The Old Grammar School, Hull. Built 1583.

Girls were then not considered to need any more education than that which they could get at home. To know how to cook a meal, to make wool into cloth, and to make cloth into clothes—what more was it possible for girls to learn? These very useful lessons they could learn at home. A few specially favoured girls of high birth were probably brought up and taught book-learning in some of the nunneries of the East Riding; but of this there are no records.

The first endowed school for girls as well as boys was founded in 1655, and from this date onward numerous girls’ schools came into existence. Some of these were styled Boarding Academies for Young Ladies; others of a humbler nature were known as Charity Schools.

One of the latter was that founded by Alderman Cogan at Hull in 1753. This provided clothing and instruction for twenty poor girls, each of whom could remain at the school for three years. The number of girls was afterwards increased to sixty. They wore white straw bonnets, brown merino frocks, and blue cloth cloaks, all trimmed with orange. The Cogan Charity School still flourishes, but the old-time charity costume is no longer worn.

Several old charity schools formerly existed in the towns of the East Riding. Bridlington had a Spinning School in which twelve poor girls were taught ‘carding, spinning, and knitting.’ Beverley had its Blue-Coat School for boys, a school afterwards amalgamated with the Grammar School; and three other Spinning Schools were in existence in Hull at the close of the eighteenth century.

Photo by][Turner & Drinkwater
The High School for Girls, Bridlington.
(Founded 1905).

Of the same class is the Marine or Navigation School belonging to the Hull Trinity House. This, founded in 1786, now provides board, clothing, and education for about 150 boys, who are intended for a sea-faring life. So valuable is the education they receive in all that belongs to a sailor’s life, that each of the ‘white-ducked’ boys is said to ‘carry a captain’s certificate in his pocket’ when he leaves the school.