M.M.S. Magazine - December 1956

There are eight library monitors and two are on library duty every week. They are there to stamp books and keep the library tidy. They are also there to keep quiet and order in the library.
The librarians are: Valerie Unsworth, Christine Buckingham, Christine Shackleton, Susan Armitage, David Crowther, David Walker, John Shaw, Laurance Whiteley.
There are eight different classes of books in the library, they are: 1, The Fiction Books; 2, History and Travel; 3, Art and Recreation; 4, Useful Arts; 5, Science; 6, The General Cupboard; 7, The Encyclopedia Cupboard; and 8, Teachers' Reference.
About half the children in the school are in the library. About 85 books each week go out. Of these about 60 are fiction and 25 are non-fiction. About 12 books are taken out of the library every day for classroom work.
The magazines we get at school are: The Girl, The Eagle, Children's Newspaper, Geographical Magazines, Popular Gardening, History Today, Studio, Picture Post, Ideal Home, Yorkshire Illustrated, Design, Model Engineer, Wood, Sport.
If books are kept out after the date stamped in the front of them the borrower will be fined.
We have started a new system in the library so that we can keep a daily check on books overdue.

The choir meets every Friday in the last period. We meet in the music room where Mr. Haycock teaches us. The choir consists of boys and girls from all the forms in the school and altogether there are about fifteen boys and about thirty-five girls. We sing all kinds of songs but mostly we sing brisk, gay songs about the country. Just at the moment we are practising descants for Christmas, and also for other occasions that might crop up in the course of the year. The occasions at which we sing are Speech Day, Parents' Meetings and other special occasions. I like being in the choir and was as pleased as Punch when Mr. Haycock told me I was in. In my form, 1A, besides myself there are three girls and three boys in the choir.

There is a period used every Thursday and Friday for Drama activity. Just at the moment we are rehearsing the Nativity play for Christmas.
There are nineteen characters cast in the play with Mr. Besly as producer and myself as assistant producer.
Recently the Drama activity has produced “Robin Hood," and in the past, the Nativity plays each year.
This year we are having an entirely new Nativity play for the first time. It is from one of the old mystery plays which were acted as pageants in the streets.
This particular play is the “Shearman and Taylors" Nativity play.
It is written in verse and therefore considerably harder to both say and learn.
The play is to be given around Christmas time and we are hoping it will be a great success.

At the beginning of this term Mr. Haycock (the music teacher) thought that it would be a good idea if he started a violin class. He said that he would like mostly first forms, but he would have a few second formers as well. There are about eighteen in the class and already nine have got violins. Mr. Haycock is trying to get the others theirs. We have only had a few classes, but already we have learnt how to pluck two tunes. They are “Every weekday, Mary Jane“ and "Baa, baa, black sheep." Now we are learning to play those tunes with the bow. In Form 1A there are six of us in the violin class. There are three girls, Patricia Leetham, Linda Exley and myself. There are three boys, David Marsden, Ian Tattershall and Tony Sykes.

On Tuesday, 14th September, we went on a visit to the Clinic at Ings Grove Park, Mirfield.
The first thing we saw was the mothers waiting for their babies to be weighed.  First of all the mothers took off the heavy parts of the babies' clothes and put them into a little basket at the side of the chair.
The nurse then laid the baby in a kind of basket balanced on the weighing scales. The nurse told the mothers the weight of the baby and compared it with the weeks before and then wrote it down on a card. Afterwards if the mothers wanted to, they went through to see the doctor.
After we had seen the babies being weighed we went to where the food was sold. At the food counter orange juice, cod liver oil, Ribena and cereal are sold. Mothers get these things cheaply.
Next we went and saw the doctor look at the children and babies. He gave them injections for whooping cough and diphtheria. There are four injections for whooping cough and two for diphtheria. There was a little girl that came in for she had fallen and was limping so the doctor bandaged it up for her. After he had seen the babies and children he wrote a few lines on their cards to say if they were all right or if there was anything wrong with them.

On Thursday, September 13th, Form 4S of Mirfield Modern School went on a very interesting visit to the Dewsbury Reporter Office.
The assistant editor, Mr. Robinson, met us on our arrival and showed us round the works.
First of all he showed us the Linotype machine, the 1948 model, which has a form of typewriter attached. This machine was very complicated and it stamped out letters and figures on to strips of metal. The machine was operated by one man.
The strips of type were then arranged into columns with various photographs and advertisements and made into a page.
The man dealing with the page made sure all the letters were straight then he put a big sheet of paper which consisted of two tissues, two blotters and one cardboard over the page and beat it on to the letters of type which made an impressino on the sheet of paper.
The page was then put under the press which was heated with Bun ten burners. Because it had pictures on, the page had to be under the press for twenty minutes otherwise it takes less time.
When the page came out of the press the print was taken downstairs and put into a machine. Molten metal was poured in and it was left to set. This then made a mould.
The various moulds were then placed on the printing machine and 200 papers per minute were run off. The rolls of paper they use for printing the newspapers are 3½ miles long.
Altogether they print 24,000 copies per week and in doing this use 72lbs. of ink.
The Dewsbury Reporter was established 98 years ago in 1858. At the office they have kept a record of the papers and they have them dating from 1858 right up to 1956.

On Tuesday, the 2nd October, we visited the Ambassador works at Brighouse. We all started in the showrooms where all the TV, radios and tape recorders were on show. Then we went into the designing room where some men and women were designing a radio on a big drawing board. Then we went next door where the transmitter was, there was a man testing a tape recorder. Then we went downstairs into the works where women were soldering wires together and also men were testing for the different channels, one woman out of every ten would be cutting little bits of wire to be soldered. We went in the stores where tons of wire were stocked then up some stairs which brought us into the sawing mill where the plywood was sawn to a standard size for cabinets, for Ambassadors make their own and it's a big saving. Then we missed a stage where the cabinets were assembled because it was a break and a man was spraying all the cabinets next door. Five men were French polishing the cabinets. Then we saw two girls putting transfers on the cabinets. Next, we went in a department where tubes were fitted in. To spend the rest of the time, our guide let us take a look round the store where all the finished products were. Then we slowly made our way through the works to the reception hall where our two parties met. We thanked the man for conducting us round. There are about twenty stages. Their newest TV has a 21in. screen and costs £109. John Logie Baird was the first man to make a TV and he put Britain in the lead before the war. But America and ourselves have worked on it and have come up to date with a 21in. screen. The Ambassador Radio Co. have recently joined up with Messrs. Baird Ltd.

The nursing exhibition was held at Morley Town Hall and was given by Batley Hospital.
When we went into the Town Hall the Sister greeted us and explained what the exhibition was for. She told us it was to encourage young girls to take up nursing as a career. The first thing she showed us was a model of a ward with a few beds and nurses and on the top of the model it said, “Come and help us."
CASUALTY. The Sister then took us to a cubicle named Casualty, there we saw a stretcher and table with wooden and metal splints, and different kinds of bandages. The Sister explained to us what the various bandages were used for.
OPERATING THEATRE. The next cubicle we went in was named Operating Theatre. In it were all kinds of instruments which they use when operating. There was a bed which you could make go up and down to where the doctor wanted it. There was also a trolley with needles, scissors and cotton wool.
WARD. In the ward we saw a dummy patient having a blood transfusion. The patient was laid in a bed and had a needle in his arm attached to a long tube which was taking the blood from the patient into a jar by the side of the bed.
Then we saw an oxygen tent with a baby in it, it was just an ordinary bed with a waterproof tent on it. At each side it had slits so that the nurse could feed the baby. Over the top of the baby was a green cylinder from which the oxygen comes.
X-RAY PLATES. On the X-Ray table there were plenty of X-Ray plates, which had been taken from patients at Batley Hospital. We could hold any of the X-Ray plates up to the light.
HANDICRAFT. On the handicraft table there were all sorts of things that the patients had made, there were handbags, woven mats and weaving looms. They make these things to keep their fingers going if they have had something wrong with them.
SCHOOL ROOM. In the centre of the room there was a sort of a school room with desks and chairs for the students, and then a desk for the teacher. On the desks there were different books about bones of the body.
On the next tables there were different kinds of spirits and chemicals which they used, there was also a methylated spirit lamp and different kinds of lamps.
On the next table there was the food which patients eat. On a table further on were models of the ear and eye.
Finally we talked to the Sister about what we had seen and then went home taking some pamphlets with us.