Selhurst College

H. Rochester Sneath MA L-ès-L (c. 1900 – ?) was the nonexistent headmaster of the also nonexistent Selhurst School ("near Petworth, Sussex") who wrote many bizarre letters to public figures in 1948. Selhurst supposedly had 175 male students.

In March 1948, several headmasters of British public schools began to receive letters from Sneath. The Master of Marlborough College, F. M. Heywood, was livid when Sneath asked how he had "engineered" a recent visit of the royal family. Next, he received a letter in which Sneath warned that he should not hire a French teacher, 'Robert Agincourt', because he had climbed a tree naked. Finally, when asked to recommend a private detective and a competent nursery maid, Heywood wrote back, "I am not an agency for domestic servants. I really must ask you not to bother me with this kind of thing."

Sneath wrote to the headmaster of Stowe School to ask if he should provide sex education for the school maids. He complained to the headmaster of Oundle School that the school chaplain was hopeless as a rat catcher. He asked Haileybury for a reference for a teacher who had a club foot and warts. Sneath even wrote to the headmaster of Eton to apply for his job. Some of the headmasters answered politely to a person they thought to be a fellow headmaster. One headmaster even recommended Selhurst to a parent of a prospective pupil.

George Bernard Shaw received an invitation to speak at an annual celebration at Selhurst (he declined). Architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott was informed of the possibility of designing a new main building for the school (he declined, as well). Conductor Sir Adrian Boult was invited to conduct the school orchestra (he was not enthusiastic, either). Two of Sneath's correspondents detected the hoax: one was Walter Oakeshott of Winchester College, who declined an invitation because he was attending a commemoration of a remote ancestor at Salt Lake City, Utah. The other was John Sinnott, rector of Beaumont College. When invited to lead an exorcism, Sinnott requested a packet of salt "capable of being taken up in pinches" be ready for him.

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