I’ve been doing some further research regarding Blanche Elizabeth Young (1856-1891) who was approved as a candidate at the Royal Naval Female School, Isleworth in 1868 and was there until at least 1871.
According to TNA catalogue I found that the Local Studies Library at Hounslow held the following record:
Royal Naval Female School, Isleworth
GB/NNAF/C2823
1868-1875: ledger
I contacted them to see if it held any relevant information and received the following response:
…this is an isolated document that at some point became separated from the school’s records, remained in Isleworth after the school had left the area, and found its way to us. The ledger records payments received by the school in date order, with a page every month summarising school expenditure during the month. Entries are made in columns under headings such as Subscriptions; School Fees; Donations; Chapel Fund etc. Only minimal information (rank or title, initials, surname) for those paying money to the school is recorded in the ledger, against their payments.
I have paged through the period late-March 1868 – January 1870 to see what might be in it that could be of use to you.
Several pages for the summer of 1869 have been torn out and are missing – perhaps by the child who has pencilled the words ‘Roten book an’t it cock’ on a page for March 1869. Several other pages are torn and damaged, but not actually removed from the book.
I spotted a small number of ‘Young’ entries while I was paging through the book, none before the first date given below:
20 Feb [should be Jan. – two pages have been described as February but are found in the middle of an otherwise sequentially correct January date sequence] 1869: R M Young; Annual Subscription; £1/1/0.
17 April 1869; Miss Young; School Fees; £4/15/0 [I take the name given here to be a reference to the pupil not the fee payer]
1 October 1869; Miss Young; School Fees; £7/15/0
7 January 1870; Lady Young; Annual Subscription; £1/0/0
19 January 1870; Misses (plural this time)Young; School Fees; £7/15/0
I hope that the above will give you some idea of the potential usefulness or otherwise of this document. Reading through it all and looking for entries in the name ‘Young’ would certainly take me a couple of hours and our charge for such research on behalf of a remote enquirer is £27.00 per hour. I am sure that you understand how thinly staffed we are and that I have many other calls upon my time.
My understanding is that in 1976, when Philip Unwin wrote a history of The Royal Naval School, the school still had a substantial archive of old records. I cannot say whether it still has them and cherishes them, or whether they have now gone to a County Record Office. The School left Isleworth/St. Margarets during the blitz of 1940, after experiencing some bomb damage. It is now part of the Royal School, in the Farnham/Hazlemere area.
Definitely something to add to my ‘to do’ list!
