Notes from school


Primary school children have always brought home notes from school with messages about upcoming events or rules which could not be trusted to those fallible young memories.  These days they are printed out in the school office on laser or inkjet printers, after having been typed up on a computer.
It wasn't always so. Before these very handy and efficient printers there were duplicators, Roneo or Gestetner, bulky and often messy machines which used paper stencils which had been typed on a manual typewriter with the ribbon removed so that the keys would cut through the stencil.
Before that there were the various types of gel copier. This is difficult to describe to anyone who has not seen them.  Essentially messages were written on to coated paper with special inks.  The paper was then pressed into a pad of gelatin like material to which the ink transferred.  A sheet of paper was then pressed very carefully into the gel thus producing a copy.  One copy at a time-a laborious and time consuming process especially if the ink gave out before enough copies could be made.
It was not surprising then that even schools which had gel copiers resorted to other methods. Child labour of which there was a plentiful supply.  The message was written on the classroom blackboard and was then copied out by the older children as many times as necessary to provide the required number of copies.







Here is the message sent home from St. Patricks school in Wapping in September 1939.

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