'Get a blue and you will see your money back again': staffing and marketing the English prep school, 1890-1912

This article explores the ways in which English prep schools were staffed and marketed in the years before the First World War. Its aim more specifically is to employ a biographical approach to consider the emphasis that the schools placed upon sport, and in particular the extent to which they recruited Oxford and Cambridge Blues as teachers (and/or as coaches). It will be suggested that while prep schools certainly placed enormous emphasis upon sport, few of them employed Blues; and that even the small number which did, generally did so only on a part-time, seasonal or casual basis - and made virtually no mention of them in their marketing.