Private Papers of Miss L M Williams

Series of ts circular letters (172pp) written between June 1940 and August 1944 by Miss Williams (later Mrs Hooper), the mistress in charge of the 24 children who were evacuated privately to Canada from Byron House School (a private co-educational school for 2-14 year olds in Highgate, North London), to their parents in England describing their Atlantic crossing on the DUCHESS OF ATHOLL and the reestablishment of the school in Ottawa in a succession of large private houses, with many interesting references to the problems of administering the school, the educational and social activities of the children, their reception by the Canadians and life on the Canadian Home Front; together with a ts account (4pp), written in the 1980s, summarising the main events of the school's evacuations from London to Cambridge in 1939 and to Canada from 1940 - 1944, cyclostyled notices and forms concerning the school's evacuations to Cambridge and Canada, 17 sheets of pressclippings and other presscuttings from Canadian newspapers concerning the school's reestablishment in Ottawa, and photostat copies of correspondence in the Dominions Office files concerning financial arrangements for schools privately evacuated to Canada during the Second World War. Also with the collection are two word-processed booklets (46 and 52pp) compiled by some of the former evacuees from Byron House School in 1995, the first consisting of their individual recollections of the four years which they spent in Canada and the second of Mrs Hooper's memories of the School's evacuation to Cambridge and then Canada, and four coloured pencil drawings of ships and the White Ensign done by Peter Goldfinger, an 11 year old at the school, during his voyage home across the Atlantic on the MV RANGITIKI in the summer of 1944.

Catalogue date 1990-07

Cataloguer RWAS