School for Young Ladies

14/07/1855

Information

The following notice appeared in the Peterborough Advertiser:

The MISSES STRICKLAND RESPECTFULLY inform their Friends and the Public that they intend opening a School after the Midsummer Vacation, for the instruction of young Ladies. With hopeful confidence they solicit a share of public patronage, assuring their friends that every effort will be used for advancement of the pupils entrusted to their charge. The First Quarter will commence on Monday July 16th 1855. TERMS - Young Ladies are Boarded and Instructed in Writing, Arithmetic, Geography, History etc., at £18 18s per annum. Day pupils: 10s 6d per quarter. Laundress: Two Guineas per annum. A Quarter's Notice previous to the removal of a young lady. Each young lady to be provided with a pair of sheets, a fork and spoon, which will be returned on their leaving. 34 Cowgate Street, Peterborough.

Taken from The Peterborough Book of Days by Brian Jones, The History Press, 2014.

Search and filter

Objects

Archaeology
Art
Costume
Geology
Natural History
Records
Social History
Treasure

Locality

Local
Global
National

Old Scarlett

1594

Information

‘Old Scarlett’ was Robert Scarlett, parish sexton and gravedigger throughout the Tudor period. He lived to the prodigious age of 98, dying in 1594, married twice and buried Katharine of Aragon and Mary, Queen of Scots inside the Cathedral.

Amongst the hundreds of people that Scarlett buried during his lifetime was one ‘Edward the Foole’, a native of Crowland by birth and former court jester to King Henry VIII, laid to rest here in 1563. As was common practice at the time, and to allow for more burials in an already packed graveyard, the skeleton would have been exhumed some years later and the bones reburied in stacks. The image of an elderly gravedigger exhuming a royal jester’s skull might have stuck in the head of a Peterborough schoolboy, John Fletcher, the son of the then Cathedral Dean. Fletcher went on to become a noted Elizabethan playwright and worked with Shakespeare, even co-writing three plays with him, including the aforementioned ‘Henry VIII’. Is it possible that Fletcher may have suggested this scene to Shakespeare? Unfortunately ‘Hamlet’ was written between 1599 and 1601, and we have no evidence that the two men met until at least five years later, but it’s a tantalising thought nonetheless!

Shakespeare , Mary Queen of Scots , Katherine of Aragon , Edward the Fool

Please rotate your device

School for Young Ladies

14/07/1855

Information

Search and filter

Time periods

Themes

Significant Events

People

Buildings

Objects

Decades

Curriculum Subjects

Places

Locality

Old Scarlett

1594

Information

Related stories

Links