Footnote ²⁹¹