Kathleen Morrisby

Kathleen Edith Mary Morrisby (1923)

1922-1923; Deputy Prefect

Born in Roebourne in 1906, Kathleen grew up in Geraldton where her sisters, Elinor Morrisby (1926) and Isabel Lee (Morrisby 1929), were born. She came to PLC in 1922-1923, after which she worked as a monitor at her old school, Geraldton High, and captained the 1st Geraldton Guide Company. She then attended Claremont’s Teachers’ Training College, with her first posting as Head Teacher at Kulikup State School, in Yallingup, in 1928. From 1929-1930 Kathleen was the OCA’s Geraldton Branch Secretary and, in 1937-1938, OCA President. The next year she became the first female appointed to PLC Council as the inaugural OCA Representative to Council. She served until 1952, and was OCA President again from 1942-1945.

In 1944 she led a new scheme, educating orthopaedic patients, aged 3-15, in the Children’s Hospital. She visited interstate specialists to study their methods and, from 1948, embarked on a tour of England and Europe, learning new techniques in the education of tubercular, blind, deaf and mute children. Finding Western Australia led the way in some methods, she brought others back when she returned in August 1950. She then rejoined the OCA committee and, as Girl Guide Commissioner for Extension Guiding, set up a play therapy unit for girls at the Claremont Mental Hospital.

In 1951 Kathleen was appointed Deputy Principal of Palingswick House School in London, for 80 “educationally subnormal” girls aged 8-16, but was soon the Principal of Larchfield House, a home and school for children with cerebral palsy, near Harrogate.

Returning to Perth in 1955, Kathleen was appointed Principal of Minballup Occupational Centre and, from 1962, the Specialist Section of South Kensington Occupational Centre until retiring in 1970. She and her sister Elinor then moved into different apartments in the same complex in Nedlands, where she died in December 1990, aged 84.

Kathleen Morrisby (1923), the inaugural full-time teacher at the Children’s Hospital, with a young student, 1944.