ARCHIVAL ANECDOTES

DANNY'S GIRLS

GENERATIONS OF ST MARY’S GIRLS FROM THE 1920s AND 1930s WERE AFFECTIONATELY KNOWN AS ‘DANNY’S GIRLS’. FAMOUS FOR THEIR ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS, IMPECCABLE MANNERS, WHITE DRESSES AND INKY BLACK STOCKINGS AND SHOES FOR FORMAL OCCASIONS, A GOOD SENSE OF FUN BUT WITH AN INBUILT SOCIAL CONSCIENCE, WHO DID THEY EMULATE AND WHERE DID THEIR NICKNAME COME FROM? STRANGELY ENOUGH, FROM A DIMINUTIVE ENGLISH LADY WHO LIVED EVERY WORD SHE TAUGHT. AS NANCY ROGERS (’25) SAID OF MISS DANNATT, “SHE TAUGHT US TO LOVE GOD, TO LOVE LEARNING FOR LEARNING’S SAKE, TO GIVE SERVICE AND TO BE WELL MANNERED”.

Famous for eating grapes with a knife and fork and knitting lace to meticulous patterns while walking the school grounds on lunch duty, Miss

Dannatt was a strict disciplinarian with a huge heart, matched only by her sense of duty to others.

Ethel Clara Hamilton Dannatt was born on 23 August 1874 to John and Lavinia Dannatt in Huddersfield,

Yorkshire, England. One of nine children, only five of whom survived childhood, Ethel was extremely well educated for a woman of that time. She attended Huddersfield

Girls’ College and Yorkshire Girls’

College, graduating first in England for Political Economy and second for Scripture. She attended Royal

Holloway College, Egham, and the

Cambridge Training College for

Women Teachers. She stated in her letter of application to be Principal of

St Mary’s, “My Final Schools Honours entitles me to the degree MA (Oxon), but I cannot use the title until such time as I return to England to have the degree formally conferred”. The official School Prospectus lists her qualifications as ‘Oxford Final Schools Honours: Mathematics’. Miss Dannatt’s teaching career started in 1901 and by 1909 she was the Senior Maths and Science Mistress at Ely High School for Girls, Cambridgeshire, England. She later made the arduous journey by boat on the S.S. Ruapehu to New Zealand, securing a teaching position at St Hilda’s Collegiate School in Dunedin. After almost a year’s absence from teaching due to ill health, Miss Dannatt was appointed Principal at Cheltenham Collegiate School for Girls, Devonport (NZ) in 1921. Restless to achieve more, she applied for the position of Principal at St Mary’s. Taking over the reins of the School in 1923 from The Reverend Charles Lawrence Riley OBE, who founded the School and was the Chair of the Board of Governors, Miss Dannatt quickly instigated many of the traditions that make St Mary’s the school that it is today. Her influence and eccentricities were legendary, from her homemade lemon syrup, to teaching the girls how to ‘take the stairs’ correctly. School life was strict and regulated, but still individually forgiving. ‘Unseemly barracking’ was not ladylike, but debating and logical argument were encouraged. Charitable fundraising for the Children’s Hospital, the Parkerville Children’s Home and the homeless was conducted through the School Bazaar, the School Picnic Day, dramatic and musical performances, drill and art displays and poetry reading nights. The Old Girls’ League, now known as the Old Girls’ Association, was founded by Miss Dannatt in 1925 from the alumnae of the schools that merged to create St Mary’s. They and the graduating classes of the School were also heavily involved in this fundraising. Miss Dannatt became well known in Perth for her charitable work. Her attendance at soirees and entertainments by Old Girls of St Mary’s was noted in the press. More importantly, her speeches aimed at encouraging the girls to stay on for higher education, and prizegiving ceremonies at the School were reported in detail. This account from The Daily News 12 December 1924 is one example: “A happier and brighter aggregation of healthy and intelligent young womanhood could hardly be met with anywhere. They were proud of their school, their headmistress, Miss Dannatt, and also of those among them who had won distinction in the scholastic field. It was an inspiring sight to see the 280

ETHEL CLARA HAMILTON DANNATT

girls file past, radiant and smiling, in their dainty white frocks, and take up the forms allotted to them near the raised dais, on which were seated Miss Dannatt, the Rector, his Grace Archbishop Riley, and members of the School Council.” Always popular with the students and parent body, Miss Dannatt fell out with Chair of the Board of Governors, The Reverend Frank Stillwell, and indignantly resigned in 1937. She retired to volunteer at Sister Kate’s Children’s Home. By 1950, Miss Dannatt was becoming elderly and living in very poor conditions. The Old Girls of St Mary’s rallied to help, giving her a rousing farewell party at the home of Miss Tothill, and ticket of passage on the Orontes to live her final days with her sisters in Bridgend, Wales. Following her passing in 1964, the School named a boarding house in West Perth in her honour. That accolade was transferred to Anne Symington House in 1970 with the naming of the Dannatt Wing. Dannatt Hall was named in Miss Dannatt’s memory in 1978, at which time the Old Girls founded the Dannatt Bursary, which was first granted in 1981. Audrey van Hattem (Raphael ’36) wrote, “This Bursary would be given not necessarily for academic attainment, but to a girl with the sort of qualities that ‘Danny’ would have appreciated”. The E.H. Dannatt Senior Maths Prize was also created in Miss Dannatt’s own prizewinning subject. One of Miss Dannatt’s most famous girls, Anne Symington (Paton, ’33), said of her, “To apply her own favourite word, she was a ‘splendid’ person”.

Stephanie Neille, Archivist, with thanks to Dr Jan Ring (Hatfield ’64)

ABOVE: Miss Dannatt portrait, c1930s. OPPOSITE PAGE (LEFT): Miss Dannatt, third lady from the right, at a Riley family christening, c1920s. OPPOSITE PAGE (TOP): Miss Dannatt with students at the School picnic on the Swan River, c1920s