The system of “orders” extended to other things besides sock shops, a dame or housemaster having the power of giving them for clothes or any other necessary. A boy applying for one of these signed permits was supposed to be able to prove that he was really in want of the article he wished to procure, and, the order being handed to him, was recognised by a tradesman as a valid voucher that the sum for which it stood would be included in the boy’s bill at the end of the half. On the whole this arrangement worked well, but occasionally unscrupulous boys, by arrangement with some not over particular tradesman, would obtain some other article which was really anything but a necessary.
Dames were sometimes easy about granting “orders,” and not a few boys prided themselves upon their adroitness in obtaining anything they liked, and some of them managed to run up comparatively large accounts with their housemaster’s or dame’s permission. An even more extravagant and reckless kind of boy would contrive to persuade some tradesman (generally a London one who knew something about the circumstances of his parents) to allow him to run up bills without any “order” at all, the understanding being that these should be paid when the boy had left school or came of age. One such case the writer well remembers, the perpetrator being a very dissipated youth celebrated throughout the school for always being in trouble with the authorities. This boy was a great dandy as regards dress, and it was currently reported that he never wore the same pair of trousers twice. This, of course, was an exaggeration, but he certainly had a wonderful stock of clothes. On leaving Eton he had accumulated debts to a considerable figure, and his after career was anything but a success, for after attempting various forms of occupation, including amateur newspaper reporting, he was last heard of keeping a little store in South Africa. An account of the curious professions adopted by Eton boys would fill a volume. On the whole, however, the majority do well, as, after all, is only to be expected, considering that in the first instance their parents must have been possessed of considerable funds in order to send them to Eton at all.