Let us then be up and doing

David S Stewart, OBE

In November 1878 a large number of wagons and carriages conveyed the children from the old Asylum in Clapton to the new Schools at Darenth. This was the first provision for children and young people with learning disabilities to be funded entirely by the public purse in the UK. Supporting the young people were the staff who had set up the school first in Hampstead and then Clapton as part of the provision of the Metropolitan Asylums Board.

These pioneers formed a strong team and together with the board of management formed the thinking for the early years of the school. This paper will explore the lives and work of some of the early staff, such as Sir Edmund Hay Currie, the Chairman, with his links to the School Board for London. Amongst those studied are Dr Fletcher Beach, the medical superintendent, Miss Stephens the Head Mistress, and Miss Hoatson an assistant teacher whose sister was better known as living in the family of Edith Nesbit, the writer. They all met Seguin when he visited the Asylum, a link back to Itard and the Wild Boy of Aveyron.

Where did staff come from and what had been their previous experience? Whilst they were colleagues there was often no love lost between the different disciplines! One member of staff, Maud Dye who joined the staff in 1904 after working at the Earlswood, worked with Miss Hoatson before she retired. She was interviewed by the author in 1980.

All too often staff are just names upon a list but the author has sort to learn more about their lives and work with children with disabilities at the end of the nineteenth century. From the extensive reports we can learn much of the detail of the lives of staff, from their daily work, to their recreation and personal lives.