Where was William educated?

[gillo]

A late-night exchange in comments with shapinglight led to this. In my head-canon Spike/William went to Cambridge, just as canonical Giles went to Oxford. Bearing in mind that he was about the right age in about 1872, which makes quite a few brash young newcomer universities ineligible, where do you think young William the not-yet Bloody studied?

Poll William's university - which one?Thank you

Comments

[bogwitch]

Personally, I am vehemently against him being Oxbridge. One, it's boringly obvious and two, I don't consider him clever enough.

[gillo]

Yes, but you didn't have to be particularly clever to go to Oxbridge back then. Just the right class and with enough money. Lots of students didn't even bother to graduate.

[bogwitch]

Agreed but there are other places he could have gone and it's just very uninteresting to fall back on oxbridge yet again. I think there are far more original things to say about other places for a change.

Plus he wouldn't want to be that far away from his mum.

[quinara]

You could have him reading English at UCL, which could be fun. It just seems so radical for William! Taught in a secular institution, indeed...

[gillo]

Did they even offer specific English degrees that early? If he was a student in London I think he'd have been way too conventional for UCL. King's possibly.

[quinara]

I think it was it's claim to fame... Wiki goes with 1828. Though for the lols maybe he should have done medicine!!

[rahirah]

You don't think William would have secretly loved the thought of being a radical? *g*

[quinara]

Oh, he'd have loved it with the fire of a thousand suns - but actually doing something about it? I'm not so sure...

[gillo]

He might have liked the idea, but he was way too conventional to do anything but dream.

[gillo]

We don't know where he lived - "your London pickpockets" implies he's from out of town, after all.

There just weren't many other places to go. UCL was dangerously radical, and I see William as being as conventional as Spike wasn't.

[quinara]

But of course 19th century Oxbridgians weren't necessarily very clever, just Sorted. Durham was primarily for the religious classes (and fairly new), while the redbricks came in to be more practical

[gillo]

The redbricks didn't exist yet except as proto-universities, with no degree-awarding powers and a strong technical/practical/science bias which is so not William. (Mechanics Institute or Owens College, Manchester, frex.)

I'm working on the basis that JM was told to "play 28" as Spike, which would have put his birth in 1852, and this he would presumably have gone to university, if at all, around 1870-72ish.

I agree Durham was still heavily divinity oriented, though by the 1870s there were other subjects on offer I believe. I think it was too far away, though; despite occasional lapses with "a" sounds (and "me mum" at the Poetry Slam) I don't think he was from oop north.