I’ve spent the last few weeks exploring the women associated with Laurel Court School in the Cathedral Precincts and it has been a far more fruitful and interesting challenge than I first thought (more on that another day). The first names that pop into people’s heads when you mention the school there are Miss Margaret Gibson and Edith Cavell, but I wanted to get a fuller understanding of the school – surely they weren’t the only names worth recording?
What I
have discovered is a loving family of pupils and teachers that existed there
over 50 years. Miss Gibson led the school, but she did so with her partner Annette
Van Dissel at her side and other teachers too.[i]
Laurel Court was a sanctuary and a home to girls from right around the world
during their education. I have set out to discover the lives of the girls and
teachers who attended the school, which has not been easy, but thanks to census
records, newspaper records and a few family trees, I’ve discovered a number of
interesting women.
For this
blogpost I am looking at the life of teacher Franziska Schmidt. Franziska was
born in Potsdam, Germany in 1849 but spent most of her life in Peterborough. Franziska
taught at Laurel Court School with Margaret and Annette; she arrived at the
school around 1875, four years after the school had been taken over by them and
she worked initially as a governess. She was only 26 when she arrived, but she
must have loved it there because she remained for the next 40 years!
Whereas
Margaret and Annette shared financial and practical responsibilities for
running the school (they were joint ‘Head’ in the censuses), Franziska remained
a loyal teacher, a third in command, should the need arise. Her native German
tongue helped many girls to excel in the language exams and saw many of her
pupils travel over to Europe to work, to make the most of their skills.
Margaret,
Annette and Franziska lived and taught together happily for the next 35 years.
By the 1910s the three women were reaching the age that many women would be
retiring but they continued happily with the school. That was until April 1914
when Annette died at the age of 73. Her death was a deep blow to the happy
school, but her death was only the start of issues for the school. The Great
War began only a few months after Annette’s death and anti-German rhetoric was
understandably rife in the city. For a small girls’ school that specialised in
teaching French and German, the residents of Laurel Court must have been
feeling on edge. Anti-German sentiment was particularly strong at the start of
the war and local papers recorded the bubbling up of rumours that the well-known
German butchers the Franks had expressed anti-British sentiments. Matters grew
over a few days, resulting in the Westgate riots in August 1914, when locals
attacked the businesses owned and run by the Franks and other Germans. We refer
to them as the Westgate riots because that was the location of the Franks’
butchers, but the mob caused damage to other premises on Long Causeway, just
outside the Cathedral Precincts, and set off past the Cathedral gates to
Fletton Avenue where the Franks lived.
Franziska
would not have been safe from the taunts of angry Peterborians if she stepped
outside the precincts and we cannot rule out the possibility that the school
was also a target of hatred. Despite this, she remained at the school, continuing
as best she could whilst reading stories of how her fellow naturalised countrymen
were being rounded up and detained or deported, fearing every day that she
would be next. Businesses were removed from their German owners, and we must
consider that that Laurel Court was not immune to an official knock at the door
to identify German citizens and ascertain they did have any saleable or
removable assets.
By August
1915 Franziska Schmidt felt she had no choice but to leave Peterborough and
return to Germany. We know she left then because it was announced in the paper,
recording her 40 years of teaching, and stating clearly that she was returning
to Germany to live with her sister for the length of the war. It stressed: ‘This
was not a deportation but a voluntary act on the part of Miss Schmidt.’[ii] The
statement and language used strongly suggests that she had been the victim of harassment
and xenophobia despite her dedicated work educating girls in the city, and that
her departure was a sacrifice for the good of the school.
Prior to
the war her name had appeared in the papers a few times in 1914 as she attended
several weddings and the New Year party at the Angel Hotel, showing that she
was very much part of the city. One unusual piece of information we have is
that a Miss Armstrong from Boston, Lincolnshire, had been staying with
Franziska’s sister in Hanover before getting help to escape back to England by
December 1914, so there would at least have been a room for Franziska there on
her return. It also suggests that even though Franziska had taught at Laurel
Court for 40 years, she was still in regular contact with her home, and her
sister potentially helped girls to find work in Germany.
At the
time of her departure Franziska had lost her two closest friends and confidantes
and was herself nearly 66 years old. To add to her distress only one month
after she left the school one of her pupils, Edith Cavell, was executed by
German firing squad. She had returned to her home country to discover that her
fellow men had killed a pupil she had both educated and taught alongside.
It isn’t
known what happened to Franziska after she left Peterborough, but she never
returned to teach with Miss Gibson after the war. We can only hope that she
lived the war out quietly with her sister, but it seems rather unlikely. She
had dedicated the greatest part of her life to education in Peterborough, yet
due to the war she was all but written out of the history of the school.
Hopefully, this blogpost will start the conversation again.
[i]
Were they more than business partners? It’s a very interesting question. They
crossed Europe to move to a country where no one knew them. They were joint ‘Head’
of the household in Census records. They raised children together (the Kirkby
children for example) as a family unit and stayed together until death parted
them. At the very least they were utterly devoted friends. Most people can only
dream of living their life with their best friend, so either way, they win. I
hope they did love each other – they certainly inspired it in others.
[ii] Peterborough
Express, 4 August 1915, p.2.
Image of Laurel Court by Mat Fascione via Geograph
Image of an angel sculpture in Potsdam by Birgit P via Pixabay
