Pamela Downing and her two sisters, Hazel and Jill all attended Edgbaston High School in the 1930’s. Jill was evacuated to Stroud at the beginning of the war.
Edgbaston High School prefects for year 1937-38
In her final year Pamela was a Prefect. She is sitting in the front row on the far left. From the school magazine, Dec 1937, it announces that the Prefects for 1937-38 are: Sylvia Evans (Head Girl), Joan Stanton (Senior Prefect), Doris Barker, Isabel Beilby, Frances Best, Margaret Crosskey, Pamela Downing, Ruth Holt, Patricia McCullagh, Jean Robertson, Barbara Hudston Smith and Doreen Vincent. The Headmistress on the photo was probably Miss Caswell.
Although the girls are not identified and matched by name in the prefect’s photo, a second end-of-term photo does give a full list of matched names with many that overlap.
Edgbaston High School girls, Jul 1938. Standing l-r: Sylvia Wetton, Jean Robertson, Cathleen Elliot, Doris Barker, Pat McCullagh, Jean Collier, Murriel Whitelaw, Margaret McCrae, Mrs Wildblood, Miss Pursel. Seated l-r: Barbara Hudston Smith, Pamela Downing, Anne Key, Frances Best, Joan Stanton, Ruth Holt
The picnic photographed below must also have been taken place in the Summer of 1938.
Edgbaston High School picnic in Worcestershire, 1938. Ruth and Pam are marked
Pamela left the school in that summer and went on an exchange trip back to France in the Autumn. In her surviving art folio are a few sketches of her fellow pupils at school. She went on to study at the Birmingham School of Art from 1939 to 1941
Sources
- Laurel Leaves: School Magazine, Issues Dec 1933-1941
- Pamela Downing Art Folio and Photos