Читать книгу Lost Voices of the Edwardians: 1901–1910 in Their Own Words - Max Arthur, Max Arthur - Страница 94

A lot of the children at our school didn't have birth certificates, so when they reached the age of fourteen, their parents would have to go and swear an affidavit at the solicitor's to say the child was fourteen, and the child would have to swear too. At school one day, one of the girls said, ‘I haven't got a birth certificate, and I've got to go and swear that I'm fourteen.’ So Dinah, this friend of mine, said, ‘Oh, you don't have to worry – all you have to do is, if you're a Christian, you stand up and say, “I swear by the Lord Jesus Christ”, and if you're Jewish, you have to swear another way.’ That's all she said, and she never meant anything derogatory against Jesus Christ. The teacher was out of the room when this happened, but there were two Christian girls there. When we went out to play in the playground, I could see these two girls walking up and down talking, and pointing at Dinah and our little crowd. When we came back, the teacher of the class called Dinah out to the front of the class. ‘How dare you stand up and make fun of Our Lord? We don't make fun of your Rabbis or your Gods!’ and so on. And Dinah was weeping. ‘I didn't mean anything,’ she kept saying, and she didn't, but the teacher wouldn't even let her speak. She was sent out to the headmistress, and then she was sent to apologise to all the English staff of the whole school. She was sent to Coventry. The only one who used to speak to her was myself, and I used to meet her outside school. Sent to Coventry with a year's marks taken away from her.