Thinking
By Richard Queripel, Head of Junior School
Two weeks ago, I had the privilege of attending a special assembly in the Senior School in which Dame Anna Wintour ONL was interviewed about her time at NLCS in the 1960s and her philosophy on life and success. It was a proud moment for the school, marking Dame Anna’s first return to Canons since she left school over fifty years ago. Her message to the girls in the assembly was clear: success is not measured in the number of followers you have on TikTok or how much of an influencer you are but rather in how well you follow your passions, blaze your own trail and make a difference. As I listened to Dame Anna, the historian in me couldn’t help but reflect on how integral that message (minus the bit about TikTok) has been to NLCS since its foundation 175 and a bit years ago. Frances Mary Buss created her school to give girls an academic education that would empower them to build careers and lead independent lives, blazing their own trails in a society that, historically, had afforded them few opportunities in life.
Frances Mary Buss is quite rightly remembered for her mammoth achievement in establishing and running the school in its earliest days but equally important and less studied are the first girls who took advantage of the education that she and her staff set out to provide. As a historian by training and the current Head of the Junior School, I have long been fascinated by the girls who joined NLCS in its earliest days, particularly those who formed the first cohort in 1850 and especially those who joined the Junior Department. How many of them were there? What did they go on to do later in life? How did the experience of studying at the first academic school for girls in the country shape them into women who could go on to defy expectations and break norms?
NLCS’s admissions registers (available in the school’s archives and online at the historical records site, FindMyPast), show that a quarter of the first cohort of girls to join the school in April 1850 were under the age of 11. Among them were Agnes and Louisa Lawford, aged 6 and 7, the daughters of a Kentish Town innkeeper; Rosina Campkin, the 8-year-old daughter of Henry Campkin, the librarian of the Reform Club; and Ann Chapman who was 8 and the daughter of a surgeon and who, according to the admissions register, left the school “without paying”! Amongst those new North Londoners were a trio of fascinating sisters who went on to play a pivotal role in the life of NLCS and its sister school, Camden School for Girls (established by Frances Mary Buss in 1871) and their story forms the basis of this article.
Walking through the doors of 46 Camden Street in north London on 4th April 1850, Emma and Annie Elford (aged 7 and 9 respectively) made history as two of the founding pupils of Frances Mary Buss’s new North London Collegiate School for Ladies (named so as to distinguish it from the North London Collegiate School, a school for boys that had been established by the vicar of St Pancras earlier that same year). Daughters of a tailor – Alfred Elford – and his wife, Elizabeth, Emma and Annie were exactly the kind of girls Frances Mary Buss had designed her new school for – the daughters of middle-class families who had slipped between the net of the limited education on offer to girls at the time: too wealthy to attend charity schools and not wealthy enough to afford private governesses and tutors at home.
We can only imagine how Emma and Annie felt as they walked into the Buss family home on that first day of NLCS. Excited possibly. A little nervous, most likely. But almost certainly unaware, as they walked up the steps of Number 46, that they were beginning a lifelong association with NLCS and that they would go on to play a significant role in ensuring its success.
The Elford sisters (who were later joined by a third, Marion, in 1853) were remarkable young women; intelligent, determined and ready to create new possibilities in life. Emma showed early aptitude for study (winning the inaugural Junior Department geography prize in 1851) and found her true calling after leaving NLCS and beginning a teaching career at a boarding school in South Hampstead and later at schools in Steyning and Brighton, where, according to her obituary published in the June 1926 edition of the school magazine, “she always bore [the responsibility] so easily, lightly and well”. It is no surprise, then, that when setting up the Camden School in 1871 Frances Mary Buss approached Emma and asked her to be its founding headmistress, a position she gladly accepted and held for the next 11 years. A remarkable achievement considering she was only 28 years old at the time.
In the 1926 obituary, which was written by Sara Burstall – herself a pupil of both the Camden School and NLCS and later the headmistress of Manchester High School for Girls – Emma was described as:
…a teacher of exceptional skill, thorough, sound, careful : a wise and careful administrator : a disciplinarian who secured order without fuss or violence : devoted to her work, interested in her pupils, abounding in professional zeal even in those days when teaching as we know it was only just beginning to be.
Clearly an extraordinary woman, Emma worked hard to carve out a career for herself at a time when opportunities for women were few and far between. She became a close confidante of Frances Mary Buss, joining her on her travels to Europe where they immersed themselves in the culture of Rome and other great cities. Emma’s achievements are all the more remarkable when you consider that she had no teacher training at all. Unlike Miss Buss and her successor, Sophie Bryant, Emma did not attend higher education classes at Queen’s College or Bedford College. In the words of Sara Burstall, “it is clear, therefore, that she [Emma] depended on herself, on her own native abilities and character, in carrying out the important experimental work entrusted to her”.
The desire to break convention clearly ran in the Elford blood. After studying at NLCS, Annie went on to work as the secretary of the Camden School for many years; and Marion joined the NLCS teaching staff in 1869, becoming General Superintendent in 1890, a post she held for the next 26 years. Not bad for the daughters of a tailor from Kentish Town! In one last ‘breaking with convention’ twist to Emma’s tale, she stepped down as headmistress of Camden School for Girls in 1882 when she purportedly married her aunt’s widower, Dr George Hewlett Bailey. Even Emma could not escape the constraints of the era that demanded that women step away from teaching once married. Or could she?
My research for this blog has revealed that, despite announcing the date of their marriage in papers such as the Pall Mall Gazette and the Daily Telegraph (but tellingly no location) – and Emma being known as Mrs Bailey for the rest of her life – she and George never actually married. There is no marriage certificate for them in the records of the General Register Office. Whilst the numbers of cohabiting unmarried couples were higher in the Victorian era than people tend to think, it was still far from the norm for unmarried people to live together, proving that Emma broke the conventions of the time in more ways than one!
The story of the Elford sisters and the part they played in supporting Frances Mary Buss is one of determination and bravery and I hope it can inspire the NLCS girls of today. The sisters’ courage resonates with the advice shared by Dame Anna Wintour during her recent visit. Like all of their April 1850 cohort and the thousands of girls who have followed in their footsteps, the sisters defied expectations and broke down barriers – true North Londoners!
It feels especially poignant to tell the story of the Elford sisters this month. Emma died on 22 December 1925, and Annie just six days later on 28 December 1925 – a hundred years ago to the month. Marion carried the torch a little longer, until 10 December 1927. Three sisters, daughters of a Kentish Town tailor, who helped shape the future of girls’ education.
A century on, their message still rings true: take the road less travelled, ask the bold questions, and don’t be afraid to do things differently. What conventions might our girls break today?
