I had not heard of Henry Berman, a teacher at St Ivo School in St Ives, Cambridgeshire, his name having come up in relation to the keeping of Huang Rats in the 1960s (HERE). However, while writing this article I realised that 65 years ago I did get to know something of what Henry Berman did but nothing of Henry himself. But more of that connexion later.
By chasing snippets online, newspaper articles and genealogical data I soon discovered that Henry Berman was well-known locally as a biology teacher of who established a fair-sized collection of animals at St Ivo school which was looked after entirely by the pupils. After his death former pupils wrote their appreciation of his activities in school and of acts of kindness after they had left.
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| Henry James Berman |
Henry James Berman was born on 4 July 1935 in Finsbury, London. When the emergency census was taken on the outbreak of war in 1939 he was living with his mother at a farmer’s house, Lime Tree House, Hilgay—a village four miles south of Downham Market in Norfolk. His father, a carpenter, was in Andover, Hampshire. Back in London he was educated at South Hackney Central School and then Hackney Downs secondary school. At the latter the headmaster was Thomas Oscar Balk M.C., M.A., the founding head of my old school and who on occasion was known to re-appear on his old stomping ground. After teacher training college Berman arrived at St Ivo school in 1957, the year in which he married Mabel Joan (known as Joan) Makepeace.
Henry Berman’s main interest was entomology; he was a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society. For the benefit of his new pupils he set up an entomological and natural history society at St Ivo School which was known as ‘Entsoc’ or ‘Ento’. From a cupboard for breeding insects, the collection expanded to other invertebrates, mammals, reptiles and amphibians. Rooms were found for temperate and tropical animals as the collection grew and grew. The key to the success of ‘Entsoc’ (the name remained the same) was the responsibility taken by the pupil members for the upkeep and welfare of the animals. The society had a motto, ‘There is no they’; responsibility lay with the individual and work that needed to be done could not be left to others. There were four teams (invertebrates, mammals, reptiles, amphibians). Each team had a leader and each team was responsible for care even through the school holidays. To move up the team hierarchy and gain the coveted Entsoc Badge (‘small, yellow with a picture of a two-spot ladybird’), examinations had to be passed. From possums to locusts and toads to tarantulas, Entsoc sometimes has as many as 50 members.
The size of the animal collection was said to be the largest of any school in Britain, with additions arriving as gifts, unwanted pets and injured wild animals. Several pupils noted that because of the degree of hierarchical organisation needed to care for the animals properly, bullying—schoolchildren being schoolchildren—was rife. Despite that the pupils just carried loving their duties while hating some of their fellows they had to work with in the cramped quarters they occupied during breaks, lunch hours and after school hours. Entsoc members and others also had to contend an infestation of the school by escaped and breeding cockroaches, a factoid the sub-editor writing the headline for an article in a local newspaper in 1982 could not resist.
In addition to activities within the school Henry and his wife took members of Entsoc on field trips in Britain and in continental Europe, staying in Youth Hostels to explore the wildlife. Pupils were taken regularly to London Zoo, the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum. Entsoc took its animals to the annual exhibition of the Amateur Entomologists' Society, to exhibitions of the Cambridge Natural History Society and to the Schools’ Natural History Societies' exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London. The animals and pupils also made appearances at local fetes and charity events in Cambridgeshire. Outside school Henry became involved with local naturalists, recording insects, reptiles and amphibians in the old county of Huntingdon.
Former pupils recall how a number of pupils were so inspired by membership of Entsoc that they went on to careers working with animals or in the biological sciences. In 1957 St Ivo was a secondary modern school and the school-leaving age was 15. There were four years of elementary, secondary education. Pathways to higher education were virtually non-existent from such schools, those passing the 11+ examination having been filtered off to the grammar schools. However, it is clear from comments online that several who started in this era did go on to obtain PhDs in biological sciences. In the early 1970s the minimum school leaving age was raised to 16 and secondary modern schools were later merged with grammar schools into ‘comprehensives’. St Ivo therefore became a comprehensive and later members of Entsoc were able to progress more easily to a university education and on to academic careers. A further comment on Dr Emily R. Burdfield-Steel’s article on the club, which was published on her blog Insect Chemical and Evolutionary Ecology in 2014, noted, ‘St Ivo school was originally a secondary modern when his Ento club was formed, which makes it even more extraordinary that several club members ended up with PhDs in natural sciences and one became an FRS’.
Entsoc survived a major fire in the science laboratories in 1992. Into the 2000s Henry Berman retired twice, first from teaching but still going into the school in order to supervise the animal collection. Then it seems he retired completely in May 2002 after 44 years at St Ivo School. Entsoc survived until around 2007; it had lasted for nearly 50 years. Members of the later years were annoyed by the closure of the society and the disposal of the animals they had cared for without any word of explanation or news on their destination. By this time Henry Berman was engaged in observing and recording local wildlife, in supporting Amnesty International and the preservation of local historic buildings—and he was still helping former pupils.
In 2017 Joan Berman died in May. Then Henry died in Hinchingbrooke Hospital on 27 December; he was 82. An obituary (with the photograph of Henry shown here) for the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Environmental Records Centre can be found HERE.
Having now read of Henry Berman’s life and what he achieved as a teacher in a secondary school I have no hesitation in regarding him quite simply as a paragon. Pupils who fell under his influence experienced something special and must have learnt a great deal about animals and about life.
Postscript: David Barker of Chatteris
The mention of St Ivo school rang a bell somewhere in my memory bank. It was not until the middle of the night that the bell clanged. St Ives is only 9 miles from the small town of Chatteris. And Chatteris was, and maybe still is, the home of another keen animal keeper and dealer of the 1950s and 60s who went on to own a tropical fish shop and then Honeysome Aquatic Nursery, David Barker. Although we never met, David Barker was very supportive of young keepers of exotic animals and was very generous. He sent me two Painted Terrapins (‘turtles in their native land) and a Spiny Softshell and offered to lend me any of his stock for an exhibition at school. That would have been in 1961. Then I also remembered that in one of his letters he wrote that he had lent animals to a local school for their exhibition—and that school was St Ivo.
Armed with that information I found that David Barker deposited photographs and press clippings in an archive (Cambridge Community Archive Network), which includes photographs of his Russian Brown Bear, his daughter with a Royal Python and a press cutting, with a photograph, which shows that my memory had not been playing tricks. The photograph from 1959 is of two pupils at St Ivo School with an American Alligator lent by David Barker. David and Henry must have kept in close touch because another cutting from 2011 was a letter written by David Chambers, a former member of Entsoc, regretting its closure and singing the well-deserved praises of Henry.
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