Video transcript for 1910 room

[Music]

Kathryn Watkins:This is one of the satchels that has been donated to the museum a long time ago. Now, inside we can have a look and see what children might have taken to school a long time ago. Something might be hidden in this bag. Does anyone know what might be in there? Yes.

Student: Knuckles.

Kathryn: No. Yes.

Student:Marbles.

Kathryn: What does it sound like?

Student: Marbles.

Kathryn: Yes. Inside you might find marbles. And marbles were used in the playground a long time ago. And of course it was very handy to have bare feet in the old days because you would draw a circle in the dirt with your big toe. So what else do you think may have been hidden in the satchel? Yes.

Student:A book.

Kathryn: A book. Let’s see. Here’s an old, old textbook ‘Junior Arithmetic’. And when you’re handling these things as I said you’re handling them with your gloves. Inside you can have a look at the old maths problems and things. And there may even be a date or there may even be a name of the child. And this will give you a hint about what year the child went to school and what things they learnt. When you look in these objects and have a look and see what children took to school a long time ago I want you to compare it with the sorts of things you take to school today. And you will see that there is quite a difference with the sort of things children took to school a hundred years ago and played with compared to the sort of things you play with today. We’re also going to look at other artefacts in this room and one of the things that we’re going to be looking is a different type of school case which is our Globite school case. Now, we’re going to use museum practice and that is we’re going to put on cotton gloves because when you’re handling very old objects you have to be very careful with them. You have to handle them, because they’re over a hundred years old, with a lot of care. So, you’re going to look in these old Globite school cases that we have set up over there and inside you’re going to look at the objects and you should be like a detective and be able to tell you know maybe what the child liked to do, what they liked to take to school. This is a beautiful old wooden pencil box the children took to school and it has another layer for your ink pens and pencils. Now remember boys you did woodwork at school so you would make these items and boys did lots of woodwork, pokerwork and carving as well. Inside also you might find bags with lots of exciting things inside like games, like jacks or knuckles. And these are made from real animal bones and we used to play with those. So you can discover what they look like inside. Another thing the children took to school was a handkerchief, they didn’t have anything like tissues in the old days. And so mum would be washing and ironing your handkerchief. And in the corner of the handkerchief was hidden often a penny. So, I want you to undo these handkerchiefs, have a look at the penny, see if you can discover a date on the penny. On the back there may be a king or queen. There could be even King George, have a look at that and see if you can tell what year that child went to school. Inside of course there’ll be old books, old readers and things that children used a long time ago. Have a look at them. Compare them with your books at school today. How they’re printed. How the colours are soft and muted and really quite different printing than you see today. These objects have been given to the school by old students or old teachers and they have been donated to us so that we can look at them and study them and realise and work out maybe what they learnt at school a long time ago. Maybe what they’re made of. You can smell an object. You can feel it to get an idea of what it’s made of and what it may be used for.