1922 - Exhibition of Art and Needlework

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Former student Bronwyn Harris (LC1969) contacted us in April 2007 when she saw her father Ken in an unidentified photo on this site. Thanks to Bronwyn we now know it to be Class 1A 1928. Bronwyn also donated some other photographs but the "jewel in the crown" was this extract from a letter written in 1920 by her aunt Dorothy Harris who enrolled in 1919.

"All the Art & Needlework is on show in the Art Room now. I have about a dozen little things there. A lot of us were upstairs looking at the things this afternoon and there were three or four fourth year boys there. They were examining the Needlework very closely. A pair of silk bloomers took the fancy of one boy and he looked at them ever so many times. They also measured the other things on themselves."

That must have caused quite a bit of giggling and fuss. It's not hard to imagine that the 1920 Display would have looked much the same as it does in this photograph. Here is some more of that letter:

"The Remove Concert came off today and it was "some concert". There were six charming (?) niggers (see note-Ed) from Remove C and I was one. I had a gorgeous red satin blouse, a pale green skirt, a banjo made of a kerosene tin, and a pair of dad's old evening boots. I never felt such an idiot in all my life. We all forgot the words as soon as we got there and made a very feeble noise (on the stage). What with burnt cork, old ribbons and red face paint, patches and grins we were very ugly.

The exams start on Monday and I haven't learnt anything yet but I suppose I'll scrape through somehow. The train went without me today, but it was the eight so it didn't matter and I walked. That's the first time I've missed it.

Note Dorothy is referring to "blackface" as popularised by the American performer Al Jolson. It was a racist caricature of the African-American people. The term nigger is of course, highly offensive to us today but was in common use back then.

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