No.129
The Trusty Servant
not last long.’ He was much more
concerned with epidemics of mumps
and paratyphoid, the latter breaking
out in Freddie’s when the cook ‘had
apparently taken the disease lightly
and continued working in this state.’
All uninfected Freddieites were sent
home for three or four weeks and
inoculated on their return; ‘owing to
excellent nursing and control there
were no fatal cases.’
Sick House
Jehovah guard, cherish and sustain
his heart and limbs as he lies on his
last bed sickness’; he died in 1658.
The building was expanded in 1775
by John Taylor, Fellow.
Old Commoners, the ramshackle
amalgam of a medieval hospital
and 18 th -century buildings which
housed 100 commoners from 1739
onwards, had its own sick-room.
However, a century later in 1839-
43 it was replaced by Headmaster
George Moberly, who considered it
unsanitary. Ironically, its successor,
New Commoners, was even less
salubrious. Poor ventilation and
terrible drainage meant that summer
epidemics were an annual occurrence,
with boys regularly sent home. An
especially bad outbreak in 1846
alarmed parents so much that many
withdrew their sons from the school,
causing the number of commoners to
decline from 143 to 40. Modifications
improved matters and pupil numbers
swiftly recovered, but renewed
overcrowding convinced Moberly
that separate boarding houses were
a better accommodation solution.
New Commoners was converted into
the classrooms of Flint Court by his
successor, George Ridding, in 1869.
The Victorian reformers continued
to make improvements. A typhoid
epidemic in 1874 which caused one
death prompted the school to connect
itself into the city’s new water system
in 1879. And the construction in
1886 of Sanatorium, with its two
wards, isolated Fever Wing and two
operating theatres, hugely expanded
medical capacity: in 1918 one ward
was used during the Christmas
holidays for 40 or 50 wounded
soldiers overflowing from the Red
Cross hospitals.
That year brings us to the Spanish
’Flu. Many comparisons have
been drawn between our current
covid-19 crisis and that epidemic of
1918-19, which killed about 228,000
in the UK and an estimated 50
million worldwide. It seems that
Winchester got off very lightly.
Headmaster Monty Rendall, in his
annual report to the Go Bo, wrote
in 1918, ‘In Cloister Time (during
July) the influenza epidemic which
was prevalent throughout England
attacked Winchester. Quite a third
of the School suffered from it; but
the cases were not severe and did
5
The 1919 report states, ‘The health
of the School has been distinctly
good during the year. We have had
little Influenza, though there was
a slight epidemic in the autumn of
1918.’ Rendall was pleased with the
quick interventions which had staved
off something worse: ‘A remarkable
feature is the number of diseases
which were checked and did not
reach an epidemic stage.’ The school
began inoculating against ’flu in
November 1918, but as MW Lowndes
(G, 17-21) recalled, the campaign was
not perfect: ‘We cued up in the snow
outside sickhouse coats off sleeve
rolled up to be jabbed. Before I got in
the “Dope” ran out.’
The last hundred years have generally
been much healthier. There was
an outbreak of polio in 1947 which
required Hopper’s to be closed for
a few weeks. An epidemic of ’flu
in 1990 caused the school to break
up three days early for Christmas,
mostly because of the number of
domestic staff affected. The most
recent epidemic to strike the school
was H1N1 in 2009 – the so-called
swine ’flu. At one stage of Short Half
around a third of pupils were off
lessons; the majority of ill pupils had
to be sent home since the Medical
Centre was quickly filled. Once dons
starting succumbing, eager boys began
to speculate about the possibility of
repeating 1990’s early start to the
holidays. But they were met with a
firm answer: ‘We can cope without
the dons. As long as the cooks are
healthy, the school can carry on.’