THE SAGA OF EDGAR HASSALL Another bedtime story for a quiet moment. There were lots of rumours about Edgar Hassall when I arrived at KETC to begin my secondary education in late January 1953. The word quickly went about, spread by more senior pupils, “better hope you don’t get Hassall for maths, he’s awful.” The best rumours about him were (a) he was an escaped Nazi and (b) that a day-school apprentice pupil had become so incensed with him one Saturday morning he hung Hassall out a top floor window of the main building by his braces. We didn’t have Hassall the first year, but you saw him around. Small middle-aged man, always tidily dressed in tweed sports coat and natty trousers. He carried his large head erect, his mouth firmly closed, a faint smirk on his face as if he knew something that nobody else did and walked briskly, with a kind of detached arrogance, looking straight ahead and ignoring those around him. His hair was grey and closed cropped top and sides. My luck changed in my second and third years — he became my Maths teacher. He operated from a small, narrow room on the top floor and he ruled it by fear. He shouted, stormed, stamped his feet and his speech was accompanied by flecks of spit. He was awful. There was an incident in my third year. He did prescribe a lot of homework, but I accepted that as a matter of Hassall’s way of doing things. By now my parents had the shop at Brighton and I was pretty much left to my own educational devices. They never asked about school, nor about homework. The seven days a week, 15 hour days in the shop were enough. Midway through my third year, before the class got started, Hassall singled me out — “Dick! Go outside into the corridor and wait for me!” he commanded. I was puzzled, because he had never directly addressed me before. I waited for 20 minutes before he came outside. He stood directly in front of me and berated me for five minutes, spitting and spluttering. “What do you mean going behind my back, you coward. Complaining to your parents about too much homework. They have come to the school. You sneaky little boy. Why not come to me. . . On and on he wet. I was dumbfounded. My parents had never questioned my homework, I had never complained to them and I wasn’t aware they had been to school. I thought this was really odd. What was going on? Then he was silent. “Well, what have you got to say for yourself!” I tried to explain that I had no idea what he was talking about. “Apologise to me. Say you are sorry to me,” he screamed in what today would be a perfect take off Basil Fawlty. His voice rising to a shriek — he stamped his foot — “Apologise to me, do you hear.” I muttered — “Sorry Sir”. “That’s better. Now continue standing to attention here.” So I stood to attention, looking like a dork outside until the end of the lesson. Only then did he bring me in, and after handing out homework, stared directly at me and said to the class — “If you think that’s too much homework, tell me, don’t go complaining to your parents like a scared little coward.” I was totally confused, but didn’t want to embarrass my parents by asking, just in case it was true. I waited for a year before asking — they didn’t have the faintest idea what I was talking about! I didn’t think they had. Hassall had got the wrong person. But was he an escaped Nazi? No, of course not. And was he hung out the window? No, it’s an urban myth that has taken on Real Proportions. Here’s why. 1. The story, in true urban myth style has several variations about who, where, when and how. They are all different. 2. The windows on the top floor were too small and too high to get a struggling (assuming he wasn’t going quietly) man up off the floor and out the window. The widows also don’t open wide enough. 3. Braces wouldn’t be strong enough to hold a grown man — and you’d virtually have had to undress Hassall to have got at his braces. 4. Had it happened, there would have been criminal charges and it would have been in the papers. 5. The person who is alleged to have done this would have been such a hero that someone would have, down the years, been able to name him. His name would have gone down in history. So, nasty bastard that Hassall was, this didn’t happen, no matter how much you think you know someone who was involved . . . Great story though.
Posted on: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 00:05:24 +0000
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