Miss Urith Dent

1889-1970

There will be many of our senior citizens who still remember Miss Dent, the highly respected headmistress of the old Bourne Junior and Infants Council School in Abbey Road pictured above [now the Abbey Primary Academy] where most of the town’s children began their education.
 
She joined the school in 1927 and soon established a reputation as a strict disciplinarian yet remained fair and just and always ready to listen to anyone with a problem or who needed help. Every school day began at morning assembly with the entire school welcoming her and the staff by chanting "Good morning Miss Dent, good morning teachers", followed by a hymn and prayers and the day’s announcements before pupils trooped off to their various classrooms to begin their lessons.
 
This assessment as a paragon of the classroom, however, is not shared by everyone, particularly some of former pupils who remembered her in later life. One of them, Mrs Jo Lees, now aged 73, remembered her as being “quite old with protruding teeth who was very strict, shouted a lot and carried a cane”, perhaps as a necessary warning to pupils who could be unruly and had even composed a scurrilous ditty about her assistant staff which said: “Please Miss Fenney, can I have a penny to buy Miss Vickers a new pair of knickers.”
 
Another pupil, Leslie Chambers, now aged 78, who attended the school from 1945 to 1950 while living in Eastgate, said that she was not one of his favourite teachers, mainly because she was “free with the cane” but also because she was a bit of a snob. “As with one or two other teachers, if you lived up North Road, Mill Drove or West Road, that was O K but coming from Eastgate then you were definitely out of favour”, he said.
 
Nevertheless, her organisational skills were not in doubt and became evident during the Second World War of 1939-45 when Bourne opened its doors to 900 evacuees who lived in sensitive areas of Britain that were likely to be bombed by enemy aircraft. The children, mainly from Hull, arrived at regular intervals during the first three years of the war and arrangements for their stay were in the hands of the Women's Voluntary Service [the WVS] which established a network of 200 volunteers looking after the town and 28 of the surrounding villages to receive them.
 
All needed school places and for those who came to Bourne that meant the Abbey Road school where space was already short. To keep pace with the arrival of successive waves of boys and girls entailed a complete re-organisation of classes.

The scale of the problem is revealed by the school log books for the period because the entry for Monday 8th July 1940 says: "We are now to work on a double-shift system. It has been decided to arrange a weekly change over. In the 'off' sessions, the various halls in the town are to be used and full use is to be made of the recreation ground and the local football ground for physical training and organised games. Nature walks and educational rambles will also be arranged."
 
Each term brought fresh problems but Miss Dent rose to the challenge with absolute efficiency to ensure the smooth running of her school. At the same time, she took a personal interest in the health and welfare of the evacuees, also helping in their billeting and welfare arrangements and the provision of clothing.
 
As a result of her remarkable achievement, she was awarded the MBE in the New Year Honours List in 1943 and travelled down to London by train for the investiture at Buckingham Palace where she received her award from King George VI, one of only 19 women out of the 300 people who were decorated that day.
 
The problems of coping with the evacuees continued at the school until the end of the war and on 29th May 1945 came the welcome relief with the log book entry which recorded: "In continuation of VE [Victory in Europe] celebrations, all the schoolchildren are being entertained in the Corn Exchange tonight. They will meet at the school at 5.30 pm." Then on June 28th: "Hull evacuees returned to Hull today."
 
Urith Dent was born at Preston, Lancashire, on 6th January 1889, one of three children of Fred and Urith Dent, and after attending school locally she went to the Sheffield Training College to study for a career in teaching, taking up her first appointments in Sheffield, first at the Wincobank School and then Carrsbrook Girls’ School. In 1921, she moved to Lincolnshire after being appointed headmistress of the village school at Dyke where she remained for six years before becoming headmistress of the Bourne Junior and Infants Council School.
 
Miss Dent soon became a familiar figure in the town where her community work was extensive, mainly as secretary of the benevolent and orphan funds run by the Bourne and District Teachers’ Association. She was also in charge of the children’s corner at the Abbey Church, an assistant at the town’s library which was then based at the old National School in North Street and an officer of the Girls Training Corps, an organisation which was formed during the war and run on military lines to teach young ladies the wider aims of citizenship with instruction in home making, craftsmanship and public affairs.
 
She lived at a semi-detached house in West Street (No 41 or 42) with her companion Miss Dorothy Jackson, who also worked at the Abbey Road school where she taught needlework and had accompanied her to London to receive her MBE from the King.
 
After forty-five years of teaching, Miss Dent retired at the end of the summer term in 1954, aged 65, and continued living in Bourne but in March 1970, she was taken ill and died in hospital at Stamford, aged 81. Her house was subsequently sold by her executors for £2,000 but the whereabouts of her medal which was so well earned on behalf of Bourne and the school to which she devoted much of her career is unknown.

WRITTEN AUGUST 2016

NOTE: Miss Dent appears to have been always reluctant to have her photograph
taken and no image of her is known to have survived.

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