The headmistress’s copies of a sequence of otherwise unrecorded Cambridge University printed and compiled manuscript reports (30 in total) on a pioneering London school for girls. Queen’s College, London in fashionable Harley Street is a girl’s school founded for governesses, and then open to any young woman, started in 1848 and numbering Gertrude Bell and Katherine Mansfield among its alumnae, still open today. It became the earliest girls schools to gain a Royal Warrant and until 2024 had always had an English queen as its patron. Alongside the 11 printed reports for 1875, 1876, 1878-1885 and 1902 are 7 handwritten originals including one in the hand of Sir Sidney Colvin, then Slade Professor of Art at Cambridge and director of the Fitzwilliam Museum. As well as Colvin there are documents in the hand of Adolpus Sonnenschein (brother of Karl Marx’s eponymous publisher in English) and the English composer Thomas Wingham, lending intellectual heft to this compilation. Hay is recorded as the headmistress of the school from 1875 to 1893 though we have not traced her first name; Edward Plumptre, divine and scholar, was the Principal and recipient of several of the letters included in this volume.
PROSPECTUS: Bound in a worn brown buckram binding, with a red label on the spine reading ‘QUEEN’S COLLEGE / EXAMINERS’ REPORTS’. A smudged college stamp is on the front paste-down. Items One to Eleven are the printed reports (1875, 1876, 1878-1885, 1902), all but one of which are present in duplicate. Eleven of the twenty-one copies of the reports carry the ownership inscription of ‘E. Hay’ (a run of the first ten items, with both copies of Item Six). Hay is recorded as being headmistress from 1875 to 1893 though we have not traced her first name. In the same hand, on Hay’s copy of Item Ten: ‘Set I / perfect’. Items Twelve to Eighteen are the manuscript material, of which all but the last comprise the actual original Examiners’ reports for the year 1877. This is explained in a note appended to a copy of Item Seventeen, which states that the report was not printed in that year. Among the manuscript material the most significant is probably Item Fifteen, the report on the drawing classes by Sir Sidney Colvin; also of interest is the report on harmony by the composer Thomas Wingham (1846-1893). The material is described in the following under nineteen heads, with the ten duplicates of printed items and one copy of a manuscript item included in the one entry.
1: Two copies of 1875 report ‘addressed to the Syndicate for conducting the examination of schools’, University of Cambridge. Examiners: Rev. J. Bell, J. W. Levin and H. A. Bowler. 6 + 1pp, 8vo.
2: Two copies of ‘Appendix. Reports from the Examiners appointed by the Syndicate of the University of Cambridge for Midsummer, 1876.’ [1] + 10pp, 8vo, paginated 11-20. Examiners: Rev. Bryan Walker, J. W. Cartmell, Sidney Colvin, E. H. Palmer.
3: Two copies of ‘Report of the Examiners appointed by the Cambridge Syndicate; together with the Annual Report to the Visitor. August 1878.’ 11pp, 8vo. Examiners: Bryan Walker, Henry Craik.
4: Two copies of ‘Report on the College and Schools, by the Examiners appointed by the Cambridge Syndicate; also, Reports by Special Examiners on Drawing and Harmony. August, 1879.’ 15pp, 8vo. Examiners: Bryan Walker, J. H. Taylor, Henry Chas. Bannister, Edward J. Poynter.
5: Two copies of ‘Reports on the College and School, by the Examiners appointed by the Cambridge Syndicate; also, Reports by Special Examiners on Drawing and Chemistry. August, 1880.’ 15pp, 8vo. Examiners: Bryan Walker, J. H. Taylor, Edward J. Poynter.
6: Two copies of ‘Report of the Examiners, Queen’s College. To the Secretary of the Cambridge University Schools’ Examination Syndicate.’ Headed ‘Not Published.’ [1881.] Examiners: Bryan Walker and G. B. Atkinson. 11pp, 8vo.
7: Two copies of ‘Examination in July, 1882. Reports of Examiners. To the Secretary of the Cambridge Schools’ Examination Syndicate.’ 11pp, 8vo. Examiners: H. Marmaduke Hewitt, Thomas Woodhouse Levin, J. H. Taylor, John Sparkes.
8: Two copies of ‘Examination in July, 1883. Reports of Examiners. [etc]’ 11pp, 8vo. Examiners: Bryan Walker, Thomas Woodhouse Levin, J. H. Taylor, John Sparkes.
9: ‘Examination in July, 1884. Reports of Examiners. [etc]’ 10pp, 8vo. Examiners: Chas. J. E. Smith, Edmund Godfray, E. W. Hobson, J. H. Taylor, John Sparkes.
10: Two copies of ‘Examination in July, 1885. Reports of Examiners. [etc]’ 10pp, 8vo. Examiners: Bryan Walker, E. Braunholtz, Thomas Wingham, John Sparkes.
11: Two copies of ‘Queen’s College: External Examiners’ Reports, 1902’. Headed ‘[For Private Circulation]’. 8pp, 8vo. Examiners: J. D. McClure, Hugh Candy, J. W. Greig, A. Ludwig, Professor E. J. Garwood, Geo. G. Chisholm, Henry Gibson Atkins, E. C. Marchant, F. York Powell, William Warren Vernon, J. B. Dale, Richard Lee, Henry T. Wells, Professor J. B. Bedford, H. Walmesley Little.
12. ALS to Plumptre from ‘A[dolphus]. Sonnenschein’, 21 July 1877, from Anerley. 2pp, 12mo. Giving a report on German.
13: ALS to Plumptre from ‘Thomas Wingham’, 7 July 1877, Bayswater. 2pp, 12mo. Giving a report on harmony.
14: ALS to Plumptre from H. W. G. Markheim of the Education Department, Whitehall, 1 October 1877. 8pp, 12mo. Regarding the marks of the French examiner.
15: Manuscript ‘Report on the Drawing Classes at Queen’s College Harley Street’, dated ‘1877’ and signed ‘Sidney Colvin / Slade Professor of fine art. / Cambridge’. 2pp, foolscap 8vo. A draft, with emendations and interpolations.
16. Signed report by Bryan Walker, ‘To the Secretary of the Syndicate for the Examination of Schools - Cambridge’. Headed ‘If this Report is circulated it must be given in extenso.’ 9pp, foolscap 8vo. Attested ‘A true copy / G. F. Browne’.
17: Two bifoliate printed school lists, both torn in two horizontally, for the manuscript marking in a variety of hands besides the names of each girl, in the fields of history, geography, arithmetic, scripture. In each field a short general assessment is also given.
18: Signed report by Bryan Walker, ‘To the Secretary of the Schools’ Examination Syndicate of the University of Cambridge’. [1877.] 4pp, foolscap 8vo. With manuscript copy, at the end of which, in another hand: ‘Note. / The first Examination of Queen’s Collge School by the Cambridge University Examiners took place at the end of Easter Term 1877, but the Report of the School was not printed.’
19: Mimeograph of manuscript document, comprising statistical tables headed: ‘Queen’s College: Annual Examination 1902: Analysis.’ 2pp, foolscap. Giving ‘Number of papers in each class’ and ‘Percentage of papers in each class’.
