Grammar Gazette_Issue1_2025

It was Kathleen Lilley in my opinion— Principal from 1925 to 1952—who was able to lay the foundation of a strong academic school. She phased out typing. She built a science laboratory in 1933. She appointed the first full-time PE teacher in Queensland in 1944. What are some of the most surprising things you uncovered while researching? One thing that really made me sit up and take notice was in 1943, when the war was still on, the School was desperate to try and address the rebuilding that was needed. Kathleen Lilley and the Board were quite keen on completely moving the entire School to a new location. They weren’t satisfied with what they could do here on two acres. They thought that the best thing to do was move and rebuild, rather than patch the shabby old buildings. They wanted 20 acres somewhere else. I mean, it’s impossible really to think of the School anywhere else isn’t it?

The critical point came in 1899 when Eliza Fewings, the Principal, was dismissed by the Board and she went off to establish her own school, taking many of her students with her, so enrolments plummeted. It was a huge crisis that could easily have closed the School. They (the school’s board) invited Millicent Wilkinson to come from Maryborough Girls Grammar School to be the principal. That didn’t please the community in Maryborough, but it was very good for the School here because she stayed for more than 12 years. She had to really rebuild the reputation from scratch, and she did. The School has stood in Spring Hill through some tumultuous times. How do you think these factors influenced the delivery of the education the girls received at our School? Context is everything. The School closed several times for weeks at a time during epidemics and wars, long before Covid 19. In the Second World War, the School closed for over a month because Brisbane was really at risk of attack. Children did their lessons by correspondence. When the schools reopened, they had to cancel several public holidays to make up time.

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You have written about people questioning the value of a Girls Grammar education, or a girl’s education well into the 1960s.

I was really surprised to find how constrained this School was when it was trying to assert the value of a liberal education, and even that girls could and should learn subjects like physics and Greek and high-level maths and not just be confined to French and sewing and literature and music, which were deemed to be appropriate subjects for young women.

Wisdom, imagination and integrity: Brisbane Girls

Grammar School 1872-2025 by Helen Penrose will be available from October 2025. The hard cover book is introduced with a foreword by Grammar Woman, the Honourable Justice Margaret McMurdo AC (Hoare, 1971).

Captions 1 Ms Jacinda Euler Welsh and Ms Helen Penrose 2 Ms Kathleen Lilley, Brisbane Girls Grammar School principal 1925-1952

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35 GAZETTE • ISSUE 1, 2025 |

Brisbane Girls Grammar School