Anybody remember the term "jumping"?
I used to work for A.F. Cheese & Co. formerly of Underhill Road (Peckham, I think) and later at Crown Point Upper Norwood.
We did all the schools in the old Inner London Education Authority - mostly the old late Victorian "three deckers" - three high floors and then usually an artroom perched on the top.
We had to do the whole lot, inside and out, and never used a ladder except for the outside of the ground floor.
On the upper floors we would climb up the window frame on the inside, pull the top sash down level with the bottom sash, hold on to the fanlight glazing bar and stand on the top of the upper sash, then duck under the fanlight so we were hanging outside and able to reach the fanlight to clean the outside of it. Then we dropped down onto the sill, cleaned the outside of the upper sash, closed it (Now we're standing on the sill, three floors up, and the window is closed behind us
) Clean the outside of the lower sash, then pull it up and climb back inside. All we had to hang onto while the window was shut was the channel the upper sash travelled in, you could just get your fingers into it.
That was called "jumping" a window.
Everybody did it, it was the accepted way in the late 60's/early 70's
And I'm still here to tell you all about it
Cheers,
Ian