Walter Gale (schoolmaster)
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Walter Gale was the first schoolmaster of the Mayfield Charity School in Mayfield, East Sussex, now the Mayfield Church of England Primary School, serving from 1750 until 1771. Gale's diaries,[1] which have been used by a number of historians to describe the nature of the English countryside, English schooling[2] and even the social status of tobacco smoking,[3] describe the life of an educated man spending his time drinking, smoking, attending church and reading books. It also describes odd bits of labour engaged in by Gale, including marking fabrics (quilts, and at one point a waistcoat) and agreeing to paint an illustration of the Ten Commandments at a church for two guineas.
