William Crompton

Born in 1843, Crompton was a product of the famous Winchester College in England and a graduate of Oxford University, attending Balliol College. He is also said to have been a grandson of Samuel Crompton (1753-1827) the inventor of the Crompton spinning mule.

One Old Boy recalled of Crompton:

Being … an Old Boy of Winchester College (England), his admiration and esteem for his old school was so great that a certain poem extolling Winchester was invariably given to his class to learn as an aid to memory training. The “poetry”, I believe, consisted of some hundred or so verses, but as I do not know of one pupil who was successful in learning the whole of it, I may be understating its length. It was of such great assistance in training the memory that I do not now even remember one line!

He came first in the Indian Civil Service classical examination in 1870. However, he drifted to Brisbane where he spent 10 years at Brisbane Grammar School before coming to Sydney first to join the staff of Sydney Girls’ High School in December 1886 and then the staff of Sydney Boys’ in October 1887. He became first assistant master after the resignation of J G Legge in 1890.

A fellow master, G P Barbour had this to say about Crompton:

Another interesting but more erratic personality was Crompton, with more ability than ballast. He came from England at middle age, [and] was first put up among the Gods or Goddesses of the top floor - the Girls’ High held the upper regions, the mere males the lower. Crompton was no mean Classic, but his forte was History. He had a marvellous store of historical facts and anecdotes, and he voiced them in a rich and often violent vocabulary. The boys loved to lead him on to some pet theme; listening is much easier than having to think. As I said, Crompton began at the top among the angels, but his reign in heaven was brief as Lucifer’s.

The old steam trams passed under the windows. Crompton had just embarked on one of his historical flights, where there squealed a blast from a tram whistle, and the orator consigned all trams to perdition in a blasting orgasm of eloquence, fiery enough to penetrate to the ears of the Headmistress. Crompton found his level; hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, he brought up among us inferiors. If he could not claim to be a founder of High’s future greatness, he at least beguiled many a tedious dinner hour for us with a rich fund of anecdotes, historical and others not found in text books.

Indeed, one Old Boy recalled:

I have better recollection and more memories of his teaching than of any other in the School. Teaching subjects in which he was a ripe scholar, he gave them life, with frequent relevant digression, based on his wide reading; his classes were never dull. Sometimes his digressions covered a wide field, seemingly far-removed from our subject matter; I recall discussion on mixed marriages, ... on religious differences, together with tales of his experiences, of his school days at Winchester, during the Crimean War, where his father served. ... I think he was a disappointed man, who had missed out in his career, through faults of his own, and he resented being passed over in the appointment of a successor to Coates.

He provoked a storm of protest on one occasion when he took some of his senior students to the theatre. Indignant parents penned anonymous letters to the Department protesting against Australian schoolboys being exposed to such depravity. This was not the only occasion on which he was a cause of concern to the Department. Never free of financial trouble, he was declared a bankrupt in 1891. Professor Cable has summarised his later career from the Department’s correspondence files:

As the years went by, he was absent for longer and longer periods from his duties. If the weather was hot then Mr Crompton “begged to inform the Under-Secretary that nervous prostration had rendered him unable to attend the High School”. If the winds blew and the rains came, then coughs and colds interrupted the teaching of classics at High. A public occasion, such as a funeral, might incapacitate the emotional Mr Crompton for days on end. The truth probably was that he was more attached to the bottle than to his teaching duties, a state not uncommon with brilliant, erratic and disappointed scholars.

He retired from Sydney High School in 1901. The following account, from an Old Boy of the 1890s, provides a brief description of the closing chapter of his life:

He was frequently absent through illness, and a few years after I left, he had a complete breakdown. My last meeting with him was on a visit with another old boy, to a private hospital, in which he died, a few months later. In spite of the difficulties of his infirmity, he talked cheerfully about our progress, with no reference to his own sad condition. In the course of years, I have met many Old Boys of the time before, and after, mine, and heard varied opinions of Crompton; some in admiration of his learning and teaching, others condemning him as a bad influence on schoolboys, because of coarseness, and freedom of speech on topics not discussed with the young in those days. Undoubtedly he had faults, some grievous ones, but it was a good thing to have had contact with him. I agree that it would have been bad, if all the masters had like qualities.