| Description | Interview was recorded on 17 September 1986 by Colin McLaren with three former students of the University, Mr George Morrison (MA 1930), Miss Euphemia Ashley Scott (MA 1930) and Mrs Dorothy Henderson (nee McLean, MA 1930)
Transcript of Interview :
McL I am going to begin by asking all of you for a very basic answer. Why did you each come to the university - George Morrison?
M I had it assumed for me all my life that I would come to the university. I mean I just regarded it as the normal thing to do.
McL Had your father or mother gone to the university?
M No. My mother was a trained teacher but a lot of graduates of one kind or another in the family.
McL Ashley-Scott.
S I think that I had always wanted to go and certainly of course at school it was kind of expected of us that we would go on and it was only natural to go to university where I lived. May I say that at that time there wasn't the desire by people to go away to other universities. In fact my parents would have been absolutely scandalised, for one thing we couldn't have afforded it, it was quite out of the question and one must remember that we were not students going to university on grants.
McL Had either of your parents been to the university?
S No, but again as George said it was expected by them that one of the family at least would go to the university, they hoped. I think that you see the Scottish parent at that time was very ambitious for their children and even though that they knew that it was going to be a very hard struggle for them they still - this was the aim of their existence and my grandmother was great pusher. She thought learning was everything and I think she thought that the sacrifice was right.
McL Dorothy Henderson, were you the child of ambitious parents or did you have parents who had been to the university before?
H Well my father was a headmaster in several of the schools of Aberdeen and he felt that he wanted us all to have a career. He was very keen that we should all have a good career at our back and I don't know, I always wanted to go the university. I remember one day a teacher asking us at the Central School who wanted to go the university and I without any hesitation you see said I wanted to - I just had it as an ambition - I just longed to go to the university - it was the highest seat of learning and it was my ambition to get there.
McL How did you set about deciding which courses you would follow, Ashley Scott?
S Well at the time in 1927 when we went up, one had to do Latin and Greek, Maths and Nat. Phil. or French and German. These were sort of the basics and I realised that I would have to do Maths and Nat. Phil., much against my will really. How I ever got there I don't know but I did somehow or other and so that was - I had never done Greek you see so that was out because at our school we didn't do Greek. We'd all done Latin of course but we hadn't done Greek and I mean I would have never contemplated starting Greek, it was out of the question. And although I had done German at school, I don't know I didn't fancy French and German all that much. You see, I think probably we were a bit conceited in a way, we could do maths because we had been under a very famous maths teacher who later became our headmaster.
McL Who was that?
S Jock Robertson, and you see he had sort of made us believe that you know that we could do mathematics and I suppose we got rather conceited about it and so on.
McL Did you talk to anybody when you were coming to make up this decision? Did you talk to your parents or to…?
S Ah yes, there was a certain amount of talking and of course with friends and with people who were already at the university and these sort of maybe influenced. I just can't recollect that entirely but certainly there was a lot of talking with people before but of course we had no chance of any guidance in the university. There was no guidance from the university at all. No, no you were expected to know when you went up - you were supposed to know exactly what you wanted to do.
McL George Morrison, did you know what you were going to do and how to do it?
M I don't think so. I thought that there was an adviser of studies. There was an adviser of studies but …
H Mr Butchart you saw when you first came to the university.
M No, not Butchart.
H It was Butchart I saw.
M No, he had an office in Marischal.
H Yes, that's right. I went to the office there and he sketched out what he considered the subjects you should take and your curriculum.
S I don't remember that.
McL Ashley Scott, you don't remember it but Dorothy Henderson you do remember having advice.
H I remember quite clearly going there and his telling me what I was to have and the first year I had to have Zoology and I was rather squeamish so when I returned home and told the family that I was having Zoology in the first year, they all just absolutely hooted. They said "oh you'll have to dissect, do you realise that?". I thoroughly enjoyed it, I loved that subject.
McL Did you also talk to friends about it as well as the adviser here? Did you talk to your friends who had been at the university?
H No, no. I did a lot on my own actually. You see I had Mr Robertson too as a headmaster and I defied him in going. You see, he wanted me to stay on as sixth year for highers and I off my own bat had sat a whole lot of prelims and passed them all and Mr Robertson said "I hope you're not thinking of going to varsity now?" He wanted me to stay on another year but I was quite determined, no I was going to the university and I did. But I didn't know that he set the papers for the mathematics. Whatever happened, I had to pass these mathematics and I did.
McL George Morrison, you remember an adviser here but did you also talk to friends and acquaintances about the courses you might follow?
M No, I didn't.
McL So when you came up you knew which course you would follow, you decided on a course but you didn't know anything about the teachers who would be lecturing, it was all new to you?
M It was all new.
McL Well, what do you remember now of the teachers you encountered?
M Well Professor Jack - Adolphus - brilliant.
McL How do you remember him? As a teacher or as a …..
M For his voice and for the way he spoke and for the way he put a lecture across.
H Professor Jack. Yes I had him too. I remember him very well. He was very fond of Chaucer and the early poets and actually I've still got my lecture books, you know and he did the development of the drama but he spent a long time on Chaucer and some times he was quite carried away, he would recite whole bits of it you know. [Here she quotes two or three lines of Chaucer] and he would sort of cast his eyes up to the roof as he said it in a sort of ecstasy and oh I just sat entranced in his class.
McL Ashley Scott, do you remember Professor Jack?
S Oh yes, very well, very well and with much affection. I can remember some of the lectures on Shakespeare and I can remember one day Professor Jack had as many possible Shakespeares. If Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare, who then was Shakespeare, you know he was lecturing in that way and he had so many in the end that I don't think in the end he knew how many there were … As Dorothy says, we did we sat and tranced listening to him lecturing.
McL This was all in the form of lecturing, you didn't of course have tutorials?
S There was another lecturer, Mr Taylor in English. Now he did the development of Language. He kept to a different theme from the Prof. The Prof did the early poets and then the development of drama and right up. He spent a good while too, on Milton and this his certain poets. But as I am fond of poetry myself I just loved it. Anyway, Mr Taylor was an excellent lecturer and he did the development of English from the earliest years you know in his lectures, and he used to give us essays I remember, to write. Mr Taylor used to take in sometimes the essays and mark them.
McL So that was Professor Jack and Mr Taylor. Ashley Scott, who else do you remember as a teacher or ….
S Professor Terry of course. Because I did History and Advanced History so that I had as it were two sessions with Professor Terry. He was an extraordinary man. He used to lecture with a black Labrador was it George?
M Yes.
S Under his feet and occasionally he would have to address the Labrador. The Labrador was very good and lay there and listened to the lecturer or slept and again I was fascinated. Of course we held all these people in great awe you know. At least I did shall I say. I shouldn't speak for other people but I have him in great awe and Terry I liked very much as a lecturer and as a man and he was a very dapper gentleman, always dressed very well and today I think he would have been rather a modern wouldn't he, he would have been very with it.
McL I want to come back to this question of your view of the teachers, this question of awe. But before we do can we just identify some more personalities. You spoke of three people who impressed you. Were there people who impressed in another sense, as being bad teachers, George Morrison?
M I don't think that in the whole of the three years that I was at the university that I found anyone whom I would call a bad teacher. I remember Terry with great pleasure but the funny thing is that I can still recollect things that he said and things that Jack said and of course I remember very clearly things that J Arthur Thomson said in Zoology. I think he was the most brilliant of all lecturers.
S Oh yes, absolutely. He had a wonderful sense of humour, a wonderful sense of humour and he was always a jump ahead of the students and he had a great faith in God also and he had this wonderful spirit and gave you such a love for those little creatures that he was telling you about, you know everything, he was just fascinating. I remember he had a great sense of humour. I remember one day some students came in late and as was the custom a lot of the students scuffled their feet making a noise and he just said "This class is composed mostly of centipedes".
McL You speak of the students making a noise. Now this brings us back to this question of awe and it brings up I think the whole notion of deportment in the Lecture Room. Was there any sense of indiscipline in the classes Ashley Scott?
S Very little really, very little indeed. I can remember a bit of carry-on the maths class you know. Sometimes the women all had to sit at the front and the male students behind.
McL Why was this?
S Professor MacDonald wanted it this way I should imagine you see. I don't know that he was awfully tolerant of women and certainly there was to be no mixing of the sexes in his class and I always remember in the morning he called the roll and we had to answer and soon if one was present. He was strict about that kind of thing. There was a bit of a carry-on because I do remember and in those days I had quite curly hair and I remember somebody with a ruler measuring and telling how far this particular bit of hair was sticking out from my head and this kind of thing and yes there was and then another thing too you see, when we came out of maths at 10 o'clock in the morning, the poor first year men, the bajans, they got a final dragging and I remember there was some terrible dos but that was really out of the classroom, you know when they came out of maths.
McL Can you just describe what used to happen out of the classroom to the bajans in fact?
S They used to take them and tar and feather them didn't they and make them parade through town and I can remember a neighbour of ours. He was taken on a cart of some kind and paraded through town and he was made to bow to all the statues in Aberdeen.
McL George Morrison, do you remember this?
M I have no recollection of that sort of thing. The only misbehaviour was from Professor Jack who had Sanford Terry lecturing underneath him on a Friday. The students were a little bit noisy and he always said "Ladies and gentlemen, this is Friday" which renewed the noise so much that old Terry got very very angry I understand.
McL Dorothy Henderson?
H Well the only time was in G P Thomson's class and in my class there was a famous troublemaker called Baton Benzie and one day he started to create a disturbance at the back of the Nat. Phil. class and GP didn't have much patience. He was quite annoyed you know which to my mind was the worst thing they could do because looking back the professors who had a very good sense of humour could control the class perfectly just with that because the students appreciated that. Now Sir Arthur Thomson had that to a high degree and he always a jump ahead of them. He knew what tricks they might be up to and he was always a jump ahead. I mean there was one day, well I still have my lecture book and there it is, the tale of the tadpole, tale, and he had this on the board before he started his lecture. Well Sir Arthur came in and no-one saw him look at that board but he continued with his lecture and then he walked backwards and pointed and said "and now I come to the tale of the tadpole". Someone had changed the tale into tail and he walked back and pointed to it you know but he was always such a ….nobody saw him looking at the blackboard, he knew perfectly well. He knew what they'd done.
McL The stature of the professoriat now Ashley Scott you mentioned awe. Was this awe something you all share, George Morrison?
M I don't know that I felt awe. I remember being very uncomfortable at being stopped in the Quad at Marischal by an old gentleman in a tail coat and a shovel hat who was Principal Sir George Adam Smith. He was like a headmaster asking where you came from, what you were doing and what classes you went to and so on but it was a very pleasant and human relationship. You respected them.
H I had that feeling of awe and respect, very much so. I was absolutely thrilled at the varsity. To me, these were some of the happiest years I was ever to have and we were like one family you see.
M Well it was a small university.
McL A small university, yes.
H We knew each other, even in other faculties.
McL Did you meet the staff outside lecture room in a social context. Were you for example, Dorothy Henderson invited to tea with any of the professors?
H Well, the only time was at my first year I went carol singing at Christmas round the Prof's houses. Well it was mostly the Divinity students I was with and we were, I remember little Prof Henderson inviting us in and he had a Christmas tree, and you know some of them invited us in and we had refreshments you know after we did our carol singing.
McL George Morrison, did you socialise with the professors?
M The only one I remember was I think Professor Laird. Professor Laird, yes.
McL Tom Laird?
M Well he ran a sort of series maybe for 20 students at a time or evening or afternoon tea. Certainly we were at his house in High Street.
McL Ashley Scott, did you……?
S Yes, I remember Professor Laird's parties, yes. They were very enjoyable occasions. They were in his house and I think we were rather surprised to be invited because Laird we always regarded as rather a shy, em…..
M Stand-offish
S Yes, rather a stand-offish type but again a very good lecturer and all the rest of it - fascinating to listen to. But he and his wife, they were very hospitable to students. Like Dorothy, I remember going to Chanonry Lodge and being entertained by Sir George and Lady Adam Smith, this was carol singing. I can't say that I remember any other actual social contact except one time that I visited Professor Terry at home. I was invited to go out to his house and meet him and I was there for a short time and that was all very pleasant. He lived at that time out at Pitfoldels and I remember that, having a delightful afternoon with him there at his house but that was all.
McL George Morrison, can I ask you. If you had been worried about your studies, would you have felt able to have gone to any of the professoriate to discuss the problem with them?
M I think so, but I never felt, it maybe was necessary, but I never felt it was necessary. No.
McL Are you aware of anyone who did?
M I'm sure those who were going on to Honours Degrees would have done so, quite readily.
McL Dorothy Henderson, did you ever discuss your …?
H Yes, I did. There was something I wanted to discuss with Professor Jack and he was very kind. I was allowed to go up to his house and he discussed it with me and he was very kind and very nice.
McL Ashley Scott, did you feel that you could have if necessary, turn to them for guidance?
S I don't know that I did. I don't think it was really done in our time, not generally speaking. It might have been done by certain people but it wasn't something I knew of people doing really.
McL Well, can I ask you to turn to something else now, to your way of life as students? George Morrison, where did you live when you were a student?
M Where I live now.
McL Where's that? Out at Culter?
M Out - beyond Culter, yes.
McL So how did you come in to the university?
M In the first year, by train, square wheeled subby trains and after that by bus - it was quite easy.
McL So living at home with your parents?
M No, I was living in a family house which has been in the family since 1814 and you know I felt well established in it and I was living alone there.
McL Were you indeed?
M Yes.
McL Did you feel cut off from the student community as a whole living so far out because it is essentially further out than presumably most students live?
M I should perhaps say that right at the beginning of the university year in 1927, I was propelled into the Independent Labour Party and I'm sorry to say that it occupied a great deal of the time which I should have spent cultivating acquaintances within the university. It was a very strange thing and rather alien to my ideas in some ways. I have been a member of the Fabian Society for many years as a follow-up to that although I may say I left the Labour Party behind two or three years ago and am absolutely without political affiliations. But it really interfered greatly with the way which I lived.
McL Well we'll come back to that again if we may later. Ashley Scott, did you live at home?
S Yes.
McL Where was this?
S With my parents. In the house where we are now, strangely enough, in Broomhill Road and I had to make my way to Old Aberdeen and to Marischal of course and had to do a good deal of walking because my father did not believe in being generous.
McL Did you have a room of your own to work in?
S Yes. Well my bedroom, yes. Certainly, and certainly I was encouraged by my parents to get on with the work.
McL Were there students in the vicinity?
S Yes, yes, there were. I had friends quite nearby. They weren't of my actual year, they were certainly students and of course one was very lucky because I had gone up from school with a lot of people like Dorothy you see whom I knew. The people that I know, for instance, a friend of mine went up from Kemnay which was the secondary school in those days and strangely enough it's a secondary school there again but it was one of the schools that closed eventually as a secondary school. Well she was the only girl who came up to university from her school. There were just two people came up, one was Hunter Will, and one was this friend of mine and she was terribly lonely and like George, she travelled in everyday from Sauchen into the university and so it was very difficult for her to make friends you see because her time at the university was spent in classes and she couldn't come in for any of the social events really because she couldn't get home. In those days, very, very few students if any had cars, very few.
McL Dorothy Henderson, you lived at home I think, in Bedford…?
H Bedford Place at that time.
McL Did you have a room of your own to work in?
H I was given the drawing-room upstairs and it had a gas fire, so I was jammy. It was nice and quiet and I being the only one at varsity in the family, I was treated with some respect.
McL Were there many students living in the vicinity of your house?
H Yes, and speak about a window in France wasn't in it compared to my drawing-room window. It looked right up Elmfield Avenue and it was full of students. You see, Elmfield Avenue has a lot of large flats and there were a lot of students who found digs there and at night they would study and then they would have a walk round for fresh air and we'd be walking round meeting each other, having a chat outside you know and then in again to study. We used to "Gaudie" people with the student whistle, I don't know, do they still have that?
McL I don't know, can you describe it?
H Yes, (whistle, whistle, whistle)
McL And this was given when you wanted to attract other students' attentions.
H Yes, if you went and saw a lighted window and you knew a student there, and you just (whistle, whistle, whistle) and then in a minute or two they would come out at the door. When they heard that whistle, they knew a fellow student was out there wanting them and out they would come you see and maybe you would have a walk round. We were all very friendly and you got to know most of the ones all round about, we were just quite a community of our own there. You know, a student community because we were near to King's College and we just had to walk down Bedford Road and so forth, and a lot of quite well known people had their digs out there.
McL For example, for example.
H I don't know if I should name people. Well the Reverend Dr James Wood had his digs out there in Elmfield Avenue.
McL This is a slightly more difficult question I suppose for you to answer since if you were living at home, it might be difficult to work out, but can you tell me roughly what cost of living as a student was like? Is it possible for you to say roughly where the money went? I mean, Ashley Scott, were you receiving Carnegie money or any sort of grant in aids?
S Yes, that's the only grant I had, that was the £9 a year that was given to us students. That's all I had.
McL Now, did your parents supplement this at all or?
S Well, they had to you see. They had to pay the fees and they had to keep me.
H I might say my allowance was about £2.6.0p a week or something like, that's all I got. Occasionally you know, one got a wee bit of something somehow or other and my mother would weaken and give me a little bit more or something but no we couldn't go in for any kind of lavish living of any kind because we had so little and students who were living in digs were for the most part similarly placed. They had more or less their weekly allowance coming to them you know from their parents and that was it. There would be some of course would be the recipients of bursaries but these were few of course.
McL Had you yourself gone into the bursary examination?
H No, I didn't.
McL Why was that?
H I would have never presumed.
McL In what sense?
H I don't think Mr Robertson would have approved if I had presented myself and told him that I wished to sit the bursary competition. I think he would have been horrified, no.
McL I'm not sure I quite understand why? Why would he have been horrified?
H Oh I don't think I was bursary competition material.
McL I see, yes.
H Definitely.
McL I see. George Morrison, did sit for a bursary?
M I can't remember actually. I certainly didn't get a bursary by sitting in a competition. I went to Banchory Secondary School in 1924, the year that it became a secondary school and the quality of teaching was far below what it should have been. In fact, they did not appoint one secondary teacher to the school for a whole year. They did in the fourth year what they did in the third year, and from that school it would have been impossible I should think.
McL I see. So how did you support yourself living in this house out at Culter on your own?
M Well, first of all there was the £9 from Carnegie. I had a Drum bursary because I lived on the estate of Drum and I can't remember the sum, like £30, and I think in the third year there was a Milne Bequest which again was about £20. When you think of money you see, it's nothing at all and my father was always very generous with me.
McL Were you on an allowance rather like Ashley Scott was? Did they give you money on an allowance basis?
M No, no, it wasn't. It was, if I needed it, I simply said, and there it was.
McL Dorothy Henderson, were you on an allowance in the same way as Ashley Scott?
H Well my father was retired and he was also putting my sister through Art school which was very expensive at the same time just on a pension, so we had to be very very careful and I got a shilling a week and I went to varsity on a shilling a week for pocket money. That included fares, everything. If you joined a society, it was a shilling. If you went to a varsity hop, it was a shilling and I walked all the way you know down to Marischal and to King's. I very seldom boarded a bus. We were trained to walk all the time.
McL What about eating meals?
H Of course I had meals at home. I was at home.
McL Did you go home for lunches or did you eat at university?
H Yes, yes. Well usually I'd go down to King's College in the morning. I might have two classes there and sometimes I had a class at Marischal, it was always in the afternoon I had a Marischal and I'd walk all the way there too, you see and I wore my scarlet toga at King's, we weren't allowed to do it at Marischal but I was very fond of the toga. It was very cosy and marvellous material which you never see nowadays, never.
McL Ashley Scott, where did you eat?
S At home, yes. Oh yes, at home. There was no eating at university, was there eating?
H No, no, I don't think so.
S Eventually in our time, there was opened the Women's Union up in Skene Terrace and I suppose the lunches an so on could have been got there but I never had the money to go to such places. One of our great haunts for students was the West End Café in Union Street, alas no longer in existence, and we could go in there and have a coffee and a chocolate biscuit for about 4 pence. But I can remember meeting friends you know in Union Street and saying "Are you coming in to the West End?" and they would say "No, no, couldn't possibly come in, no money till Saturday". That's when their money would be coming from home, I think.
McL Clearly the financial factor dictated to a large extent the social life. From your experience, not your personal experience now but your observation, was there any sort of gulf as it were between the richer students and poorer students?
S It wasn't terribly obvious. There must have been cases I'm quite sure that we didn't perhaps know of them, where people were really very very hard up, but there was no question of anybody in our day as there had been in times past of people walking all the way from, say, the like of Old Deer, carrying the meal sack on their back. There was nothing like that I don't think in our time, but again probably there was a lot that was hidden. Students didn't talk about it. They may have been very very hard up, but they wouldn't talk about it probably to us.
McL When you say they wouldn't talk about it, would this be simply their own pride or is there a sense that perhaps one wouldn't have asked about it. Did you sort of know each other very well so that you could talk about such personal matters, or were there sort of restraints do you feel in your relationships?
S I think at that time there was a certain restraint. I mean people didn't talk about their own circumstances as much as people do today, no. I think there was a limit beyond which you wouldn't go.
McL George Morrison, as a member as you described yourself in the ILP at that stage, were you interested aspect of how people lived, did you take note of how people lived?
M Yes, I did. I didn't like the ILP as a matter of fact. It was because a friend of the family had thought it was an awfully good thing, he was a student at the time, an older student, much older. He thought it was a wonderful thing to be a member of the Independent Labour Party and most of them hated students.
McL Why was that?
M Because they represented a class or society which was privileged.
McL Now, from what I've heard Ashley Scott say and Dorothy Henderson, the impression one gets is that there were people who were making sacrifices to come so in a sense they were sacrificing for the privilege. Did this not weigh with the ILP that people were sort of making great sacrifices?
M I never heard it mentioned. We're talking about 60 years ago now.
McL Yes, of course.
M Maybe my memory is just unkind, but I felt that they were an unsympathetic crowd, although some very nice people amongst them who were my friends in later life but there was some resentment of students and of the privileges which we were supposed to enjoy.
McL Dorothy Henderson, were you aware of any sort of social grouping of poor students together as opposed to mixing?
H Not really. I found everybody very friendly. I just thoroughly enjoyed every minute but I was a Liberal and there was a bit of rivalry you see between the political parties especially between the Unionists and the Liberals and so forth. There quite a bit of rivalry there and we had a rectorial election in our first year and Sir Reginald Barclay was, he was standing as a Liberal and my mother made me a huge Liberal rosette and it was rather like a cabbage, it was an enormous one and Sir Reginald took it as his mascot and put it on the bonnet of his car.
McL How lively was this rectorial? I mean there is tradition of very lively...
H Oh they had a peasemeal battle. I went down to the Quad to see the peasemeal battle.
McL To what degree were these violent battles, well here's the word battle used, they were friendly?
H Oh yes.
McL Was that your experience Ashley Scott?
S They were friendly, yes, but I think a lot of it probably was students letting off steam, really more than great political, you know, interest and so on at that time, and of course, we had the unfortunate experience of Lord Birkenhead. That was the Rector. Students were sent down.
McL Why was that?
S Because there was an affray in the gallery. Was that when they let chicken down, and all sorts of things and then there was - they let off these stink bombs, do you remember, and the whole of the Mitchell Hall was filled with this sort of smell and all of the rest of it. But I think it was three students who were sent down as in 88. Now I thought that was a bit harsh.
McL Were these arts students, do you recall or medical students or?
M He was an arts student.
S He was an arts student, yes, and there was another one, I think he was, was it agriculture or science, I can't remember.
McL Were you aware of medical students perhaps being more inclined to high spirits than other faculties or is this just a myth, Dorothy Henderson?
H I don't think so. Quite a lot of medicals were well behaved.
S They were a lively lot and of course, in those days there was really little drinking but they probably did drink a bit more than some of the others. I can remember some of them being you know a little bit at some of the hops on a Saturday night. Of course there was no drinking in the university whatsoever and anything they drank was outside. But I know there used to be a bit of liveliness and carry-on but I think it was just generalised spirits and so on.
McL George Morrison, were you aware of drinking as any sort of problem at all in the university?
M I never tasted alcohol.
McL Never?
M Not at that time, but by god I made up for it. I had become vegetarian when I was about 12 or 13. You didn't ask me about my eating habits. I would have an apple or a couple of apples in the middle of the day and go home and make myself a salad at night, very much what I do now. Quite frankly, yes, I mean, yes. Between those days and these days, there was a time when I was a meat eater and enjoyed it but I was vegetarian from the time I was about 12, 13 until I was 30.
McL Was this unusual amongst other students? Were you looked upon as an eccentric?
M I didn't advertise it. I don't know, I didn't know any others but it was a pleasant way of living. I didn't buy chips or things like that, there weren't places where you could.
S Chip buying by students was very popular.
M In those days?
S Yes. I always remember the horror when I thought mother first discovered that I had been walking up Rosemount eating chips out of a newspaper. Horrifying to think that her daughter would do such a thing.
McL Dorothy Henderson, you lived in an area where a number of students were in digs. What was the cost or rent for these lodgings?
H Well they varied from perhaps 17.6p a week, if there perhaps a few students would be sharing a room then we'd say 25 shillings a week would be reckoned good digs.
McL This was for food as well as lodgings?
H Yes, board and of course 30 bob a week, that would be people earning a salary, they would pay maybe 30 for really superior digs, would be about 30 bob a week, but I understand that some of the students paid about 17.6d and perhaps there might be three sharing a room and of course they varied according to the price and I mean there were as there always are good landladies and poorer ones.
McL Were these landladies who had for many years taken in students, were they used to students?
H Yes, oh yes. A lot of them made their livelihood from it.
McL Now you lived at home and Ashley Scott you were at home and George Morrison you had your house out at Culter, you were all able to work relatively undisturbed. What about the students who were in lodgings? Ashley Scott, were you aware that they had problems working? Did they favour the library perhaps as opposed to their room?
S I can't remember any of them complaining in that respect but again perhaps I've forgotten.
McL Dorothy Henderson, were you aware of it?
H No, I wasn't aware they were having difficulties. I knew quite a lot of the country ones from Strichen and round about. Most of the ones round about came from the country, from perhaps Cullen and the North of Scotland. They came from all over the North of Scotland and they all seemed to be contented as far as I knew.
McL George Morrison, does what do you remember bear this out?
M Yes, I knew a great many of my contemporaries but knew nothing about them personally. I used the library occasionally you know if there was a long gap between lectures and I remember the library was only used by ? (interruped by Dorothy Henderson)
H Yes, I used it a lot. It was very handy. I'm very sorry that they closed down the old library. I found it very comfortable and very handy. I'd come out of the Maths or the Logic and I had an hour perhaps in between that and the French lecture and I'd pop into the library and you know Mary Allen, I knew her, she gave me excellent advice before I entered. She said "Whenever you get a lecture, read it over at once and it fixes it in your mind" and I took that advice and I always used to pop into the library and read over my lecture as soon as I got it.
McL Ashley Scott, did you use the library at all?
S Oh yes, but there wasn't a great deal of opportunity. For instance, in my first year, I was fairly busy because I had Maths at 9 in the morning and then French and History you see. Now there would have been a break from 10 - 11 between, I think History was at 12 as it were, we would have had that break. Sometimes we certainly went into the library, but there was a woman used to come in and she used to bring buns into that horrible room, it was the only room that was allocated to women in King's and she used to sell these buns and we used to (interrupted by Dorothy Henderson)
H Is that at the tower, the common room?
S Yes, the Common Room in the Tower.
McL This is in the Cromwell Tower?
S In the Cromwell Tower.
H This was the Common Room and it had nothing in it but bare tables and wooden chairs and I think, was it a wooden floor, I don't think we had anything on the floor. I know it was just nothing but the basic.
S I don't think the university authorities had got round to the idea of having women … (TALKING THROUGH ONE ANOTHER) and the supervision at Marischal was very much worse.
McL Why was that?
S It was absolutely nothing. It was simply a cloakroom at Marischal. I mean there was no chairs
McL The Ladies Union that was then founded in Skene Terrace, that was to make up for these deficiencies, was it?
S Well, I think so. It was more probably for social entertainment later in the day and they did take a few residents you see, there were one or two women who actually lived there, but you see we wouldn't go up to Skene Terrace really because mostly we were going home after lectures.
McL Would you say there was any difference George Morrison between the atmosphere at Marischal and the atmosphere at King's?
M Yes.
McL In what way?
M Indefineable. I mean I always felt very much at home at King's. At Marischal you were there to do something. (Laughing). Well, you know what I mean.
McL Yes, yes.
M It was a much more practical place to be in.
McL Functional and……
M Yes.
McL Were you aware of this too, Ashley Scott.
S Yes, I think I would agree with George in that. You know you just went to Marischal really for your class and that was it sort of business.
McL Dorothy Henderson, did you …?
H Yes, I agree with that, absolutely. King's was a very friendly place - atmosphere and I felt more relaxed at King's than at Marischal. Except there was one thing I did enjoy at Marischal and that was the students room in Zoology, as I said I enjoyed the Zoology class, very much and there was what they called a students' room with samples you know all laid out where you could go any time you wanted and examine specimens. It helped you a great deal in the spotter exams and so forth and I just haunted that room, I just loved it.
McL Where, Dorothy Henderson, were most of the societies located, at King's or Marischal? The extra curricula societies. Did you meet at King's or at Marischal?
H Well, if it was evening things, the hops and that were usually in the Men's Union, you know and the Debater. These things were at Marischal because the end of the week, there was usually a weekly hop and it was usually in the Men's Room and of course we had the Debater.
McL Now you were a member of the Debating Society, weren't you?
H Yes.
McL Can you tell me a little bit about it? What would an evening at the Debater be like?
H Well, we'd start, I showed you my book there, we'd start bawling out these songs, you know the The pop's down in Demerara and you know all these popular songs and then there was the debate, you know the affirmative and the negative and with our seconders and then they would lay it open to discussion after they made their speeches.
McL How well attended were they?
H Oh packed, absolutely packed. Actually I broke the rules unwittingly. I didn't know that it was against the rules for a Bajanella to speak at the Debater and I at school, I had a very good English teacher who had trained us in debating and she was very keen. So, when I went along, trotted along to my first debate you see, there was something I wanted to say. Well, I just jumped up and said it and I didn't know what I'd done, there was complete silence and everybody started. Bajanellas had to stay in the gallery, you weren't allowed down below until you were in the second year you see and there was just complete silence. And then, it was afterwards explained to me that it was against the rules for a Bajanella to speak, you weren't allowed to speak until you were in the second year. However, as it was, I was the first Bajanella to speak at a Debater and I was given special permission to do so and I did, and in the second year, I had my own debate "That the face is a true indication of the character".
McL This is where you proposed the issue or did you share the debate? When you said you had your own debate…
H Well, I was the affirmative of that, you know, I mean the debate. I had to do the big speech you see and then Agnes Geoff, Agnes Geoff was my seconder, she lived out at Bucksburn and Jessie Shaw was the opposition.
McL George Morrison, did you take part in the Debater?
M No sir.
McL Why was that, given that you had this interest in the ILP and so on, I would have thought you would have been a natural for it?
M You see I did another foolish thing. I got in tow with the Unitarians in Aberdeen. They had a very fine minister at that time and he involved me in all sorts of interesting things outside - he was interested in students. That was why he involved myself and other students in doing things but I spent too much time out of university things.
McL Ashley Scott, were you in the Debating Society?
S In so far as I attended the debates regularly, yes, because it was a sort of ritual. The Literary Society met at 6 o'clock at Marischal and it was very well attended too and then we all moved on into the Debator and as Dorothy said we sang songs and the debate would start probably at 8 o'clock and continue and these debates were extremely well attended the place was packed out usually and there was some very eminent speakers but again one held these people rather in awe and so sort of the idea of getting up and speaking, it took an awful lot of courage really to get up and speak. Although I don't know why one felt like that really but I must say they were always every enjoyable occasions.
McL Who were the luminaries of the Debating Society that you remember?
S John R Allan, Ian MacPherson and Jean Cameron.
McL Were these men who spoke well or were they people who had a strong political interest in their speaking?
S No, they were - the ones that I had mentioned, they were all people who did honours English or English and History, the ones that I'd mentioned so far but no, I don't think that you know politics generally was so prominent in our day. For the simple reason, there wasn't the propaganda of course that there is now and one has to remember that we were all rather, you know, we were rather innocent and immature, I think, compared with today's students. We had less experiences than they have because simply because we were rather tied to the places where we lived, very much and probably we should have been going to the university when we were much older and more experienced, you know it might have done us good not gone from school into university.
McL George Morrison, you'd obviously from what you say taken an interest in matters that were to do with the Fabians and the ILP. Now, did you form the same impression, that there was a certain innocence in the under-graduate population of the university?
M I never felt innocent. No, amongst the men students I knew, there was a striking lack of innocence.
McL Would that be political innocence as opposed to any other?
M Well I never discussed politics with fellow students. It was enough to face the members of the Independent Labour Party and yes I suppose we were innocent.
McL Dorothy Henderson, did you find this too?
H Yes, oh yes, I was very green. I was very innocent. We were very innocent compared to the modern youth, you know. But it was delightful you know, and I mean in our day, you could walk the streets almost any time in perfect safety, you know, and walk about as other students, even ones you hardly knew and be perfectly safe. You knew that you were alright and there was this great feeling of camaraderie you know between us. Kathy Garden by the way, in our first year was a great personality, she dominated in the Debating Society. She just dominated the Debating Society and I was there when she made her farewell speech. She made a great speech, I remember her speaking about the Marischal spires pointing to the sky and so forth but John Logan was also on the Debating Committee. He was one of the debators. The Logans lived beside me in Sunnyside Road.
McL So you knew them, yes.
H I knew all the Logan family, Annie and John and so forth.
McL We talked about the apparent innocence in the political matters but Ashley Scott, what about social concerns. Were the students aware for example of slum conditions in the beginnings of depression, of poverty? Did this weigh with them at all?
S I can't say that I was really aware of it in other people. I was aware of it to a certain extent myself but you see one felt powerless to do anything about it. I remember that social conditions were certainly very bad in parts of Aberdeen, rather shocking indeed. I mean children were still running about without shoes or socks on their feet and I'm quite sure that lots of children were probably sewed into their clothes at the beginning of the winter and I found out later of course when I started to do my first teaching, I came up against that and there were shocking living conditions in Aberdeen at that time. I can remember the famous Blacks buildings beside the theatre which are all clear today with beautiful gardens and so on, but these were dreadful slums. I mean one couldn't pass them without being aware of them, but I don't know if we as students discussed it very much. I know we often wanted to put the world right. I am Episcopalian and there was an episcopal students society and on Sunday nights we used to go to Reggie Butcharts, his church down on the Quay. It's long since gone, it's gone up to Mastrick but at that time St Clements on the Quay was the place where these students gathered on a Sunday night and they went to the service, to evensong and afterwards we went up to Reggie's flat and it was there that we would put the world to right. We would sit on the floor and discuss social problems and things like that. I remember discussing alcohol as one of them.
McL So these things did get an airing?
S In that small group they got an airing, yes. I can remember that, but then we couldn't do very much in that day. There weren't opportunities for us to do that much.
McL Was there a university mission to any of the slum areas?
S I can' t remember that.
McL George Morrison, were you aware one?
M I was made aware of it by my political friends outside. It didn't stir me to do anything. It doesn't even now. But I was aware of what Ashley has been speaking about like Blacks Building, I mean they were dreadful. When I started teaching in Aberdeen, I had pupils from that area and realised that the conditions were pretty dreadful.
McL Now, Ashley Scott, you were an Episcopalian and George Morrison, you joined the Unitarian Church. Dorothy Henderson, had you a specific church affiliation as a student?
H Oh yes, oh yes, but I sometimes went to the chapel, you know, but I was a member of the South Church. The Church of Scotland.
McL Could I ask you, what part did religion have in the student life? George Morrison, were you aware of it having any particular role for students?
M I had nothing to do with religion in the university.
McL Ashley Scott, does that square with your memory?
S Well, I was a member of the Student Christian Movement which met regularly and we certainly went to a conference at Swanwick where we met other students from other universities and discussed all kinds of general social conditions there. I really didn't go to the chapel very often because my father was very strict and you want to go to church, your own church is down the road, you see he didn't like me going to St Clements on the Quay on Sunday nights because he felt that if I wanted to go to church I should be going to my own church. We were rather narrow minded in that respect you see but probably secretly he was maybe quite glad that I was going to church at all, but we certainly, I think students as a whole did go to church.
McL Dorothy Henderson, do you remember many people attending the chapel, you said you had been on some occasions?
H Yes, it was only other church like Ashley, my father disapproved of our going to another church from our own, except of course I was allowed to go to the chapel and I enjoyed that. Every now and then I would go there you see. Otherwise, of course we were wrong, we had to walk from that place down to the South Church next to the theatre. Sometimes three times on a Sunday morning then I was back to the Sunday School in the afternoon and back again at night. Incidentally, later I taught in the Mission Sunday School you were asking about conditions, I can tell you about that because I taught in the Mission Sunday School of the South Church and if any of my pupils were off more than twice, I was after them. I went to their homes and that took me into the dreadful slums of Blackfriar Street.
McL Was this as a student you were teaching in the Sunday School?
H No, I was a teacher there.
McL This was after you qualified and you were a teacher.
H I had been in the Gallowgate round the houses there, but the worst was the Blackfriar Street one where there was a whole family just in one room and the washing was strung right across the room, you know and a whole lot all living just in one room but some of the conditions were really bad.
McL Well, looking at a slightly brighter side of your student life in going from the sublime to possibly the ridiculous, students acting and dramatics and the show, Dorothy Henderson, you showed in the show.
H Yes, yes.
McL How many shows did you do? Just the one?
H Just the second year, the last year I was concentrating on getting my degree.
McL Where did you rehearse? In the Union?
H We rehearsed in the gym of Marischal College.
McL And you brought in outside people to rehearse you and train you?
H Frances Forrest, a dancing teacher trained us.
McL Ashley Scott, were you involved in the show in any way?
S Yes, I was in one of the Northern Lights with Kathy Garden and Stephen Mitchell who later on became of course an impresario in London and that was one of the famous Northern Lights and I enjoyed it very much. We had - he died - a very distinguished student he was - I'm sorry about that - yes, the student shows were something to be in, you know, they were super shows.
McL George Morrison, were you a member of it?
M No, I had more important things to do, I thought. I would go to the show once a year but that was my only contact.
McL Did you follow any sport as a student?
M No.
McL Did either of you, Ashley or?
H Yes, I did. I was in the relay team for Arts in the first year. There was Winnie Neilson and Jessie Shaw and Laura Greig who was very good and myself, we were the Arts team, and I went in for the hundred yards and the hurdles but after that for the second year I was concentrating on the students' show. Also I did swimming, was it the first year, yes the first year I swam in the gala down at the Beach, the students' gala during the students' week and I was roped into swim then.
McL Can you tell me Ashley Scott how you spent your vacations as a student?
S Helping at home. It was expected that you know once your actual work at the university was over at the end of term, that you get down to the business of helping at home. I was expected to help my mother in the house because there was quite a lot to do. There were two younger than me and so that really I was put to quite hard labour, you know.
McL Did you have a family holiday at all?
S Oh yes, usually during the time I'd be away for a break of some kind.
McL Would that be abroad or?
S Oh no, never.
McL George Morrison, what about you? What did you do in vacations?
M I picked raspberries in Blairgowrie and met all the tinks from Glasgow who also came up for that. I learned a lot of new swear words which I still use. I'm sorry to say since my wife died I swear a lot at home and I find myself saying so many things which I learned in 1927-28, no not 27, 28, 29 and 30. Earning something like £4 a week, spending 10 shillings on food, ate a lot of raspberries of course, very good fun and it was tremendous to go back after six weeks with six times £3.10 shillings. It was a considerable sum in those days.
McL Did you every go abroad at all as a student?
M Not as a student, no.
McL Dorothy Henderson, did you go abroad during your vacation?
H No, we never had money for that. What father did was he rented a cottage and we used to go out to Kemnay and we used to rent a cottage you see, and did for ourselves for a month or sometimes we took what you call room and attendance, you know somewhere in the country and the landlady would do the cooking. My mother would buy the food, give it to the landlady and she would do the cooking and we would have rooms and we had a sitting-room to ourselves and that worked out very well indeed.
McL Now Ashley Scott, you remembered in Professor MacDonald's class the women being not entirely segregated but sitting together at the front of the class. Well this leads me on to ask a very general question really about the position of women students. Were you aware of any sort of general attitudes towards women students as a body in the University or did you feel integrated within the University?
S That's a difficult question. I think that the women were accepted by our time but as I said earlier no provision was really made for their comfort and well being and I think probably that most of the academic staff accepted the fact that you know women were there and were there to stay, but I suppose really you know greater attention was probably paid to men than women. Now I wasn't really conscious of this but you know I think that probably was through certain of the professors anyhow, I wouldn't say all of them, but from certain of them I think. It was still very much a man's world I would say.
McL Dorothy Henderson, would you agree?
H Well I wasn't really very conscious of being made different you know. I mean I flitted around and I managed to penetrate where I wanted to pretty well but she has just given me the explanation of the other day I was just thinking back in Logic why I was always sitting in the front row there and I used to get little notes from the boys at the back of the class so that answers even in the Logic class too. We were at the front and the boys were at the back.
McL George Morrison, do you think it was a still slightly male oriented community, the student community?
M I don't recollect that it was. I don't think I would, I mean I was brought up co-educationally till I was 17 and we just regarded women, girls as the equals, certainly at home that was the idea and I never had any feeling of that sort, perhaps I should have been more sensitive.
H We spilled out you see into the quad when our classes were usually round the quad especially at King's. You just went into the quad and everybody went into the quad, and there were chats there you know and everybody was just very sociable and that, at least I found them all very sociable.
McL Can I put in a question perhaps to crystallise it? Ashley Scott, if a couple of undergraduates went out for an evening, would you go so to speak go Dutch or would the boy pay for the girl or what? Did they go out for evenings like that?
S Oh yes, oh yes indeed, indeed and well you see I think at that particular time when I was a student, I think that the women still expected the men to pay. I think the idea of going Dutch was creeping in and probably for some people it had arrived and yes that is true, but we were still often treated by men if they were actually going to take us to something. I mean they wouldn't ask you to go to a particular dance and make you pay for your own ticket, oh no. No that wasn't done because I can remember a laddie waiting for me outside the Nat. Phil. Class, a laddie I didn't know really and saying to me would I go to a particular dance with him. I mean he would no more have said to me you've got to pay for your own ticket you know than fly in the air. I think he must have been awfully well off at the time, I think he even got a taxi to take me to this dance, which was you know luxury.
McL George Morrison, while you're giggling away there, I think in what revelation you're going to bring up. Did you take a girl out, you would take her out for the evening, it would be….
M I have never failed to pay for both in my whole life, that's true.
McL So despite the earlier points you raised about the cost of living and that the fact that some students were on very straitened means, this would always be a matter of honour to do this?
M Yes, yes.
McL When you finished your university careers and qualified, you went into teaching I think all three. Did you have difficulty in getting jobs, Ashley Scott?
S Times were very difficult when we qualified and I in 1931 when I was due to start, having done my year at the Training College, I believe that there was something like 29,000 teachers unemployed in England and Wales. So an uncle of mine who lived in Middlesex suggested to my father that I should use his address to apply for a job because he was quite confident that Aberdeen was too far away for me to have my fare paid to go down if there was an interview possible and that is what I did. I used my uncle's address, he let me know when I was called for interview and I went down and got my job and having got it, there were a lot of people who hadn't got jobs and I said to them, look use my address and I'll send you a telegram or phone and this they did and some of them you see came down from Middlesex, Essex or Kent or somewhere roundabout, so there was quite a little gathering of Aberdeen students who went down there.
McL George Morrison, did you have any difficulty getting employment when you left the university?
M No, I applied for a job. I was determined to get out of Aberdeen, a horrible place. I got a job in Ely in Cambridgeshire and I went there in the beginning of September 1931 and after a fortnight I discovered that I didn't like living in digs. It was an experience which I had not had and so I got my parents to use what influence they could to see to it that I would get on to the preferred list for which I hadn't applied in June in Aberdeen and they would pull the necessary strings and I was appointed and started teaching in Aberdeen on the 5 January 1932.
McL Dorothy Henderson, did you have any problems?
H No, none at all. I was very high marked and in fact I was one of the highest marked for teaching and so I got right on to the town list and I got into Aberdeen.
McL Just very briefly in a sentence, Ashley Scott, can you compare the training you got at TC with the training you got at the university, I mean how do they compare or contrast?
S Quite frankly, I was not terribly impressed with the training at college. I did miss the university I think, very much and I didn't care for a lot of the things that went on at Training College but I just had to accept that this was the only way to qualify and get on with it. It was rather like being back at school, you know, one period after another, the pressure of it. It has a sort of stultifying affect, the same at school. You know, at school, when I was asked to write an essay, well I could write an essay but it wouldn't be a very long one. When I went to varsity, I couldn't stop writing, I was so full of ideas, they just seemed to pour from me then and that was just a feeling of liberation. The varsity gave me this feeling of liberation that I just, you know felt some of the extended in all directions and you know you were meeting other people and you were seeing other things and you were thinking in all different directions that well it was a very wonderful experience.
McL George Morrison, were you aware of a distinction between the students at the Training College and the university - did they mix at all?
M Well there was bound to be a certain amount of mixing. They were friends from two years back very often or younger ones whom we met but I felt that the Training Centre as it was in those days was a prison and I didn't think all that much of the staff, I was very respectful to them.
McL I'm sure you were.
H What I missed was not getting out into the fresh air, you know you were cooped up from morning till night and lesson after lesson and so forth. Whereas at the varsity as I said we just had a lecture and we were out into quad and maybe had hours free that we could go and have a walk or run round the playfield if you wanted. You know what I mean, there was a freedom about it.
S The best part of the Training College was really when were out doing the practical work and I think there should have been far more of that you see than all these lectures in the actual college. When one went out into the schools, after all that was what we were going to do and that's where we should have been at for most of the time and not so much theoretical stuff given to us which was really of little use to us in the practical job of teaching.
McL Ashley Scott, can I ask you briefly what did you feel the value of the university education was to you?
S A tremendous privilege and something for which I have always been very grateful.
McL George Morrison?
M I agree with Ashley. I felt that it was a privilege, I have always felt it was. I don't know if it's done me much good but it gave me three very pleasant, peaceful, happy fullfilled years which I am sure would have had an affect upon the rest of my life.
McL Dorothy Henderson?
H Well I agree very much with what has been said. I found the same. I found it a most enriching experience, as I said it's stretched me in all directions and it wasn't just studying, you met different people, it seems to enrich you in all different ways.
McL Thank you very much indeed.
END OF INTERVIEW
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