"BLUE-COAT” BOYS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19830, 3 May 1927, Page 5

"BLUE-COAT” BOYS

AN OLD COSTUME QUAINT DRESS TO BE RETAINED. The quaint dross of the boys at Christ’s Hospital, Horsham, Sussex—with its long blue coat and yellow stockings —is to remain unchanged despite many criticisms on the ground that it is unhealthy. “Old Boys” of the “Blue Coat” School, whose uniform has remained practically unchanged since the school was founded in 1552, are up in arms against the suggestion that it should be abolished in favour of more modern notions. Dr Belfrage, medical secretary of the New Health Society, declared that these “poor children are compelled to go staggering round in the unhygienic costume,” but the governors of the school declare that it is both warm in winter and cool in summer. The abolition of the costume was mooted when the school was moved from London—it stood on tho site of the Greyfriars monastery, near St. Bartholomew’s Hospital —to Horsham in 1902, but old “Blue Coats,” many of whom hold prominent positions in all parts of the world, raised a storm of protest. An official of the school said to a Daily Mail reporter: “There is nothing that binds old boys to the school so closely as the school dress, which typifies the tradition of four centurigs. If all the old customs of London abolished it would become a very drab place. Among the many old Blue Coat boys who became famous, Coleridge and Charles Lamb both spoke highly of the respect and dignity of the Blue Coat costume. The wearing of .the dress during holidays is not now rigidly enforced, and boys may wear ordinary clothes when going abroad or to places where the significance of the Blue Coat is not known.”