I admitted my limitations.
Latterly they ceased to attend. In one parish I saw no member of the Board for ten years, and when it happened that the school got a lower grant than usual, the Board of the adjacent parish reproached the absentees: “Yo shuld ha loonched th’ inspector: our chairman did, and us did well.”
“Most people have their price,” said Walpole, usually misquoted: but mine is not so moderate.
In the ’nineties, as I have said, visits without notice took the place of the field-day inspections, and we lost sight of the country Boards. Then came the great Act of 1902, which abolished all the Boards and made the county or county borough the unit, instead of the civil parish. “These our actors are melted into air, into thin air,” and the name of School Board remains only to the School Attendance Officers, the paidagogoi,[23] who, though they now represent the Education Committees, still keep their old titles among the populace.
Before I close the history, let me append a story in connection with the old triennial elections mentioned above. I read it in a Norfolk paper more than thirty years ago.
There were not fewer than five members in the smallest School Board, and, as the vote was cumulative, there were often ten or twelve candidates for the five, or seven seats. As these elections were frequent, and elections to Boards of Guardians were annual, voters and onlookers were accustomed to a long list of office seekers; and when there was a Parliamentary by-election in a Norfolk division, and the result was posted on the walls, the rustic mind was a little perplexed to find so small a field. There it was in black and white:
| Brown | 3,456 |
| Jones | 2,978 |
| Majority | 478 |
Two yokels gazed at it and wondered.
“I ’xpact thet’s about thet there elaction.”
“Ya-as: there was only tew of un got in, though.”