Maud M. Barrows, B.A., arrived from overseas in 1896 as first assistant mistress, still under the headmaster of the undivided school. Within a few months the boys’ and girls’ departments were split and the title Wolmer’s High School for Girls came into use. That is the 1929 bicentennial souvenir’s account, written by “M.E.C.” — Mary E. Cowper, then headmistress.

The same souvenir’s earlier narrative dates her Kingston work “1895–1903” and her Hampton move to autumn 1904. Both dates sit in the official school book. She put girls who had never met Latin, algebra, geometry or German onto a full secondary course. Two unnamed old pupils, quoted in 1929, remembered a one-room school becoming six classrooms and an “uphill fight” that won “whole-hearted loyalty.”

She left Kingston in autumn 1904 to become headmistress of Hampton, in part to recover health strained by “eager, boundless energy in the heat of Kingston.” She resigned Hampton in 1922, spent a substantial part of the next years in Tanganyika, and by the souvenir’s publication was in London.

Sources

Sources: Wolmer’s School Bi-Centennial Booklet, “The Former Heads — Miss Barrows”, 1929.