Kitty Anderson (headmistress)

Dame Katherine "Kitty" Anderson, DBE (4 July 1903 – 15 July 1979) was a British schoolteacher. She was headmistress of the North London Collegiate School from 1945 to 1965.[1]

Early life and education

Katherine Anderson was born on 4 July 1903, Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, the eldest child and only daughter of three children born to John Herbert Anderson, a chartered accountant, and his wife, Lizzie (née Dawson). The family moved to Middlesbrough, where Kitty attended the High School for Girls in Saltburn-by-the-Sea, where she became head girl. She was the first girl from the school to go up to university and attended Royal Holloway College, University of London to read history where she obtained a BA.[1]

In 1925 she obtained a teaching diploma from the London Day Training College, now the Institute of Education and part of the University of London. In 1926 she taught at Craven Street secondary school in Hull. In 1930, she returned to Royal Holloway as a Christie scholar and received a PhD in 1933 in Elizabethan history, 'The treatment of vagrancy and the relief of the poor and destitute in the Tudor period, based upon the local records of London to 1552 and Hull to 1576'.[2][3]

Career in education

She then taught at Burlington School for Girls, London before taking a position as headmistress of King's Norton Grammar School, Birmingham in 1939. In 1944 she became head of the North London Collegiate School until retirement in 1965.[1]

As headmistress there she became an outstanding figure in the educational world. She was appointed DBE in 1961,[1] and served on the Robbins Committee[4] from 1961–63. She was a Governor member of the Council of Royal Holloway College from 1947 to 1953 and member again from 1962 until at least 1967.[5] On her retirement she became chairman of the Girls' Public Day School Trust.

She received in 1967 a LLD (University of Hull) and in 1971, a DUniv (University of York).[1]

The celebrated journalist and TV presenter Dame Esther Rantzen paid huge tribute to Dame Kitty when she appeared on the BBC's radio programme, Desert Island Discs, she having attended the school of which she was Principal,telling how much of an inspiration she had been to her because of her keen and unflagging interest in all social subjects she deemed important and to be aware of them.

Death

Anderson died on 15 July 1979 in Northallerton, Yorkshire.

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References
  1. "Anderson, Dame Kitty". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/101030761. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. "The treatment of vagrancy and the relief of the poor and destitute in the Tudor period, based upon the local records of London to 1552 and Hull to 1576". The British Library. Retrieved 9 December 2018.
  3. Barbara Ker Wilson, 'Everyone Mattered: The Life and Times of Dame Kitty Anderson', North London Collegiate School, 2003, 198 p., ISBN 978-0954531102
  4. HMSO: The Robbins Committee Report on Higher Education, 1963
  5. College Letter, December 1965, Royal Holloway College Association.
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