`Punctuality is the courtesy of kings'.

Memory is a strange thing, and it is difficult to understand where and how happenings of seventy years ago can

be called to mind without effort. I can repeat without hesitation the names on the register in the class when I was

eight years old. There is an hiatus where day dreaming took the place of vigilance, but as my name came last in

alphabetical order, all was well. Here is the list:

Bilbee, Butler, Beresford, Breeze, Culling, Cosh, Dunlop, Elms, Fleming, Gale, Hogg, Humphries, Joy, May ...

Walker, Walling, Welch.

To W.H. Tulk must go the credit for keeping the school up to date in the matter of Science. In 1894 at this

L.C.C. School (as it had become) I was initiated into the wonders of Spectrum Analysis, Newton's Disc,

Photo-Synthesis, Sound, Light, Heat, Magnetism and Electricity, and have been surprised in after life to meet men

who on the surface had received far better training than I, but who had not had so clear a conception of these

elements of scientific research as had then been part of the ordinary syllabus at Keeton's Road School.

The playground of the boys' section was partly open and partly covered, the building above being supported on

rows of pillars. The Surrey Docks was naturally a target for enemy bombers, and in 1940 or thereabouts, about two

hundred rendered homeless by such an attack were shepherded down to take shelter in the covered playground of the

school. That night a direct hit on the school buried that two hundred souls, and not one, so far as I can discover,

escaped. One wing of the school still functions, but the school I knew as a boy is no more. The picture, drawn in

January 1959, shows the condition of the building that remains.

In 1894, when I was fourteen, I left school and sought some form of employment. In after years, when my

parents were not so hard pressed, it was possible to give two of my younger sisters a college training, but although I