Crown Street and Elgin Street 1876-1912
Two years after Crown Street was rebuilt in 1876, the roll was 1262, now organised in Elementary and Secondary Departments. The School then occupied a place analagous to the Academies in the burghs, and was the only source of secondary schooling on the South Side. It was, and would remain for a century, an integral part of the City's educational provision. Divided into Classical and Modern sides fronm age 15, Hutchesons' boys began to dominate the University Bursary Competition.
Memorial Windows of George and Thomas installed in the Crown Street Hall. Later happily re-located to the entrance foyer in Beaton Road for many years, they fell foul of health and safety regulations, and are presently looking for a new position having lain neglected, forgotten, and inch-deep in dust for years.
Originally planned for the education of girls, with a Kitchen and a cookery lecture room, Crown Streer was altered at the last minute when the Patrons were offered the premises then housing the bankrupt Gorbals Youth School in Elgin Street. This building became the first Hutchesons' Girls' School in the same year, 1876, as the rebuilt Crown Street became Hutchesons' Grammar School. Both opened on the same day, 1st August. Menzies' title became "Rector and Headmaster" from this date.
Elgin Street School in 1876
The Patrons saw Elgin Street School as the first of a series of Hutchesons' schools throughout the city, as was permitted by the Hutchesons' Hospital Act of 1872, which also introduced fees, at the time charged everywhere except in charity schools. Hutchesons' had not been educating paupers for a long time.
As with the move to the Gorbals, some said the Wills gave no justification for teaching girls; others that the Royal Charter of 1821 (when the first coat of arms was granted) also spoke only of boys. But women had been admitted to the Hospital from 1737 without fuss, the Charter gave the Patrons power to make new rules, and was there not a pressing need to change the "injurious effects" of working class wives lacking domestic training?
Pupil-teachers were used in Elgin Street at first but quickly the school transcended the purely "domestic" ambitions of some Patrons. Hutchy girls came high in the Higher Education Bursary exams which allowed female students to take University level classes until finally - in 1892 - women were permitted to graduate from Scottish Universities. The school described itself as a Higher Cla
ss School, showing it a provider of academic secondary education. It was a school for the upwardly mobile, and proud of it
Elgin Street Opening Day
The Girls' Primary (first of the two schools to use the term to replace Elementary) bore heavily on "womanly accomplishments" but less so in Secondary. Fees in both Schools were payable in advance (split between four quarter days), a change from earlier in the century when the parents would go to the Hospital twice-yearly to be given money and clothing (conditional on a good report, of course).
Legal re-organisation of educational endowments in Glasgow in 1885 saw a separate Board of Governors emerging to manage Hutchesons' Schools. A year later the Girls' School had "Grammar" added to its title. Three years later, the first National Leaving Certificate saw Hutchesons' pupils gain 50% more passes than the national average.
But once educaton in Scotland became free for 5-14year olds, in 1891, a crisis developed and by 1893 the 200 legally-required numbers of foundationers (free place holders) could not be found. In both schools, very large numbers left after the first year of secondary school to begin employment. Menzies had to employ a monitor because he could not afford a teacher. The Governors prepared to transfer Hutchesons' to the School Board, and a scheme was agreed in 1898. By 1900, the roll was down to 353 in Crown Street, and 351 in Announcement of a Saturday Elgin Street.
Class on Electricity and Magnestism
It did not help the funds that Elgin Street had to be compulsorily
rebuilt in 1897 It had become a slum far below the standards of the new Board Schools which were taking pupils away from Hutchesons'
Rebuilding costs soared by 300%, and the architects hadn't been paid a year after re-opening.....
The re-built Elgin Street School in 1897
Ironically, the National Leaving Certificate and greater central 
regulation saved the day for an independent Hutchesons'. Society increasingly wanted qualified school-leavers. The rolls improved from 1903, helped by the Schools introducing the Intermediate Certificate to keep future clerical workers in school longer. The Group Leaving Certificate, begun in 1902, also played to existing academic strengths. In the Boys' School, Headmaster Philp went against many of his own beliefs to follow Scotch Education Department regulations concerning organisation and methodology. He saw survival meant being competitive from within the national system, which was no more than an extension of the Founders' intentions. In the Girls' School, Headmaster Thomson was also committed to modern organisation and the links with the centre implied by his support for the receipt of Government grants. Interestingly, he was an early adherent of the methods of Maria Montessori, whose learning by discovery teaching would not gain wide acceptance for half-a-century.
The 1909 Regulations for Teacher Training (Hutchesons' Girls' had been a Training school since 1886)
A Junior Student's Certificate awarded by the School in the "ART OF TEACHING"
But a recovering roll and tightening regulation then made life difficult again, especially in Elgin Street. A Church basement across the street came into use, giving rise to the Board School children chanting as they passed:
Hutchy bugs with leather lugs
Got sixty days for killing bugs
- the lugs being a reference to the uniform Winter Hat. "Hutchy Bugs" became a Glasgow-wide appellation for many decades to come. Temporary buildings went up in the playground but the school's deteriorating condition, a new, noisy tramway outside and a new glue factory nearby meant it was either find a new site or close - the School Board had no interets in taking over a ruin and, by 1909, no need.
Two years after a new site was found, the new Girls' Grammar School opened in Kingarth Street in Pollokshaws, around a mile from Elgin Street
, as seen in this contemporary print.
Opened by Lord Balfour, he crystallised the position of the Schools on the eve of War when he said Hutchesons' was the institution against which other Higher Class Schools in Glasgow measured their achievement.