Publisher's Synopsis
This book celebrates the lives of the students and former students of Southend High School for Girls during its first one hundred years. Through their words we are able to experience key events of the twentieth century and come to understand how much has been achieved by them. In 1913 women did not even have the vote, including the highly educated and formidable Head Mistress. One year later World War I broke out. Sister Mary Ruth Brewster, on her hundredth birthday in 2005, wrote from South Africa about the air raids, 'we had to get out of our desks, sit cross-legged on the floor on the side away from the window, with our big atlases open and held over our heads.' In World War II the Old Girls faced even more dangers, including imprisonment by the Germans in France and internment by the Japanese in China. Others who went out as teachers and missionaries in the final days of the British Empire also faced dangers from those fighting for their independence. Finally, this would not be a true history of the school without chapters on the uniform, success in sport, and the School Birthday in October with its cards, presents, cakes and celebrations.
