SCHOOLS 



charity, that whereas there had been only one 

 gift to the school since the days of Elizabeth, no 

 sooner was the school reformed and put on a 

 better basis so as to command the confidence of 

 the town than further endowments came pouring 

 in. Between 1868 and 1882 the Morley, the 

 Moore and Copestake, two Cooper, a Trustees' 

 and Town, and an Old Boys' scholarship, each 

 worth j6o a year, had been founded by individual 

 donors or joint subscriptions, together with a 

 Bishop Exhibition of 5 and a William Enfield 

 Exhibition of ^25 a year. 



After 1880, however, a decline set in. This 

 fact and the long-standing squalor of the school 

 premises and other causes produced a ferment of 

 indignation in the town, and general pleasure was 

 felt when, in 1882, the Charity Commission 

 framed a new scheme for the management of the 

 foundation and introduced new blood into the 

 governing body. The scheme, made under 

 the Endowed Schools Acts, was approved by 

 Queen Victoria in Council 3 May 1882. It 

 took the management of the High School out 

 of the hands of the Municipal Charity Trus- 

 tees, and vested it in a body of seventeen 

 governors, consisting of the lord-lieutenant of 

 the county, the mayor of the town, and the 

 chairman of the now defunct School Board, to- 

 gether with three representatives of the Town 

 Council and the Justices of the Borough and 

 one each of the three universities of Oxford, 

 Cambridge and London, with five co-optatives. 

 The school was made one and indivisible, the 

 separate departments being abolished ; the tuition 

 fee was fixed at 8 to 16 a year, and the 

 boarding fee at 65 a year. The name of the 

 foundress was commemorated by 10 Agnes 

 Mellers scholarships, to be awarded preferentially 

 to boys from elementary schools, entitling to 

 freedom from tuition fees, and an allowance 

 of not less than 5 a year in addition. By 

 another scheme, becoming law the same day, 

 Sir Thomas White's charity, founded 6 July 

 1552, so far as applicable to Nottingham, was 

 made applicable to the school, ,25,000 capital 

 being reserved for the original purpose of free 

 loans to tradesmen on setting up in business. 

 This curious charity consisted of four-sevenths 

 of the income of estates held by the corporation 

 of Coventry which was applicable in rotation to 

 Coventry, Northampton, Leicester, Nottingham 

 and Warwick, each town receiving its share 

 once in five years. In consideration of this the 

 school scheme provided for 10 Sir Thomas White 

 scholarships for day boys of the same value as 

 the Agnes Mellers scholarships, three leaving 

 exhibitions of 50 a year, tenable at universities 

 or other place of higher education, and two 

 leaving exhibitions of 30 a year. As a result 

 of the new scheme a large number of scholars left 

 and the school sank rapidly to less than 200 boys. 

 The new governors, of whom the late Dr. W. H. 



Ransom, F.R.S., was the most conspicuous and 

 energetic, soon thought it advisable to have a 

 new clerk and a new head master. The former 

 was found in Mr. (now Dr.) E. H. Fraser. 



In 1884 Dr. Dixon retired to Cullompton in 

 Devon and in 1887 was made vicar of Ayles- 

 beare. 



Dr. James Gow, the new head master, was at 

 King's College School, London, whence he won 

 a scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, and 

 was chancellor's medallist and third in the clas- 

 sical tripos in 1875, and a fellow of Trinity in 

 1876. He was called to the bar in 1879. As 

 a University Extension Lecturer in the early 

 days of the Cambridge movement to spread 

 university ideas and culture among the populous 

 regions of the north and the midlands, he made 

 a great impression at Nottingham, which en- , 

 sured his election out of a strong field for the 

 head-mastership in 1884. He was perhaps the 

 first layman to hold the office, at all events 

 since the days of Elizabeth. He stayed for 

 seventeen years. His legal experience stood him 

 in good stead, for in fact little had been done to 

 carry out the directions of the new scheme, and 

 many subsidiary schemes and re-arrangements 

 were left over for the new officers. It should be 

 said, in fairness to Mr. Patchitt, that he had 

 greatly increased the value of the school property 

 and, though most of his expenditure was worse 

 than useless, he had provided the school with a 

 good revenue. The buildings were now taken 

 in hand and put into good order : the accounts 

 were recast, plans drawn up for the award of 

 scholarships and exhibitions, new time-tables and 

 curricula prepared, a scheme of salaries arranged 

 and some improvements in the staff effected. 

 These things were not carried through without 

 opposition, which was all the stronger because 

 Dr. Gow had not previously had much experience 

 of school-teaching. But gradually he got the 

 better of all difficulties and launched the school 

 on the tide of prosperity. He began with 178 

 boys. For the first five years his increases were 

 small. The first open scholarship was won at 

 St. Catharine's, Cambridge, in 1888. Two years 

 later there were scholarships at Sidney, Cam- 

 bridge, and at Durham. In 1890 he passed 

 5 boys for the London matriculation, and 44 for i 

 the Cambridge Local Examinations, with 9 dis- 

 tinctions. In 1891 he ventured to publish his 

 first school list, which showed over 250 boys. 



In July 1900 there were 362 boys in the 

 school, of whom 9 had passed the London Matricu- 

 lation, and 29 the Cambridge Local Examina- 

 tions ; and 23 old boys as undergraduates at 

 Oxford and Cambridge, of whom 15 had open 

 scholarships. Successes at the universities, when 

 once they began, came abundantly, and it was 

 considered a poor year when boys of the High 

 School wo/i less than five open scholarships at the 

 universities. The new cricket ground in Map- 



237 



