From the Archives

The 1916 Tennis team showing the blazer of that period.

The uniforms worn by the boys enrolled in the different parts of the School have changed considerably over the course of thirteen decades. At first, Grammarians were not required to wear any uniform at all, but to dress appropriately as ‘gentlemen’, the stated aim of the School being to produce an end product of “Australian gentlemen”. It was regretted in those early decades that these proto-gentlemen were often involved in skirmishes with less exalted students of state schools when proceeding homewards over the many open fields that bordered Camberwell and Canterbury at that time. Given the absence of a regulated uniform in the first decades of the School, there was a great degree of variety in the wardrobes of the students as the 1890 school portrait shows, but later the growing numbers of pupils were expected to wear the School’s colours (pale blue, dark blue and gold) on their caps (or hats). By the 1920s a school tie was introduced and jerseys, blazers, socks and stockings were available in school colours, but were not compulsory. The blazers, with a plain pocket emblazoned with the initials “C G S”, tended to be worn at the taking of sports photos for the official Magazine in the years that followed its foundation in May 1915. Suits were worn for other portraits and for everyday school wear, and were required to be either blue or grey. When the Graphic of Australia newspaper featured a portfolio of images of “The Boys of Camberwell Grammar” in its series “Melbourne Schools and Their Scholars” in January 1924, the fifteen images portrayed six class groups, sports teams and, of course, “The Principal and The Prefects” – many of the sports images featured boys wearing their school blazers, whilst elsewhere the dark suit was de rigueur with one exception when

A group of Camberwell Grammar ‘gentlemen’ in 1890 dressed in a variety of outfits.

Prefect Ingle Hall (the son of Headmaster Alfred Hall) was pictured standing directly behind his seated father, and wearing a suit of a lighter coloured fabric than normally adorned prefects. Young Ingle often seemed able to bend the rules and was accordingly unpopular amongst his peers, particularly amongst his fellow boarders. In these early years of the School, the ‘school cap’ was considered the one indispensable uniform item used to identify a scholar of Camberwell Grammar both at home and when travelling overseas – in late-1922, for example, the ‘School Cap’ was proudly worn and pictured at Pompeii. The Archives contain and conserve a number of these items, but I have recently received a donation from Mrs Bridget Jaboor of material sourced from Old Boy Paul Jaboor (1952), who enrolled at Camberwell Grammar in Term 2, 1944 as a five-year old resident of Balwyn. His school portrait showed him in his sparkling new uniform of grey suit, school tie and (the donated) iconic school cap. This donation is the best example of an early school cap contained in our Archives. Paul, an only child, later proceeded to Geelong Grammar as a boarder in 1946, having completed Form I at Camberwell. His father, George, was a noted publisher of Australiana through his firm of Georgian House Pty Ltd and Paul followed his father into book publishing, distribution and retailing for his entire working life. Paul’s two sons, Marcus (1989) and Jonathan (1997), both attended Camberwell Grammar.

The Jaboor donation also included Paul’s Preparatory School Report Book for the year 1944. I have mentioned earlier that such reports are a valuable primary source for the history of the School and they make absorbing reading. Paul was

Paul Anthony Jaboor ready to enter the Prep School, February 1944.

one of twenty-two boys in his 1944 class and it was noted by Headmaster Tonkin that the boy possessed ‘good manners’. Arithmetic was his best subject (90% average) and he was pleasingly assessed in some other subjects that have since disappeared from the curriculum such as ‘Word Building’, ‘Handwork’ and ‘Mental’ (a subject apparently related to Arithmetic). Paul was commended as a ‘neat and conscientious worker’. Judging from his portrait, he was also a very neat dresser and it is unlikely that many of his peers were as well turned out in 1944 during that frugal period of wartime.

Dr David Bird

School Historian and Archivist

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