Retired since 2020 from his position as Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Calgary, Canada, Roger Thomas (OE 1952–1960) continues both to teach medical students and to conduct research – his current work is a study of 230,000 patients aged 65 and over.
The winner of multiple awards, including 19 teaching awards, Roger taught firstly at Yale, then at various universities in Canada over a 53-year career, with 1980–1983 spent at a hospital in Malawi. QE, he says, had a large effect on his life: he has penned his memories of the years he and his brother, Andrew, spend at Queen’s Road.
Roger’s account
“Mr Ernest Jenkins was a unique and highly motivated and excellent History teacher and Headmaster . I had no idea what a mentor was: I realised later how important his encouragement was, because he arranged for me to take the admission tour through Oxford and Cambridge colleges that he selected. His goal was to get as many boys as possible into Oxford and Cambridge. Due to the calibre of his teaching, I achieved Scholarship-level History, an A in A-level History, a State Scholarship and an Exhibitionship at Magdalene, Cambridge.
The students were generally extremely obedient. Mr Jenkins told the School one day that a lady had written to him and ‘three boys had walked along the pavement and forced her thus into the road’. No-one owned up, so the entire School of 650 boys attended one Saturday afternoon and stood on tables for three hours with their hands on the tops of their heads. Mr Jenkins had absolute control by force of personality. He played the grand piano every morning for prayers, and when singing Bring my spear, O clouds unfold [from the hymn, Jerusalem], the boys tried once to slow down on the “O clouds”, but a look from Mr Jenkins said: “Don’t try that again.”
Mr Jenkins’ prize day featured orations in Greek, Latin, German and French (I was assigned to memorise a speech from General de Gaulle’s memoirs): Mr Jenkins reminded boys who forgot a line, sotto voce.
We paraded on the sports field annually for Founder’s Day. There was a speech which always mentioned “a fishmonger of Barnet”. Boys inevitably fainted in the heat despite instructions to rise regularly on their toes. We marched to the parish church for the service.
I thought some of the masters could have had academic careers if they had wished and had there been more opportunities in universities at that time. We knew very little of their personal lives. We also wondered if the catapults and other toys apprehended from the boys and placed in the master’s desk drawer, if not returned, perhaps went to those masters who had children.
We did exactly what we were told. The teachers were all highly motivated and prepared lessons carefully. Having taught medical students and registrars for decades, I know how much thought and preparation have to go into any presentation if it is to have any lasting teaching effect. The Physics and Chemistry laboratories were well equipped and we did many useful experiments.
My memories of lessons include the following:
- The Physics master one day decided we would all write a 100-page essay and we were issued a book. I unfortunately decided to write The history of the universe and carefully illustrated it. Some cleverer boys chose instead topics like The motor car and, for example, stretched a picture of a piston over two pages;
- I remember one lesson when the Headmaster threw the map of Europe on to the table and took us through Napoleon’s campaigns. He was reported to have been the captain of a minesweeper in World War I;
- Mr Wingfield had been a tank commander in Italy and could easily be redirected to stop the Latin lesson with a request to “Please tell us about when you attacked Anzio”;
- We wondered from where the Biology master got his supply of dead cats for dissection;
- The Greek master, “Tiger” Timson, had only to look at a student to get obedience;
- In contrast, kindly Mr Woodbridge, the German master, offered to mark my German O-level exercises as I decided to take it as an extra subject from home;
- Two of the French masters for some reason had the poorest luck with control. On Saturday mornings, we read the magazine La France, with enough copies only for one per two boys. The master’s command to change them over led to the uncontrolled shunting of desks for about 15 minutes. He was reported to have left due to a breakdown. Another master tried to make lessons interesting with small French objects in envelopes that were passed round the class for us to name them in French. However, the boys deliberately mixed up the objects and “lost” the handle for the gramophone which signalled to move the objects round.
Lines were a key way of enforcing discipline. They could be either prose (no poetry, as it could be remembered and written more easily) or equally spaced tiny dots. One could get 200 lines just for turning round in class. If required to write more than 600 lines per term, you would probably be caned with ‘six of the best’. This was in the Masters’ room: the rule was the cane could not be lifted higher than the master’s shoulder. We were asked to write a magazine: one boy drew a person on a bicycle and a sign ‘to the bogs’, but this reference to toilets got him caned.
My memories of ‘illegal’ activities amount only to some boys secretly smoking in the World War II anti-aircraft gun emplacement, one boy offering to steal pens from a stationery store, and another offering to rent out a magazine, Health and Efficiency, with pictures of naked ladies, for sixpence a night.
Sports were compulsory, and included Saturday afternoon. Getting to rugby required a three-mile trek through fields full of cattle and cowpats, and jumping over brooks. There was also cricket, swimming, track and cross-country. The cross country was over the area of the Battle of Barnet 1381. “Sid”, the Chemistry master supervised the cross-country, but chose to do so by bike and did not observe the short cuts the runners took. Swimming included plunging in November into a freezing pool full of green vegetation.
There was no careers counselling. All my family members left school at 14 except my uncle. He wanted to study engineering at Birmingham University, but the fees were greater than my grandfather’s annual wage as a shunter. My uncle was a self-taught engineer who rose to be head of BSA and one of the key Brockhouse engineering firms, and sold machine tools to Mercedes, Volvo, Renault and in the US. When I was at Yale, he regularly wrote me to obtain engineering books from the bookstore. My mother thought I should be a Post Office engineer (she had been a telephone receptionist and worked her way up to be office manager of an engineering firm) or a rock star. I mention this because there may be many current boys who have no career counselling from their families, and counselling would open their eyes. Some may have very bright and motivated parents who are blocked by an inadequate education.”