A brief sketch of my life : a fragment.

  • Henry Power
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A brief sketch of my life : a fragment. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    At the end of 1840 the home discussions culminated, and my mother took me to High Stakesby, Wakefield and Dorothy Chapman inviting us, whilst my father remained at Cheltenham. The separation was entirely his fault, though my mother’s pious and religious disposition rendered her incapable of managing him. Whilst at High Stakesby I was placed at my seventh school, Mr. Brecon’s, at Skinner Street, Whitby, where 1 do not remember learning anything at all. I had, however, good exercise in running up at twelve every day to Stakesby and down again at two, as well as in chasing Pickernell35 through all the courts and alleys of the Crag. From Stakesby my mother and I went for a month to Wakefield Simpson, at Liverpool, but I was not allowed to escape school, which was on the Birkenhead side. This was the eighth school, and I remember little of it. Then my mother and I, with Aunts Lotherington31 and Wells3r>, took a house (5, Elliot Place) on Blackheath, and here I had a private writing and arithmetic master, and, as usual, learnt nothing. We remained there all the winter of 1841. A reconciliation between my father and mother followed, for they were really very fond of each other, my mother relying on my father in everything, and we once more settled down at 1, Sussex Villas, soon to move to St. James’ Square. The stone, and very good house, still stands (1904) unchanged, opposite the Catholic Chapel and Station of the G.W.R. The site of this station was then Jessop’s Nursery Garden, and I was put to the Cheltenham College,3' then located in Bays Hill Terrace. Lord James of Hereford gave in Macmillan s Magazine or the Cornhill Magazine a capital account of it, and I remembered when I read it every detail he mentioned. We then shifted to the College then just completed. The south wing only was occupied, and there were about 150 boys. South was the mathematical master, and Airy, who had been a master at Fallon’s, was under him. There was no
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