The Bluecoat's Looked After Children - Writing selection

The Bluecoat’s Looked After Children

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Margy McShane and all the writers who participated in the Looked After Children strand of the Echoes and Origins project, which was financially supported by the Heritage Fund, LCVS and Art Friends Merseyside. A special thanks to Michelle Girvan, a collaborative doctoral award PhD candidate at University of Liverpool, who provided historical research into the charity school in the eighteenth century.

Cover: James Cliffe, Emma as a Blue Coat Girl, oil on canvas. The artist had a studio at the Bluecoat where this was painted, probably in the 1960s/early 1970s. With the garden as a backdrop, it evokes the building’s time as a school, its sitter wearing the traditional Blue Coat uniform. The painting was purchased by Celia Van Mullem and presented to the Bluecoat Society of Arts.

The Bluecoat’s Looked After Children

Contents

Foreword by Bryan Biggs 4

Introduction by Margy McShane 7

The Butterfly in the Blue Coat by Irene Stuart 9 A Mother’s Love by Janet McCusker 10 Son of Mine by Julie Swallow 11 Dress and Bonnet by Janet Robb 15 George Harrocks Reminiscing by Kathleen Wildman 16 Folly Fair by Gengwalchen Akumu 17 Bluecoat Poem by Jade Harris 21 Girl, 14 by Corrina Robinson 23 Richard Fowler – a Sonnet by Angela Cheveau 27 William Seed by Christine Day 29

Foreword by Bryan Biggs

This collection of creative writing is a selection from a much larger body of work produced by participants in the Looked After Children strand of the Bluecoat’s 2022 project, Echoes and Origins. Funded by the Heritage Fund, this explored the eighteenth-century origins of our building as a charity school — Blue Coat School, or Hospital — for poor and orphaned children in Liverpool. The school moved to larger, purpose built premises in Wavertree in 1906, after which the building became a centre for the arts.

The other strand of the project, Colonial Legacies, examined the school’s connections to transatlantic slavery through its co-founder Bryan Blundell and many other maritime merchants who supported the school and who were involved in the ‘triangular trade’ in enslaved Africans. In delivering Echoes and Origins, and working with artists, academics and participant groups, we found cross-overs between the two strands, particularly colonial

themes being reflected in the life of the school and in the experiences of the children. This was apparent, for instance, in the cotton that the children spun (to make their uniforms) coming from slave plantations in the American colonies, or children being apprenticed to sea captains involved in colonial trade.

The Looked After Children strand of the project involved a creative team, including designers Stand + Stare, dance artist Paula Hampson who worked with children from Kinship Carers, and Margy McShane who worked with a group of writers, some of whom had experience of the care system. We wanted to publicly share some of the writing that emerged from Margy’s workshops, and have selected one poem from each of the ten participants, in order to give a flavour of their interpretations of the stories of the Blue Coat children.

Bryan Biggs is the Bluecoat’s Director of Cultural Legacies

TheBluecoat’sLookedAfterChildren, Bluecoat installation view, 2022. Photo by Rob Battersby

TheBluecoat’sLookedAfterChildren, Bluecoat installation view, 2022. Photo by Rob Battersby

Introduction by Margy McShane

For nearly two hundred years, countless children lived, worked and were schooled at the Blue Coat Hospital, but little is known or recorded of their characters and personalities. The aim of this project was to research and commemorate the lost lives and voices of those children and, for me, it was a privilege to facilitate a group of writers to that end. The writers, drawn from various community groups, each brought a unique lived experience and writing skills to the project. We focussed on three individual schoolboys and looked more generally at the schoolgirls, about whom there is scant information. As we researched and workshopped, the children seemed to emerge, whispering their stories to us.

In the archives, we found a photograph of the bible of William Seed, presented to him on leaving the school in 1872. Less than a year later, apprenticed to a seafaring master from among the Blue Coat’s wealthy trustees, he drowned at sea. In Liverpool Record Office, a silhouette book of cherubic profiles accompanied the school reports from 1722. Among these was one Richard Fowler, scathingly described as stubborn, self-important and doomed to failure. An account in the Blue Coat Hospital Yearbook of 1800 described a riotous truant spree involving over a hundred boys on a trip to Liverpool’s annual Folly

Fair. One of these scallywags, serial truant, George Harrocks, was later expelled along with thirty five of his A.W.O.L accomplices.

As we progressed, the subliminal whispers became a cacophony of voices. It got a little weird in the workshops sometimes. Seagulls shrieked overhead, as we wrote of George Harrocks and the rioting schoolboys. Rainfall, strangely appearing only from the courtyard window, somehow felt like tears for poor, drowned William Seed. William, George, Richard and the many Blue Coat girls, destined to duty and anonymity, were suddenly in our care — we mourned their losses and rejoiced in their rebellions. The writers spoke of feeling ‘haunted’ by the children. We were cyphers, channelling their forgotten stories.

The selection on the following pages celebrates the characters that came to call on us. Each piece is deeply personal and presents a coming together of a writer and a Blue Coat child. Although Scouse, as a Liverpudlian dialect, was yet to be established at this time, I like to think of the children as proto-Scousers: self-assured, rebellious, defiant; plotting mutiny, weaving mischief, waiting to be heard.

Listen carefully, the children are calling…

The Butterfly In The Blue Coat by Irene Stuart

Take her said mother away from this poverty to a better life

Give her a future as bright as the stars above as bright as she is

Her father works hard and I do my best to help but we are still poor

A curly haired child angelic face and nature deserves happiness

A blue coat for her a butterfly to emerge please, please, please take her

Leaving me, we wept but she had done the right thing the right thing for me

Blue Coat girl stone relief in the building’s front courtyard

A Mother’s Love by Janet McCusker

I hope you know I did it for you

I hope you know I miss you I miss your constant chatter

I miss your laugh I miss brushing your hair I miss you sitting on my chair Asking questions I could never answer I miss the innocence in your eyes Your look so true so fiery blue

I miss your storytelling on a starry night to your brothers’ and sisters’ cries of delight All huddled and cuddled four in a bed Hanging on every word you said I miss your kiss goodnight

I hope you know I tried To keep you always by my side

I hope you know I love you My forever firstborn I hope you know

I hope you know How hard it was to let you go

I did it for you For the future you For the wonderful woman You are yet to become I did it for you I hope you know

Wordsoflovefromamotherforherdaughter whowassenttoTheBlueCoat,aged8.

Son of Mine by Julie Swallow

I beg of you son learn to read

I beg of you son learn your sums

I beg of you son learn some manners

I beg of you son learn some more of what it is to be a gentleman

I beg of you son of mine

Obey your masters Honour the Lord Work at your lessons

Work the hardest of all

Then some more son

My son, first born, more bonnie than a spring lamb Sweeter than a ripened blackberry Cheeks smoother than a pebble tumbled by the sea

Skin softer than a single silky rose petal

I loved the very bones of you before Hung dangling by your ankles you screamed

More cherished than thick cream set atop the milk Gift given to us, your ma and da Blessed were we, until your da was lost at sea

Your innocent da punished and perished

Son, though I launder and sew I’m afeared you I can’t feed

I need you to get an education

Son of mine, I’m sending you to school

Though our flesh be set apart

You remain bound to my heart

A very precious part of me

Boys and matron at the school, photo c. late nineteenth century

Dress And Bonnet by Janet Robb

I am standing and all is whirling. Who am I?

I am eight. This I know.

Why am I wearing a dress and bonnet? Where is my ma? My nana said she’d followed my pa, But where? Where did they go? Who am I now and who will I be?

Can anybody tell me?

My sister is with the big girls. Bigger than me. My brother is gone to sea. I am eight. This I know.

But that child will die And in her place another one will grow, Part of a stricken tree, Strong enough to flourish, Strong enough to let her be This eight year-old in her new dress, In her new bonnet.

Now remains the question. Who was she then, And who could she have been?

The school laundry, photo c. late nineteenth century

George Harrocks Reminiscing

by Kathleen Wildman

Memories, sweet memories are the ones we surely find, When sitting quietly in later years, they’re in the forefront of our mind.

One such memory for me, as vivid now as then, Is one that will never, ever fade, it revisits time and time again.

I see me, twelve years old, as bold as brass, with new found freedom, A hundred and six rebel boys behind, I’d won the vote for who to lead them.

I took full control, the Fair, our goal, and it was in our sights now. No rigid rules and regulations, not for me, to no man I bow.

In the still of night I’d readied the gate, by removal of its staple, So a speedy exit could be made, we were ready, we were able.

In the early morn, secrecy sworn, we made our swift escape. If any masters then had seen us, they’d have stood with mouths agape.

But they did not, and what they got, when they awoke, those stern reposers, Was news, that with little fuss, a mass exodus, had gone on under their noses.

Folly Fair by Gengwalchen Akumu

bitter tasting words aimed at prideless innocents shot from cruel sideburns

shuddering delight gleaned from trampled dreams and faith downcast children sigh

greedy tirades rain words stinging from the holy book His brutality

boys from poverty live acts of vandalism ripe for discipline! sweat furrows under master’s shining silk top hat glazed over grey looks now! shouts a pupil pushing free from oppression youthful rebels dash school’s out for st. george!

WG Herdman, TheOldInfirmaryandSeamen’sHospital withFollyFairinprogress

Bluecoat Poem by Jade Harris

I am a lady

I have to be, I am disciplined, I don’t show too much emotion, It wouldn’t be ladylike.

I keep my head down, I am so grateful to be here. My parents are so proud. I knit, I do my lessons, I am complacent, I do what I am told, And say no more about it. But secretly I dream And count my blessings 1, 2, 3, 4, That I am a blue coat girl and nothing more

I am a blue coat girl, I wear my blue cape and my blue cap.

Unknown Blue Coat girl, photo c. 1950s

Girl, 14 by Corrina Robinson

Six years of sewing, stiff necked and pricked fingers. Six years of scrubbing, starching, smoothing. On my knees in dusty corners and on my knees in church. And when I am sent out of here how many more years of sewing and scrubbing lay before me?

I will not do it. I will be nobody’s servant. I will sew myself some britches and I will cut off my hair and change my name and I will join a ship as the boys here do. But I will not sew sails and I will not scrub decks and I will not go on my knees and give my blood for the king.

I will become a pirate and live a life of freedom. I will curse and fight and play at cards and drink rum and all manner of unladylike deeds.

With my gold I shall commission a man of science to make me a monkey that runs on clockwork and he shall be my servant and do my bidding. Together we will sail the seven seas and travel to the ends of the Earth and in all that time I will take no husband nor nurse any infants nor ever go to church until the day that I am buried.

And in all my life my only master will be the wind and my only mistress the sea.

Unknown Blue Coat girl, photo c. late nineteenth century

The school refectory, photo c. late nineteenth century

Richard Fowler, A Sonnet by Angela Cheveau

Dear ma, I was never ‘dismissed’ from school

But I chose to leave of my own accord.

I left because my master was a fool

And being so clever, I was just bored.

I am not some lowly ballard master, Not I, I am destined for greater things. To stay there would have been a disaster

You should hear me when I’m singing me hymns.

I was born to a desk of polished oak, Not some half-rat nanty narking about.

I will one day wear a thick velvet cloak.

I am a better man than Nathan Sprout.

The master bowed to me, ma, when I left, Wept tears of sadness, the school left.

Silhouette of Richard Fowler, 1822.

This was one of 31 portraits of Blue Coat boys by Gerard Ebenezer, image courtesy of Liverpool Record Office

William Seed by Christine Day

Was his call for me?

As he was claimed and swallowed by the sea

As I now cry out for him

In my grief and salt wet tears

My own ‘little seed’ No resting place can he be given Only the waves enfold him now No mother’s arms to shield him from harm

Nothing remains except these Holy Scriptures

But I cling to this one reminder of his being Beseeching that he’d never gone And I’d no Bible left to mourn his empty place

William Seed’s bible frontispiece, image courtesy of Liverpool Blue Coat School

The Mira Flores, a 500-ton sailing vessel. On one of its journeys to Valparaiso, Chile, Blue Coat boy William Seed was washed overboard and drowned

Find out more about the Looked After Children project and the history of the Bluecoat at thebluecoat.org.uk

Boy at the school gates, photo c. late nineteenth century