At the Dickensian school I went to in Horsham, we wore big brown outer knickers and inner white ones (Letters, 24 June). Their best use was for smuggling lumps of the most inedible food under the leg elastic in order to escape punishment in the refectory. The danger was forgetting it was there, so strips of cold mutton fat might emerge during gym – or once calamitously during a dance class where the famous Madame Vacani was teaching us to curtsy in case of future encounters with another of her pupils, Princess Lilibet. I was never allowed into another dance class, and have not re-entered Sussex in years.
Stacy Marking
Litton Cheney, Dorset
• On the theme of “ancient” school uniform stories, we wore waist-high green PE knickers, and were dissuaded by the nuns from wearing patent leather footwear, lest any young men got to see the reflection of underwear on our shoes.
Siobhán Ní Chuanaigh
Clonskeagh, Dublin
• At my boarding school in the early 1950s, the slightly naughty word “brassiere” never passed our lips. On our laundry lists these garments were referred to as “bust bodices”. Hence, BB or, as we maths marvels said, “B squareds”.
Valerie Lewis
Wantage, Oxfordshire
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