AIBU To Think That The Chalet School Matron Would Be In Prison Nowadays

[TheShellBeach]

..........................for giving unprescribed sedatives to the girls so frequently.

(lighthearted) (in case a million people tell me that IABU)

The Chalet School Matron was forever doling out sedatives to the girls, without even asking Jack Maynard to prescribe them first.
Shocking stuff. Nowadays, she would be jailed and struck off the NMC Register.

Yes, they were occasionally given brandy or schnapps if they were unfortunate enough to be buried in a snowdrift for a while.

I seem to remember that Joey was also given brandy when she fell through the ice while rescuing one of the girls from St. Scholastika's.

Dr. Mensch demanded brandy from Miss Browne once he'd lugged Joey back to St. Scholastika's, and Miss Browne had to confess that they "never kept spirits in the school" - so that suggests that St. Scholastika's wasn't part of the drugs cabal.

And EBD is waaay more interested in the delicate ones. If you’re a sturdy, healthy, jolly-hockey-sticks type, you’re just filler for tubercular Engelkinder like the Robin, or over-emotional, imaginative types like Joey who almost die every time they sit in a draught.

She had some utterly appalling ideas about appropriate parenting, especially fathers. I think she thinks it’s absolutely correct for a father to be so angry with his young child that he can’t trust himself to whip him and sends him away to family for the summer!

@TheShellBeach it’s definitely one of the holiday books and prob a GGB reprint. It’s one of the ones set at the Tiernsee after the Maynards buy the old St Scholastika chalet as a holiday home. At some point before the start of the action, Mike goes over a cliff after something and Joey swoons lengthily, and Jack sends him away as he’s so angry. Really, it’s EBD trying to get rid of most of the Maynard offspring so she can concentrate on the triplets.

It might be the one where Ruey Richardson is first introduced, which is dementedly unintentionally comic. (Ruey is left alone with two brothers in an isolated chalet while their father does space experiments, and when the triplets meet her, their main issue is that she hadn’t made the chalet ‘dainty’ with table cloths and ‘nice touches’!)

Joey and co in the Tirol I think. It’s where the unlikely lost in space story starts.

I think Joey had childhood asthma that she outgrew

There are multiple comments about if she races round she ends up breathless and having coughing fits. Then simple colds go to bronchitis/pneumonia easily. I can totally see in an era without inhalers and steroids for asthma use that she would be 'delicate'

Although admittedly chalet school does seem to have more than its fair share of delicate children even before they pal up with the San.

I also question the wisdom of someone with a delicate chest breezing in and out of the San as an adult visiting patients and nurses.

I’m almost certain she did have asthma.

And yet.................in the same book, Joey falls into a freezing river (and is rescued by Dr. Jem - how is he always, always around when a girl needs rescuing) and Jem rushes her back to the school, flings her into a hot bath, wraps her in hot blankets, takes her temperature and then says to Madge:

"I doubt if she'll even take cold"

I mean - really? She gets pleuro-pneumonia after standing in a draught for a few seconds, but doesn't even get a cold after falling into a freezing river?

EBD had this idea that being cold (from whatever cause) invariably led to various viral and bacterial infections.

Her medical knowledge was very, very poor. Even for the 1920s.

Damitall. That's one I have not yet read. It's on the expensive side, even in the crappy Armada edition.

It's very inconsistent isn't it! I mean as an asthmatic running into a room may or may not give me an asthma attack, but falling into cold water almost certainly would!

I also find it baffling that EBD made Joey outgrow her asthma. It seems she wanted her to be able to dart around here and there without gasping for breath every 5 mins which makes sense. But also wanted her to be delicate enough that her health could still take centre stage when necessary. So she turned her from a relatively centred mentally stable person to someone who would go to bed for days if a child did something naughty

No wonder Jack was dosing her right, left and centre. He wanted some peace and quiet!

I went on a school skiing holiday to the Tirol in 1975. We were given schnapps to warm us up after going tobogganing one evening (that was after 2 boys crashed into a railway bridge on a toboggan in the dark & broke their legs). I realised now that the teachers in charge had been reading the Chalet School books.

(Ruey is left alone with two brothers in an isolated chalet while their father does space experiments, and when the triplets meet her, their main issue is that she hadn’t made the chalet ‘dainty’ with table cloths and ‘nice touches’!)

This must mean that EBD would not be able to use her favourite adjective "pretty" to describe the Richardsons' chalet.

It's maddening. Madge has a "pretty" drawing room. The cretonnes at the CS are "pretty". Miss Linton is "pretty".

FFS it's a bit rich from someone whose fictional schoolmistresses insisted on high standards of written English, and objected to "smashing" being overused.

They were shit-hot at removing outdoor shoes, though, so Mumsnet-compliant in that respect.

I very much doubt that workmen were allowed to use the toilets, either.

It's ages since I've read Jo and co in the Tirol. Is that the one where ruey's elder brother has a swimming race with Joey and ebd comments on his tiny swimming trunks?

Did they even have workmen, though?

Surely Eigen, Jockel and Gaudenz fulfilled the roles of workmen, and presumably were allowed to use the toilets occasionally. I can't remember the name of the gardener when they were in Wales (Evans Evans?) (Or was it Williams Williams?)

Ooh Matron.

Outdoor toilets only, suited to their simple peasant sensibilities, and used under the watchful eye of whatever Madge’s St Bernard was called. You can’t be too careful.

Oh my, yes! Something about him being a fine figure of a man - the sexual tension was sizzling.

I adore this thread.

Does anyone know how it came about that Herr von Francius, the dentist when they were in the Tirol, moved to Switzerland in the later books?

Was it the same thing as Joey moving to be next door to the CS, (and the San doing the same thing)? I mean, did Herr von Francius love the CS so much that he felt it incumbent upon himself to move countries so that he could attend to their collective teeth, every time they moved?

Or was the later Herr von Francius a cousin of the first one? I think we should be told.

I genuinely enjoy reading Jo to the Rescue, one of the earlier holiday books when the triplets are about 3. Such a comfort read. It's when there's a plot about a stolen cello, a spoiled girl called Zephyr, and whatshisface who ends up engaged to Len is first introduced. (He becomes a dr 🤤)

I have often wondered about the book which Vera Smithers had been reading clandestinely when Miss Browne discovered it, and immediately expelled her from St. Scholastika's.

I mean, let's be honest - Vera Smithers was a bit common, wasn't she?
Not a naice girl at all.

EBD never wasted doctors, did she?

They all married CS mistresses, or former pupils, or the daughters of former pupils.

I worked out that Jack Maynard would have been twenty eight when Joey was fourteen. If she was twenty when they married, he would have been thirty four.

Imagine the MN thread about that.

I worked out that Jack Maynard would have been twenty eight when Joey was fourteen. If she was twenty when they married, he would have been thirty four.
Imagine the MN thread about that.

("DD (14) has a boyfriend of 28. AIBU to think that this is obvious paedophilia?")

Ooo, was Thekla involved with this?? Or maybe there's more than one naughty book doing the rounds (hopefully).
Remember Thekla - I think she was a schoolgirl Nazi/German spy.

Jack is creepy AF, but he wasn’t actually her boyfriend until they all escaped from the Nazis, at which point Joey had already left school and was 17ish.

Remember when Miss Wilson's rich chestnut hair turns white overnight after the Nazi escape?