F.E.C. Gregory's book "The History of Price's School" records....

 

QUIT YOU LIKE MEN" 1908-1934
The Opening years 1908-13

"The School was opened on the 18th day of January 1908 when there were present the Revd. J.E. Tarbat and Mrs. Tarbat, Capt. Ramsay, Col. Atchinson, Mr. Cole, Mr. Dodge, Mr. Batchelor and Mr. Coghlan, also Mr. Bradly (Headmaster) and Mrs. Bradly, Mr.J.H. Hunter (Assistant Master), Mr. Leonard Warner, the Clerk to the Governors, and the following boys: H.W.Jeffery, B.Woods, E.Foster, C.H.Gribble, H.J.E.Pearce, F.E. Swaffield, R.E.Mather, E.J.Coles, R.A.Hunter (brother of Mr. J.H.Hunter), T.Frost, E.G.Giddins, P.G.W.Gibson, A.C.Parsons, W.I. Bartlett, H.V.Bone, L.W.Clifton, E.H.Fry and V.F.Sandy.

 

One of the boys present, T.Frost, has provided a vivid description of this ceremony. He writes, "on the Opening Day the small group of boys stood in a rough line near the school entrance with their backs towards the paling which separated the gravel playground from the school field. I was towards the left of the line and had a good view of Mr. Bradly as he came out of the School House at the Head of the procession. We had been given an Order Paper, and as he passed me I remember that I looked at the Paper and read underneath his name 'Fish Exhibitioner of Queen's College, Cambridge'. I looked ·up at him and wondered what this meant, for -and of this I am sure -it never occurred to me that 'Fish' was the name of a man!"

"We followed the procession into the school, past the cloak and locker room on the right and the first classroom on the left, and entered the second classroom which with the first room formed the school hall when the partition was drawn back. There was no platform and Mr. Bradly stood near the far window at a teacher's desk, I sat in a desk quite near him. I think the proceedings began with the singing of '0 God our Help in Ages Past'. I am sure that towards the end we sang 'Forty Years On' for I remember that we were told that the boarders had been rehearsed before the ceremony."

 

There then followed an address by the Revd. J.E. Tarbat....I was all eyes on Mr.Bradly. He read,and I think we read with him, the passage from 'Ecclesiasticus' beginning, 'let us now praise famous men' ... .I think that very few of my sixty years passed without my recalling his rather shrill voice giving this small group of young boys his first message -'Quit you like men. Be strong'. Looking back, I think he would have liked these words to have been the school motto; I feel sure that it was the basis of his philosophy as a headmaster....