Education: Jimmy’s

Cramming schools, which are not mentioned in polite academic society, often include brilliant teachers and teaching.* British education also has its cramming crypts. The most famed, and hoarier than many U.S. colleges, is “Jimmy’s” of London (Carlisle & Gregson, Ltd.), which last week was cramming young men for the British medical examinations. As usual, Jimmy’s confidently expected to get 90% of them through.

For 70 of its 80 years, Jimmy’s has occupied great, dreary, genteel Kensington House at 5 Lexham Gardens. Its ponderous Victorian interior—dark red wallpaper and funereal furniture—is still lit and heated by gas. Among the 20,000 rack-brained heads that have bent over their notebooks in Jimmy’s gaslight was Winston Churchill’s. In 1893 he “swotted” at Jimmy’s for Sandhurst. The headmaster said that Churchill was “able enough, but his mind strayed to other interests, was brilliant at history but sluggish in mathematics and science.” The French master wanted Churchill thrown out. But he stayed on and passed his examinations. Other celebrated alumni of Jimmy’s include two living British Field Marshals, Lords Gort and Ironside; Prince Arthur of Connaught; the Duke of Gloucester; the late Field Marshals Lords Haig and French.

Jimmy’s was founded by one Dr. Frost; its nickname came from a subsequent, highly successful Army examination tutor, Captain Walter James, Royal Engineers. Today the school is headed by benignly sharp Daniel A. Ruddle, who has been its scientific tutor for 30 years and would make an impressive stand-in for Mr. Chips. The school at present concentrates on the extremely stiff examinations for the medical profession, Navy cadetships, Royal Marines and Royal Indian Navy. After the war, however, Mr. Ruddle expects to offer, as before, the highest type of abbreviated preparation for university examinations, including honors finals, and the civil service exams.

Mr. Ruddle would not call it cramming. Says he: “We study our pupils carefully and give special coaching on the weakest subjects. No tutor ever has more than four or five pupils so that he can give them all individual attention. . . . This is the secret of our success.”

* Examples (curtailed or closed for the duration): Harvard’s Wolf School; Yale’s Milford; Princeton’s Hun; Washington, D.C.’s Roudybush Foreign Service School, which crams many candidates for U.S. posts; the New York State bar examination cram given for 29 years by famed Manhattan attorney Harold R. Medina and taken by many graduates of the best U.S. law schools.