Kate Howson, B.A., came to Kingston as second mistress of Wolmer’s Girls shortly before the 14 January 1907 earthquake, while the school was still in the city. By the day of the earthquake she was already headmistress. Alice Rushie Grey’s 1929 memoir says she kept classes going in the ruins, in congested rooms, with street noise outside. After marriage she is Mrs Moulton Barrett; the 1929 souvenir prints both names.

The souvenir does not agree with itself on the end year. The photograph caption says 1904–1927; the memoir heading says 1904–1928; the 1929 staff list dates Mary Cowper’s appointment 1928. Barrows’s departure in autumn 1904 is the start.

On 20 April 1909, after the move to the present National Heroes Circle site, Howson invited fifty girls to form the Wolmer’s Old Girls’ Association. The Times piece reprinted in 1929 gives three aims, including “to join together in some Social Work.” By the 1929 bicentenary she was vice-president of the souvenir committee, and spoke as the old head introducing her former pupil Mary Cowper.

Sources

Sources: Wolmer’s School Bi-Centennial Booklet, 1929.