Common Room meeting
Agreed to advertise for a French Master. The Meeting so far, I suppose, satisfactory, but in other respects, far from it. The Warden announcing his intention to take the Lower 4th himself entirely. This will be a very bad thing I am sure. If the Lower 4th have no systematic work, it will eat out the core of the school. Well, we can’t help it. It is a pity too for Barber’s sake. He will thrown away on the 1st. No arrangement could be made for the Unplaced

William Wood’s Diary 1855-1861, ed. by Mark Spurrell, is available from Oxfordshire Record Society. These excerpts are presented to give a flavour of life at Radley in the 1850s