Tony Money, the archivist of Radley College, confirmed that WGB had not been a full student at the college, but a servitor.
Servitors were drawn from the lower class ‘which sadly requires improvement’. Although put through a ‘privileged curriculum’, they performed ‘domestic duties as servants in addition to being trained as choristers and given a religious education. Food, lodging and clothing was provided. They seem to have been regarded as somewhat inferior to students, as they are listed after the students but before the maidservants. A description of ‘five little naked Irish boys’ arriving at the school confirms that the servitors were certainly not children of wealthy families — if they had families at all.
Tony Money, archivist, very kindly send me a copy of an entry from the records of St Peter’s College, Radley, for April 4, 1852. On that Palm Sunday, 25 students, 10 servitors, and two maidservants were confirmed by the Bishop of Oxford. All of them received their First Communion on the following Sunday, Easter Day. WGB appears 4th from the end. He was then aged 14.
In a letter written to a Mr Hope — who seems to have been making enquiries on behalf of my father — on 2 December 1937, the Rev. Arthur Sewell, aged 97, a nephew of the founder of the school, wrote ‘the relatives with whom he was living would be responsible’ for his attendance at the school. We don’t know if he was living with his widowed mother, but we do know that his great-uncle James Barratt, master joiner of Newark, was still alive. His grandfather Thomas Barratt, bookbinder of Oxford, might still have been alive — he married Sophia Sleigh at Longdon, Staffs, in 1813. There was also his aunt Mary Anne Barratt, christened in 1814, who was probably married to Daniel Bird (unconfirmed) by this time.