Archived report · 4 min read · Set in The Hallam Reading Room ·
The Examination of Empty Halls at the Hallam Reading Room
A senior invigilator reports that the reading room register counts one candidate more than the sign-out sheets collect names for, and that the surplus always takes the desk nearest the door.
- filed: "before the winter papers"
- reference: "HR/EH/03"
1. This report is filed by the invigilation staff in advance of the winter papers, at the direction of the examinations office, and concerns the sittings held in the Hallam Reading Room during the September and October counts.
2. The Hallam Reading Room seats thirty-four candidates at numbered desks. Desk 1 stands nearest the east door and is the first position a candidate passes on entering the hall.
3. The standing procedure is that candidates enter on the hour, sign the register at the door, and sit where the seating plan places them. On leaving, scripts are handed up and the register is signed a second time, in the column printed for that purpose. The invigilator on duty then counts seats taken against names collected, and enters both figures in the day book.
4. On the morning of 6 October, thirty-one candidates were counted seated and thirty names were collected. The difference was entered as one, as the book requires.
5. On each of the four sittings counted to date, the figure for seats taken has exceeded the figure for names collected by exactly one.
6. In every case the surplus seat is Desk 1.
7. Candidates filing past have stated, on the slips provided at the door, that Desk 1 was already taken when they came in, and that they moved along to the next seat. None of the slips supplies a name for the occupant. The slips are filed with this report.
8. The register's second column carries no signature on Desk 1's line. The line is ruled and ready in every sitting, and blank in every sitting.
9. The porter's day book was checked for the hours of each sitting, and I checked it with Mr. Ronald Pardoe, the caretaker, who keeps the book and holds the room's keys. No admission stands recorded that is not on the register.
10. The desk itself is found reset at the close of every paper: blotting squared, chair pushed in, the pencil laid level with the front edge, as the room's standing order sets out. The chair's arms are worn at the grips beyond what one term of use would account for.
11. The arithmetic stands as follows. Thirty-one less thirty is one, and one over four sittings is four seatings unaccounted altogether. No part of any difference falls inside the Thin Hour, in which the room is not let under the standing instruction of 1979.
12. Three explanations were taken and disposed of. A candidate seated and gone without signing out: the east door is in plain view of the dais, and the invigilator on the dais saw nobody leave. A miscount: the count was taken twice at each sitting, once from the register and once along the aisles, and the two methods agreed. A name lost in transcription: the register and the day book are separate hands, and both are filed.
13. The examinations officer, Mr. Lionel Ashby, has directed that the count continue and that no name be supplied for Desk 1. A supplied name would want evidence. An invented name would want considerably more, and that is not business this office can put to paper.
14. It has been practice since 1974, and remains practice, that Desk 1 is not called at the close of a paper. The practice is older than every member of staff now serving. This report asks for no change to it.
15. The winter papers will be seated to a plan of thirty-three submitted last week. The plan omits Desk 1. The omission appears in no minute anywhere, and the plan was drawn, checked, and passed in the ordinary way.
16. The Cantor's office has taken the four differences into the general register as four, carried and not closed. The archivist has directed that the count be kept apart from the seating plan, so that the two documents do not agree in the Archive when they do not agree in the room.
17. The winter papers begin on 12 January. The invigilation roster for the first afternoon is drawn but not yet signed. When the office has found its signatory, that person is to be asked the question this report has not managed to word, which is what it is that sits at Desk 1 when there is nobody seated at Desk 1.