The First Decade

It was a warm October day in 1902 and a number of excited girls were assembled in the hall of the Staatsmodelschool at he corner of Skinner and Van der Walt Streets in Pretoria. For three years education in the town had been most unsettled; until then most of the youth of the day had had an extremely sketchy education. There were very few schools in the Orange Free State and Transvaal at that time and the outbreak of the Anglo Boer War in 1899 had disrupted the measure of progress which had taken place in Pretoria during the 1890's. A number of the group were rather nervous because they realised that the old order was passing and what the new order might bring forth, none of them knew.

Early Education in Pretoria

Before 1878 the Convent School in Pretoria was the only place which catered for the education of girls and from 1878 to 1893 there followed a different period during which attempts were made to establish a school for girls in the town. In 1893 a Miss Lorentz opened a Secondary school for Girls in a private home in Skinner Street. According to various sources, she wished to bring Dutch and English children together in the same school and yet to do justice to the language of each. In 1894 the government of the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek took over the school and decided to continue classes through the medium of Dutch only and English was taught for two and a half hours per week, as a foreign language. This arrangement continued until the outbreak of war when the school was closed on 1 October 1899. Very little is known about this early girls' school, except that when the government took over the school, Miss Lorentz resigned and was succeeded by Miss Roodhuizen; the school became known as the Staatsmeisjesschool. In 1896 Miss Adriani, from Holland became Principal of the school and under her the school was much extended. An imposing building was erected, but only occupied by the school from July 1899 until its closure three months later when the school building was put to use as a hospital after the outbreak of war. In July 1901 some education was resumed under the British occupation, when girls and boys were admitted to the Staats Model School which, during he early years of the war, had served to house British officers as prisoners of war. Among others was the war correspondent Winston Churchill who escaped from there.

Now, on 10 October 1902, the girls at the Staats Model School were told by the Principal, Mr H W Atkinson, to walk up Van der Walt Street for two blocks and turn left at Visagie Street, to a large building on the left hand side – their new school. The girls formed a crocodile and, led by Olga Solomon Cramb and Grace Anderson Battiss, walked to the new school. In those days Pretoria did not have the tree-lined, tarred streets that we know today and the girls were attired in any outfits which their parents thought suitable for school, so it was probably a rather motley little procession that made its way up the dusty street to the new school. There they met other girls of all ages who were starting at the Pretoria High School for Girls; in the early days the school consisted of a kindergarten for little girls and boys, a primary school and the high school. Altogether there were about 106 children ranging in age from kindergarten to the Upper V, as Standard 10 was then known, and they waited in anticipation to be received personally by the Headmistress, but this was not to be.

Miss Edith Aitken, MA, had come to South Africa in 1902 to found a girls' school in Pretoria, which was to be run on the lines of the North London Collegiate School for Girls, where she had been educated and where she had taught. Miss Buss and Dr Sophie Bryant (the first woman in England to earn a PhD) under whom she taught, were early pioneers in England, fighting for the acceptance of higher education for women which was a very recent development. In Miss Aitken's mother's day girls usually left school very early, for example at thirteen years of age although there were a few schools where girls were taught good deportment, manners and how to dress, and then advised to marry “as soon and as richly as possible.” The North London Collegiate School for Girls was one of the earliest girls' schools in England, established as it had been by Miss Buss in 1850, and Miss Aitken was fortunate to have a father who was eager to provide a good education for his children. His elder daughter was one of the earliest students at the newly founded Girton College (for women) at Cambridge and she became a classics teacher; his second daughter, Edith, was the second woman out of 2 400 candidates to qualify to enter London University and she took ninth place in the Honours Division; his son Charles became a director of the Tate Gallery. After obtaining a brilliant degree, a double first in Science, Miss Aitken (who became affectionately known as E.A.) returned to the North London Collegiate where she taught until she left England to establish the school in Pretoria.

During the latter part of the nineteenth century E.A. Keenly observed the developments taking place on behalf of the education of women and summarized these in her final address to PHSG. As a suffragette, she eagerly looked forward to the emancipation of women, but believed that the education women was the fundamental step. When she came to South Africa, she brought with her “the tradition of integrity in work and founded the high standard of work that distinguishes the Pretoria High School today” (Miss J McWilliam reminiscing, Liber Puellarum 1951-1952). She also brought with her, from the North London Collegiate, the motto “We work in hope”, as well as the idea of having a flower as the school emblem.

Her old school had the dafodil as its emblem. In 1951 Miss McWilliam wrote, “I wonder if Miss Aitken would have liked to have the dafodil as the school flower? No, I don't think she would, for she disliked yellow. She chose the iris, and from it Miss Grace Anderson (Mrs Battiss) designed the school badge.”

On her arrival in Pretoria in August 1902 there was a great deal of work to be done. Mr A E Barrow was appointed as school secretary and caretaker; he is remembered as Miss Aitken's right hand who did everything in the early days (he even punished the naughty little boys who were in the kindergarten class!) Between August and October the school buildings were put in order, staff appointed and many problems in post-war Pretoria dealt with as best they could be. The school grounds covered four acres, taking up the whole block bounded by Visagie, Van der Walt, Prinsloo and Skinner Streets. A few houses stood on the property; one on the corner of Prinsloo and Skinner Streets was the Headmistress's house and the other two became hostels after the boarding school was established in January 1903.

Having worked tirelessly to be prepared for the opening of the school which was to become a monument to her high endeavours, Miss Aitken must have been extremely disappointed that a sprained ankle put her in hospital and prevented her from welcoming the girls on that momentous occasion. According to most accounts, the first few days were very difficult. The staff had no particulars about the pupils, so their names, ages, addresses and details of previous schooling were noted; then the pupils were sorted into age-groups and given tests. Inez du Saar recorded that “those early days must have been difficult ones for Miss Aitken and her staff. There was such a shortage of equipment, of everything that was necessary to run a school properly! But the whole proceeding became an adventure to both staff and pupils.

Eventually, on 2 November 1902, Miss Aitken joined the staff and immediately the great influence which she was to have on staff, pupils, parents and the educational authorities in Pretoria began to be felt. In those days Pretoria was recovering from the ravages of the Anglo-Boer War. Not only had the education of her children been neglected, but commerce, cultural activities and human relations had felt the effects of a deeply divided community. Miss Aitken moved into this situation. Dutch and English-speaking girls were welcomed at the school. According to Miss A E Headridge who joined the staff in 1905 and later became Deputy Headmistress, the staff were “all in long skirts which swept the floor, white or coloured shirts which swept the floor, white or coloured shirts with stiffly starched collars, and very trim tightly belted waists. We read out our registers and the girls answered to their name. I was confronted with a list of about twenty names, many of which I had never seen before and I stumbled rather badly over some of the Dutch surnames. Miss Aitken beckoned to me after I had finished and told me sternly that I must go to Miss Bantjes (the Dutch mistress) and learn how to pronounce the names properly!” Although it was essentially an English medium school, a number of subjects were offered in Dutch and even when the numbers had dwindled to only four in the Dutch medium History and Geography classes (1912), the option was open to the girls until 1914, when the Dutch inspector “regretted the arrangement for the school as time and energy were frittered away excessively.” The school Assembly was conducted in Dutch on alternate days and the Headmistress made a concerted and successful effort to master the language. The following insertion of examination results of past pupils in the school Honour and Prize List of 1908 (only six years after her arrival in South Africa) best proves Miss Aitken's commitment to qualifying herself to be the Headmistress of a school catering for both sectors of her community.

Extract from "We work in Hope"
By Laurel Becker
Sonja van Putten

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