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Archiver > LANCSGEN > 2001-03 > 0983970503-01


From: Henry ODDIE <>
Subject: Re: [LAN] School Attendance 1901
Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2001 13:08:23 +0000
In-Reply-To: <000301c0a691$7c245b00$635a063e@default>


on 6/3/01 18:32, Peter Smith at wrote:

> Could anyone replying to Henry's query about school attendance, especially
> half-timers, please put it on the list.

Hi Sheila,

I would still like to learn more myself but I gather that in England state
involvement in primary education only became significant with the Forster
Education Act of 1870 which set up the first School Boards and empowered
them to build schools and provide teachers etc. Education still wasn't free
except for the poorest and children could still work provided that they were
also attending school some of the time. I haven't the details but it looks
as if the control of attendance rested on the fact that the child at 13
could not work full time without a certificate saying that the statutory
number of hours of school attendance had been completed. The system still
seems to have been in operation in the early 1900s. Certificates which I now
have were obtained for my mother and father at the time and I was told of a
sister of my mother who couldn't get certified for full time work at 13
because she hadn't attended for the requisite number of hours due to the
necessity of her being at home due to some domestic crisis. She had to
complete her attendance hours first.

> By the way Henry, there are Oddie's even up in Lancaster early 1800's

It would be nice if someone worked out a distribution map one day. They seem
to have move out rapidly from a maily West Riding base after the 18th C.
And did you know there is a group of ODDIEs dating back to at least 1740 in
the Orkney & Shetland Islands? I wonder how they got there? Of course, they
are probably not related at all to the ODDIEs of Lancashire and Yorkshire!

I'll post this to the list to see if others have anything to add.

Cheers

Henry ODDIE
West Sussex






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