Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Full download The Earl, the Kings, and the Chronicler: Robert Earl of Gloucester and the Reigns of Henry I and Stephen Robert B Patterson file pdf all chapter on 2024
Full download The Earl, the Kings, and the Chronicler: Robert Earl of Gloucester and the Reigns of Henry I and Stephen Robert B Patterson file pdf all chapter on 2024
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-oxford-history-of-the-third-
reich-2nd-edition-earl-ray-beck-professor-of-history-robert-
gellately/
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-companion-and-the-earl-rose-
pearson/
https://ebookmass.com/product/in-the-eyes-of-the-earl-kristin-
vayden/
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-companion-and-the-earl-a-
regency-romance-pearson/
The Culmination: Heidegger, German Idealism, and the
Fate of Philosophy Robert B. Pippin
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-culmination-heidegger-german-
idealism-and-the-fate-of-philosophy-robert-b-pippin/
https://ebookmass.com/product/kings-and-queens-of-england-lives-
and-reigns-from-the-house-of-wessex-to-the-house-of-windsor-
peter-snow/
https://ebookmass.com/product/luke-the-chronicler-the-narrative-
arc-of-samuel-kings-and-chronicles-in-luke-acts-mark-giacobbe/
https://ebookmass.com/product/healing-the-earl-rose-pearson/
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-culmination-heidegger-german-
idealism-and-the-fate-of-philosophy-first-edition-robert-b-
pippin/
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/12/18, SPi
T H E E A R L , T H E K I N G S , A N D T H E C H RO N I C L E R
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/12/18, SPi
Frontispiece. Earl Robert and Countess Mabel of Gloucester as Monastic Patrons s.xviin.
The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford, MS Top. Glouc. d. 2, fol. 15r.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/12/18, SPi
RO B E RT B . PAT T E R S O N
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/12/18, SPi
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Robert B. Patterson 2019
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2019
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018946763
ISBN 978–0–19–879781–4
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/12/18, SPi
Preface
This book has emerged from a doctoral dissertation initially directed by Professor
Sidney Painter at The Johns Hopkins University and completed in 1962 after his
death under the supervision of his successor, Professor John W. Baldwin, with the
assistance of Professor Joseph R. Strayer of Princeton University. I put the idea of
a book aside to pursue interests in scribal administrations and their generated
business documents, but continued to hunt for Robert and earldom of Gloucester
material. I was encouraged in these efforts over the years by Professor R. H. C.
Davis of Merton College, whom I first met in Oxford when he was preparing his
edition of King Stephen’s, the Empress Matilda’s, and Henry fitz Empress’s char-
ters. I also never came away from discussions of my work with my friend James
Campbell of Worcester College without some new idea and question to ask of my
material. I profited from the advice of Richard Sharpe about Tewkesbury Abbey’s
charters and am particularly indebted to David Bates, Nicholas Vincent, and
Daniel Power for documentary transcriptions. The virtual explosion of literary and
documentary editions along with scholarly studies of King Henry I’s and Stephen
reigns and of allied subjects from the 1970s along with my accumulated data has
made a full study of Robert an obvious opportunity. Furthermore, some of David
Crouch’s studies have raised some challenging issues about Robert and the testimony
of the Historia Novella about certain Robert-related subjects. Edmund King’s new
edition of the Historia highlighted the Gloucester family’s role, including possibly
Robert’s, in creating its version of the text.
My efforts have been aided by the staffs of the Thomas Cooper Library, University
of South Carolina; The British Library; Department of Coins and Medals, The
British Museum; The National Archives (formerly The Public Record Office); The
Bodleian Library; The Bibliothèque Nationale; the Archives Départmentales du
Calvados; The Wiltshire Record Office; The Bristol Record Office, and The
Gloucestershire Record Office. In particular I am indebted to Michael A. Williams
and Amanda Saville, Queen’s College Library, Oxford; D. J. McKitterick and Joanna
Ball, the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge; Paul Zutshi and Frank Bowles,
Cambridge University Library; Irvine Gray, Brian Smith, and David J. H. Smith of
the Gloucestershire Record Office; Gwyn Jenkins, Daniel Huws, Rhydian Davies,
and Rhianydd Davies of the National Library of Wales; Zoe Stansell of the
Department of Manuscripts, the British Library, Tamsin Mallett of the Cornwall
Record Office; Gaye Morgan of the Codrington Library, All Souls College, Oxford;
and Michael Riordan, Archivist, St. John’s College, Oxford. Funding for my research
trips has been provided by the Research and Productive Scholarship Committee,
University of South Carolina; the National Endowment for the Humanities; and
from the Southern Region Education Board. Periodic hospitality was provided
by H. G. Pitt, David Bates, John and Frances Walsh, James and Baerbel Brodt
Campbell, Robert and Amanda Simpson, Brian and Alison Smith, Christopher
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/12/18, SPi
viii Preface
and Jean Elrington; Sir James Holt, Joseph P. Funke, and the Fellows of Merton
and of Worcester Colleges. Robert Faber, Terka Acton, Stephanie Ireland, Cathryn
Steele, Manikandan Chandrasekaran, Donald Watt, and Edwin Pritchard all have
helped me get this project to press. Lastly, no acknowledgment can do justice to
the many contributions my wife, Ruth Weider Patterson, has made to this book
through her keen interest, encouragement, productive questions, and suggestions.
Columbia, South Carolina
June 2018
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/12/18, SPi
Contents
List of Figures and Acknowledgments xi
Table of Abbreviations xiii
Introduction xv
Genealogical Chart: Robert of Gloucester and the Norman Ducal-Royal Family xxi
Bibliography 207
Maps
1. Robert earl of Gloucester and Normandy 239
2. Significant Anglo-Welsh Demesne and Military Actions Involving
Earl Robert of Gloucester
240
Index241
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/12/18, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/12/18, SPi
Table of Abbreviations
AD Archives Départmentales
ANS Anglo-Norman Studies: Proceedings of the Battle Conferences
BGAS/BGAST Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society Transactions
BIHR/HR Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research/Historical Research
BL British Library
BM British Museum
BN Bibliothèque Nationale
BNJ British Numismatic Journal
Bodl. Bodleian Library
BRS Bristol Record Society Publications
BSAN Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie.
EHR English Historical Review
HSJ The Haskins Society Journal. Studies in Medieval History.
MSAN Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie
NA National Archives (formerly Public Record Office)
NLW National Library of Wales
PRO Public Record Office (now National Archives)
PRS Pipe Roll Society
SRS Somerset Record Society
TCD Library, Trinity College, Dublin
TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
WGAS West Glamorgan Archive Service
Abbreviated titles for sources and secondary works can be found in the Bibliography. Lower-
case Roman numerals following ‘s.’ indicate paleographical dating.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/12/18, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/12/18, SPi
Introduction
Robert (c.1088 × 90; d. 1147), grandson of William the Conqueror and eldest
son of the future King Henry I of England (1100–35), could not succeed his
father because he was a bastard. Instead, as the earl of Gloucester, he helped
change the course of English history by keeping alive the prospects for an Angevin
succession through his leadership of its sympathizers against his father’s successor,
King Stephen (1135–54), in the civil war known as the Anarchy. Although, with
England as a prime example of the dynastic instability plaguing western European
monarchies in the twelfth century, the period more than fulfilled what the term
implies, it also witnessed great cultural developments, in which Robert participated.1
He is one of the great figures of Anglo-Norman history (1066–1154) and for his
many-faceted links to it occupies important niches in the era’s historiography,
from comprehensive political studies of Henry I’s and Stephen’s reigns to the
“Brother Cadfael” novels of Ellis Peters.2 The breadth of his activities has earned
him places in the literature of modern history’s allied fields such as studies of
Norman or Anglo-Norman England;3 government and law;4 art and architecture;5
the Church,6 literacy, literature, and education,7 urban geography,8 social and
economic history,9 numismatics,10 and military history and the chivalric code.11
Indeed, Robert of Gloucester was a twelfth-century Renaissance man.
As part of his plan to make war on King Stephen on behalf of his half-sister’s
claim to the Anglo-Norman throne, Earl Robert added a weapon to appeal to the
litterati by commissioning the great Benedictine scholar William of Malmesbury
to write a history of their times. The result was the Historia Novella, which is an
apologia for the Empress Matilda’s right to the throne and for the earl of Gloucester’s
sponsorship. Anyone attempting a biography of Robert is confronted by the
political persona Malmesbury created of the high-minded baron who, although at
heart loyal to Matilda, had to perform a conditional homage to Stephen out of
necessity until the king gave him grounds to rebel and champion the empress. On
top of that, there is the challenge of dealing with the inherent contradiction of the
Historia’s case for the earl and then of sorting out fact from varieties of distortion
in a mostly reliable work to create a more accurate political Robert.
Malmesbury’s version of current events never became a major part of the corpus
of medieval historical knowledge because for centuries his chief literary successors
mostly ignored the Historia. The major exception, thirteenth-century Matthew
Paris of St. Albans, gave Robert’s so-called conditional oath of fealty to Stephen a
classical flourish: “As long as you shall maintain me as senator I will support you as
emperor.”12
The chronicler’s account of Robert’s career during the Anarchy became a force
in English historiography during the nineteenth century when history was becom-
ing established as an academic subject. The first critical edition of the Historia
appeared in 1840, the work of Thomas Duffus Hardy, but it was its successor,
edited with commentary for the Rolls Series and published in 1887–9 by the
extremely influential Oxford scholar William Stubbs, ultimately bishop of Oxford,
which exerted the most influence. Stubbs gave the work his complete endorse-
ment, although he recognized its limitations.13 Key elements of the work appear in
9 Stenton, The First Century of English Feudalism 1066–1166; Green, The Aristocracy of Norman
England; Newman, The Anglo-Norman Nobility in the Reign of Henry I: The Second Generation; Crouch,
The Image of Aristocracy in Britain 1000–1300; Crouch, The English Aristocracy 1070–1272: A Social
Transformation; Le Patourel, The Norman Empire; Bates, The Normans and Empire.
10 Blackburn, “Coinage and Currency under Henry I: A Review”; Boone, Coins of the Anarchy;
Archibald, “The Lion Coinage of Robert Earl of Gloucester and William Earl of Gloucester.”
11 Beeler, Warfare in England 1066–1189; Hollister, The Military Organization of Norman England;
Morillo, Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings 1066–1135; Gillingham, “Conquering the Barbarians:
War and Chivalry in Twelfth-Century Britain”; Strickland, War and Chivalry: The Conduct and Perception
of War in England and Normandy 1066–1217; War and Society in Medieval and Early Modern Britain.
12 Among annals, Winchester’s, which did use the Historia Novella, contradicted its representation
of Earl Robert’s oath to King Stephen: “Ann. Winchester,” 50; Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora ii. 164
(transl., mine); King, HN (1998), lxviii–lxix, xcv–cvii; see also Chapt. 6, 203. Scribe 24, the author of
the “Margam Annals,” barely used the Historia Novella or mentioned little concerning Robert even
though the abbey possessed a copy and was the earl’s foundation: Patterson, “The Author of the
‘Margam Annals’: Early Thirteenth-Century Margam Abbey’s Compleat Scribe,” 198–9; Patterson,
The Scriptorium of Margam Abbey and the Scribes of Early Angevin Glamorgan, 92–3; see also Chapt. 6,
203 and Figure 6.1.
13 See, e.g., Maitland, “William Stubbs, Bishop of Oxford,” 420; Patterson, “William of Malmesbury’s
Robert of Gloucester,” 983–4.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/12/18, SPi
Introduction xvii
Kate Norgate’s mainly chronicle-based England under the Angevin Kings, and in the
entry for Robert she contributed to The Dictionary of National Biography.14 And
the Historia achieved an enhanced standing through document-verified accounts
used by John Horace Round, the apostle of the new methodology, in his Geoffrey
de Mandeville, even though he found some of Malmesbury’s passages questionable
and partisan.15
For over half of the twentieth century scholars recognized some of Malmesbury’s
faults as a historian, but saw little to criticize in the Historia Novella except bias.16
However, I was moved to probe the text further by H. W. C. Davis’s remark that
“no doubt we receive from William of Malmesbury the version of events Robert of
Gloucester desired to be set before posterity.” That led in part to a severely critical
assessment of the Historia and its author in a 1965 article, “William of Malmesbury’s
Robert of Gloucester: A Reevaluation of the Historia Novella,” and a follow-up
piece in 1968 and ultimately to this book.17
Before the year was out, the first publication of Stephen’s, Matilda’s, her husband’s
and son’s acta in Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, volume three, edited by
R. H. C. Davis challenged me to rethink some of my former positions.18 David
Crouch’s full-length study of the Anarchy, The Reign of King Stephen (1970), a full-
scale revisionist piece by Joe Leedom, “William of Malmesbury and Robert of
Gloucester Reconsidered” (1974), and Crouch’s partly supportive, partly critical essay
of 1985, “Robert of Gloucester and the Daughter of Zelophehad,” gave added
impetus. Warren Hollister’s 1975 article, “The Anglo-Norman Succession Debate of
1126: Prelude to Stephen’s Anarchy,” enhanced the image of Earl Robert as a Matilda
loyalist during the late 1120s. And then you could not read Rodney Thomson’s
William of Malmesbury (1970) and not wonder how my vintage 1965 image of the
historian could exist side by side with the scholarly polymath of 1970. Marjorie
Chibnall’s The Empress Matilda (1991) showed model subtlety in handling both
criticism and implicit endorsement of the Historia Novella’s testimony on a case-
by-case basis. Several interpretations of passages particularly benefiting Robert’s
image by David Crouch in The Reign of King Stephen and Edmund King in his new
edition, William of Malmesbury Historia Novella: The Contemporary History (1998),
were encouragements to expand the topic of Robert’s literary patronage to include
his likely direct or indirect role as one of Malmesbury’s sources. King’s Introduction
also was both resource and foil for my thinking about the alteration of the text of
14 Stubbs, William of Malmesbury, GR i and ii. cxli–cxlii; Gordon-Keltner & Millican, “Norgate,
Kate,” 9; Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings i. 270–1 & n., 274, 294 & n. Norgate, “Robert,
Earl of Gloucester,” 1242–4.
15 Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, e.g., 11, 61, versus 22, 69, 115.
16 Galbraith, “Historical Research in Medieval England,” 17, 23; Darlington, Anglo-Norman
Historians, 9; Southern, “Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing: The Sense of the
Past,” 253–6; Gransden, Historical Writing i. 183.
17 Davis, “Henry of Blois and Brian Fitz Count,” 297; Patterson, “William of Malmesbury’s Robert
of Gloucester: A Reevaluation of the Historia Novella,” 983–97; Patterson, “Stephen’s Shaftesbury
Charter: Another Case against William of Malmesbury,”487–92.
18 Regesta iii, esp. no. 898.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 06/12/18, SPi
the Historia Earl Robert received and production of the codex containing a copy
of the work later sent to Margam Abbey.19
Contrary to my former views, Robert was loyal to Matilda during the last decade
of his father’s reign, but certainly not immediately following the king’s death. The
earl also may have had grounds before late May 1138 for believing that Stephen was
attempting to seize at least some of his estates.20 Furthermore, evidence of Robert’s
involvement with the Angevins before he led Matilda to England in 1139 is even
stronger than I formerly claimed.21 Malmesbury, however, is still open to criticism
for omitting Robert’s abandonment of his oath to Matilda and recognition of
Stephen as king in the winter of 1135.22 Nor did William mention the loss of the
earl’s place at court to Waleran of Meulan and the king’s favoritism toward his
family, which were motives for Robert’s retraction of fealty to Stephen.23 William is
accountable to some degree for publishing a disingenuous explanation of Robert’s
homage to Stephen. The chronicler falsely claimed that his patron’s service to Matilda
was completely unselfish.24 Some dubious stories like Henry I’s deathbed concession
of Normandy and England to Matilda in Robert’s presence and Stephen’s attempted
abduction of him are more valuable as evidence of the earl’s literary collusion with
Malmesbury than grist for indictments other than for his gullibility. Malmesbury’s
failure to publish the papal injunction Robert conjured up to justify his denial of
fealty may not be William’s fault but Robert’s or a member of his household.25 His
willingness to accept possibly promised material and failure to correct his manuscript
might be excusable because of his failing health.26
William of Malmesbury’s Historia Novella reveals an unabashed propagandist,
but also, as readers of this book will find, a valuable resource for the study of the
Anarchy, reflecting a range of virtues found in his other works. Malmesbury also
deserves credit for what may be considered the only contemporary biography of
his patron and special respect for striving to complete his commission under
adverse conditions.27
My findings in these topical categories are reorganized in the six following chap-
ters containing aspects of three major phases of Robert of Gloucester’s life, which
I refer to as careers, and of his baronial modus operandi: his youthful grooming
(Chapt. 1); promotion to favored royal counselor, servant, and a specially designed
Introduction xix
earldom (Chapt. 2); aspects of his baronial life (Chapts. 3–4); and his military,
political, and literary sponsorship of Matilda’s succession (Chapts. 5–6).
From all of this material emerges an exemplary post-Conquest baron. In pursuit
of traditional aristocratic goals, Robert and Mabel fitz Hamon more than rectified
her parents’ dynastic failure, which had brought her to the king’s son as her family’s
heiress. Socially and politically enhancing marriages were obtained for several of
their children. But a failure in this regard and in providing an appanage led in part
to Robert’s facing military rebellion from at least one son.28
Robert reveals a range of jurisdictional powers enjoyed by only a tiny minority
of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy. As a Marcher lord in his Welsh honor of
Glamorgan his courts exercised almost complete viceregal powers. Elsewhere, he
enjoyed most major prerogatives of ordinary lordship over tenants. His earldom of
Gloucester, with overlordship of the constable of Gloucester castle, who also was
the county’s sheriff, made him politically dominant in the demesne heartland of
his most valuable English honor of Gloucester.29 To rule and exploit his Norman,
English, and Welsh honors Robert developed an administrative system resembling
the king’s, including a writing-office and staff which Robert’s nephew later as
Henry II found advantageous to raid for his own administration.30 Evidence about
his best-illustrated English honor of Gloucester confounds some long-held notions
about feudal lords and honorial society. The honor was socially and tenurially
diverse. Tenants by knight-service like Richard Foliot and Osbert Eightpence might
be considered burgesses; some of the honor’s barons, holders of multiple knights’
fees, were themselves barons of their own lordships and vassals of lords other than
Robert, including the king.31 Armies Robert mustered also were not limited to
tenants by knight-service.32 The apex of his power was reached not just by being
lord of military tenants, but as leader of an affinity made up of independent lords
who were in some way under his orders. At least during the 1140s independent
lords were minting pennies in Robert’s name on their lands with dies supplied by
his administration.33
As a demesne landlord, Earl Robert was exceptional for the extent of his urban
holdings in England, for his burghal development, and for his patronage of the mer-
chant class. Urban unrest fueled by the increasing wealth and the de facto power it
gave conflicted with the old social order in Western Europe. Robert appreciated
the economic potential of boroughs and gave personal and economic privileges in
return for rents and other revenues and with political savvy made members of his
boroughs’ patriciates trusted councilors like Robert fitz Harding of Bristol.34
Robert of Gloucester, who was at least bilingual in Anglo-Norman French and
Latin, was very much a part of a realm and culture that was in many ways more
Lunch 1¼
This is the new program for a school of eight grades. In the case
of the complete school plant, such as those of the Emerson and
Froebel Schools in Gary, with their twelve grades and their forty or
more classes apiece, the program becomes much more
complicated. But the division of time follows essentially the outlines
given above, the high-school classes resembling the upper grammar
grades’ distribution of time and subjects.
The noteworthy thing about this program, apart from the ingenious
and successful multiple use of the school plant it represents, is the
equable distribution of time between the “regular studies” and the
“special activities.” In the Gary school, the “special work,” more or
less an appendage in the ordinary public school, is as regular as the
“regular work.” Yet the amount of academic work is no less than that
in the ordinary schools. The various fundamental groups are
participated in on equal terms. No subject is slighted, no age is
slighted. The extended school day, which absorbs the “street and
alley time” of the city child, affords ample opportunity for all activities.
No activity is continued long enough to cause fatigue, while the
constant daily cultivation of each activity provides the constant drill
and the thoroughness of training which the ordinary school, with its
short day and crowded curriculum, is compelled to slight. Such a
program seems to be a highly rational distribution of school activities,
as ingenious from the point of view of educational engineering as it is
pedagogically sound. By treating the daily use of the schools as a
public service, the Gary program obtains, for twice the number of
children ordinarily accommodated, twice the number of facilities
ordinarily provided. Each individual is immensely benefited because
all are served. “The only reason why the public—that is, ourselves
collectively—can afford to provide things for each of us individually
that we cannot provide for ourselves privately, is that collectively we
secure a multiple use of the facilities.”
The same principles of administrative economy—an economy
which creates rather than impoverishes—are applied to the yearly
schedule as to the daily program. The Gary authorities find that they
cannot afford to let their plant stand idle two or three months of the
year, and are therefore working toward an all-year school. This effort
coincides with a growing general belief that the long summer
vacations not only demoralize the city child, but are a great waste of
educational influence. At the present time state laws hinder the
completion of the all-year plan. The Gary schools now have ten
months of regular compulsory school, and ten weeks of voluntary
vacation school, but they are working toward an organization of four
quarters of twelve weeks each. This plan was approximated by
Superintendent Wirt in the Bluffton schools before he came to Gary.
Under this scheme pupils are required to attend any three of the four
quarters, attendance in the remaining quarter being wholly voluntary.
In Bluffton it was found that the attendance of the younger children
for the summer quarter was greater than for any other quarter in the
year. With the traditional term organization, many children are
unavoidably absent in the winter on account of sickness and
weather. Under the four-quarter arrangement, however, the allotted
vacation of these children could be so organized as to include this
absence and thus insure thirty-six weeks of schooling. “When people
are given a chance,” says Superintendent Wirt, “it is found that they
do not want to go to school at the same time any more than they all
want to travel at the same time.”
The all-year school would not increase the cost of maintenance.
For with the same number of pupils per teacher, the cost is the same
whether the pupils are all taught together for thirty-six weeks, on the
traditional plan, or whether only three quarters of them are taught at
a time throughout a school year of forty-eight weeks.
The economies which this multiple use of school facilities effects
are so large as to provide ample funds for all the special features of
the Gary plan of education. These savings are in construction, in
operation and maintenance, and in instruction. Savings in
construction alone are very large. Since, under the duplicate-school
plan, two complete schools may be accommodated in one building,
the number of school plants may be greatly reduced. In the light of
the Gary plan, therefore, those cities which are confronted with
problems of school congestion are in the paradoxical situation of
having, not too few buildings, but actually too many. Fewer and
better plants would accommodate their children under the Gary plan.
It must be remembered that the Gary schools at present have
accommodations for many more children than there are children to
use them, and this in spite of a phenomenal growth of population.
The erection of a number of Gary unit plants is less expensive than
the erection of a much larger number of ordinary school-buildings of
the common school type. For the cost of building construction does
not increase in proportion to the size of the building, and large sums
may be saved on the fewer sites required. The diminution in the
number of classrooms in the Gary school plant is a distinct source of
economy, owing to the fact that the classroom is uniformly the most
expensive portion of the school plant. The Gary experience seems to
show that the best and completest unit school plant is also the
cheapest. The plan of having the twelve grades under one roof
avoids the reduplication of expensive equipment in several centers.
And the self-sustaining industrial shops cut off an item of “vocational
training” expense which most cities find almost financially prohibitive.
As for the costs of operation and maintenance, it is obvious that
increasing the size of the school plant makes for economy. The cost
of janitor service, administrative charges, heating, lighting, etc., are
much reduced by consolidation. Nor, in order to effect these
economies, need the size of the school plant be made so large as to
make administration unwieldy. The largest Gary school plant,
operating with all these economies, accommodates only twenty-
seven hundred children, forty children to a teacher, while it is the
intention to reduce the average number of children per teacher to
thirty, and the building capacity to two thousand children.
Finally, the cost per pupil for instruction is decreased by the plan of
specializing and departmentalizing the work, and thus eliminating
overhead charges for supervisors. It should be pointed out again that
all these economies actually increase the educational efficiencies of
the school.
The figures show that the Gary school plan does not increase
public expenditures for educational purposes. The Jefferson School,
built before Superintendent Wirt came to Gary, and representing the
common type of modern school-building, was erected at a cost of
$90,000 to accommodate 360 pupils, with 40 pupils per teacher. This
is a per-capita construction cost of $250, a cost exactly equal to that
of a typical New Jersey High School recently erected at a cost of
$125,000, with a maximum capacity of 500 pupils. The capacity of
the Emerson School, constructed as an ideal Gary school plant, is
1800, with 30 pupils to a teacher. Its cost, with a large playground
and the wealth of facilities already described, was about $300,000.
The per-capita cost of construction was therefore $166. At its
maximum capacity, with 40 pupils to the teacher, the per-capita cost
of construction would be only $111, as against $250 for the Jefferson
School, with no facilities. Further tables of comparative costs will be
found in the Appendix.
The funds liberated by the application of these simple economical
principles to public-school finance are so large as to give Gary the
means to provide, as Superintendent Wirt says, “any kind of a school
desired.” Extraordinarily complete educational and recreational
facilities may be furnished for all the people all the year round.
Money is thus provided for an evening school for adults on an almost
unprecedented scale. The Gary evening schools, held in the four
largest school plants, four evenings a week throughout the regular
school year from 7 to 9.30 P.M., have an attendance over two thirds
that of the regular day schools. The cost of the evening school is
only thirteen per cent of the day-school cost.
The evening schools of Gary resemble a people’s university.
Practically every study authorized by state law is given, and the
bulletin of courses is like a university catalogue. All the shops,
laboratories, studios, and classrooms are thrown open, either to
repeat the day studies or to present more advanced work. All the
work, industrial and academic, is open on equal terms to men and
women. During 1914-15, 4300 students, representing all classes in
the community, are said to have been enrolled in the Gary evening
schools, with an average monthly enrollment of 3103. Over two
thousand of the nine thousand voters at the last city election were
said to be enrolled in the Gary evening schools. There are said to be
more men over twenty-one attending evening schools in Gary than
there are boys of all ages attending the day schools.
The Gary evening schools in the last year have achieved an even
closer articulation of the work of the day and evening schools. A
large number of short-unit courses were offered for busy men and
women who wished particular branches of certain studies, and who
could not remain in school to pursue their studies in the usual way. It
has also been arranged to connect into group units the studies that
bear upon a given industrial occupation, so that the school may
correlate directly with all the occupations of the community, and the
adult worker may come and secure the additional experimentation or
theory which will help him in his work.
In addition to this instruction offered in academic and industrial
work, to the evening pupils is given free use of the gymnasiums,
pools, playgrounds, etc. The playgrounds are artificially lighted so
that games may be played successfully at night. Playgrounds and
swimming-pools are open on Sundays also, and the auditoriums for
lectures, moving pictures, community forums, and the like. All
wholesome social gatherings and entertainments are welcomed any
evening of the week. The auditoriums are freely lent for political
meetings, conferences, meetings of neighborhood or other private
associations. The Gary school plant thus becomes in the fullest
sense a social or community center. The “wider use of the school
plant” here involves almost the widest possible use in the interests of
all classes of the population; for the lavish Gary school plants
contain equipments which serve the needs not only of children, but
of all classes of adults as well, from the well-to-do woman who
wishes to learn French to the sheet-metal worker in the mills.
By using the schools as a public service, the Gary educational
authorities are thus able to provide for all the people facilities at no
more expense than other communities are paying now for meager
opportunities which do not even meet the needs of the children,
while they leave the majority of adults entirely uninfluenced by the
schools. “The private exclusive use of public-school facilities has
meant and will continue to mean,” says Superintendent Wirt, “that all
of the people collectively can provide for only a part of their number.”
The Gary school is evidently a genuine “public school” in a sense
more “public” than is generally known. In many communities the
public school is “still the old private school publicly supported.”
School boards often act as if they were trustees of private property.
They gravely discuss “wider use of the school plant” as if this were
some gracious extension of privilege instead of a public right. The
public in many communities scarcely feel yet that the schools are
their own. The Gary schools seem to have produced a different
spirit. They are public in the same broad sense that streets and
parks are public. They are used with the same freedom and lack of
reserve. In such a community and such a school education would
never be finished. Just as there is no break between common school
and high school in the Gary plan, so there need be none between
child and adult. The child would not “graduate,” “complete his or her
education,” but would tend to drift back constantly to the school to
get the help he or she needed in profession or occupation, or to keep
on enjoying the facilities which even the wealthy private home would
not be able or willing to afford. It is toward such a public educational
ideal that the Gary plan seems to work. Toward this all the
economies and ingenious schemes of organization are directed—
toward making the public schools veritable “schools of the public.”
V
ORGANIZATION