Mummy's the one in slacks : recollections of the Raj, boarding school & postcard parenting

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AuthorVirginia HillDescription
Mummy's The One In Slacks gives an insight into the British Raj, boarding schools and postcard parenting. I spent the earliest years of my life in India, where my father worked for the Indian Police Service under British government rule. At the age of five, I was sent away to boarding school in Australia. Historical accounts of colonial families of nearly 200 years of the British Raj, are frequently characterised by the 'Empire nostalgia' that followed Indian Independence in 1947. They typically emanate from well-off families who sent their progeny away to e boarding schools. Archival collections are more voluminous and detailed from these families. Thus, the experiences of the legion of children from 'ordinary' colonial families who were also sent away - such as - me, have become marginal to the analyses of the Raj. The harsh colonial custom of early-age boarding for children now seems unbelievably Dickensian.
In the twenty-first century, recent history barely survives a few years under the avalanche of daily news about international affairs, but institutions whose nature was once well understood and largely homogeneous - such as families, schools, religions, governments, banks and armies - are still central to contemporary life and thinking. In this book I have gathered my childhood Raj and Australian boarding school recollections to pass on to readers some unromanticised colonial history to remind people that the world at that time - mid-twentieth century and earlier - most certainly did not revolve around the realm of the child. In fact, consideration for children and their feelings was barely taken into account. Significantly, although little has been written about the Australian twentieth-century experience of sending children away to boarding school, many former boarders continue the habit and send their own children to these schools.
Unlike many of my cohort, I have long since left my school and its community behind. Perhaps publicly breaking ranks from the code that 'it never did me any harm' to discuss feelings of abandonment is a bridge too far for most former boarders. This book is a history contrary to the well-established national paradigms of the British Raj.ImprintMelbourne, VIC : [Virginia Hill], 2019Collationxvi, 112 pages : illustrations (some colour), portraits ; 29 cmLanguageEnglishISBN9780959174717Dewey ClassB/HILPublication FormatBook

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Barcode30118000796502LocationReference Collection

SubjectBiographyVoyages and travelsCollectionPublications Collection

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Request AccessPlease email the Fremantle History Centre: lhc@fremantle.wa.gov.au

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