Leila F. James — later Tomlinson — is the first name on the 1929 official list of Wolmer’s girls who won the Jamaica Girls’ Scholarship: 1912, Bedford College, B.A. Honours, London. The souvenir, writing in 1930, already has the middle of the career: a post in the “Schools Office,” a spell teaching in Bermuda, and staff at Bethlehem Training College. The old-girls’ roll prints both “James, Leila” and “Tomlinson, Leila.”

The Gleaner of 3 July 2022 calls her “the first female Jamaica Scholar in 1912” and says the award took her to the University of London. Henrice Altink’s 2007 Society for Caribbean Studies paper, built from the Gleaner and Legislative Council record, places the 1912 win as the first girls’ scholarship for study at a university abroad, identifies her as African Jamaican, and reconstructs the 1920–21 storm over her dismissal as acting sub-examiner in the Education Department. A governor-appointed commission reported in February 1921 that the dismissal was unfair. The Council voted a year’s salary and another civil-service post rather than reinstatement.

Sources

Sources: Wolmer’s School Bi-Centennial Booklet, Jamaica Girls’ Scholarship list, 1929; Jamaica Gleaner, Civil servants – struggle for gender equality, 3 July 2022; Henrice Altink, The Case of Miss Leila James B.A., Society for Caribbean Studies, 2007.