St. Andrew High School Prefects 1951
with Miss Gartshore, Headmistress
In 1951, much to my
surprise, I became a prefect,. Here I am in this photo, front row, second from
the right and one girl away from our Headmistress, Margaret Gartshore. Miss
Gartshore was a tiny little woman with a bouncy walk which earned her the
nickname “Diana Pom Pom”, shortened to “Pommy” but never used in her presence!
Although tiny she was mighty and mighty scary too. Pommy could freeze you to
your very soul with one look and the worst event any St. Andrew High School student could experience
would be to be called to the Office to speak with Miss Gartshore
Miss Gartshore had a
Scottish accent and I always imagined that she had been born in Scotland. According
to SAHS history, her sister, Janet, aka Jenny, had been the first headmistress,
but had retired on getting married and Margaret took her place as Headmistress,
a position she carried out faithfully for thirty-one years. Recently, in doing
some online research into Jamaican records, I found that Pommy and her five sisters
with the exception of her brother, John, had all been born in Jamaica, in Brownsville,
in the parish of Hanover. Their parents were John Ferguson Gartshore, a Presbyterian
minister from Scotland, and his wife, Jeannie. Their only son, John, was born
in Kingston, where, presumably, the Reverend Gartshore was called after his
time in Hanover. Margaret and her sisters, Janet and Jeannie, all attended the
University of Glasgow, as had their father,
Reverend John Gartshore.
According to her biography on the website of the
University of Glasgow, Margaret had
enrolled in the University in 1914 and attained an MA, studying History,
English, Logic, Scottish History, Geography, Political Economy and French. In
1957, the year she retired from St. Andrew High School, she was awarded the
Order of the British Empire for her services.
Miss Mary Dawson
became Headmistress after Miss Gartshore’s retirement. This was after my time
at SAHS, as I had left school in 1953, and Jamaica n 1957. However I did recall
Miss Dawson, as she was one of my science teachers in the Fifth Form, along
with Miss Liversidge. Here they are on
the grounds of the school, probably in the early fifties. Miss Dawson is on the
left.
Miss Mary Dawson and Miss Liversidge
One of my favourite
teachers in the Fourth Form was Miss Nora Taylor, who came out from England to
teach at St. Andrew’s. Sadly, I have no
photo of her, but I do remember how popular she was with all the Fourth
Formers. She taught us English and was a
great teacher. The only item I could
find about her in the Gleaner was this brief article from the newspaper of
November 3rd, 1947
Another of my teachers who
made an impression on me, though she was not at St. Andrew High School for very
long, was Audrey De Sola Pinto, who taught us geography in Fifth Form. Miss Pinto, the descendant of two well-known
Jewish families, the De Solas of Britain and the Pintos, of both Britain and
Jamaica, had been an SAHS pupil herself
Audrey De Sola Pinto
She was born
in the Canal Zone, Panama, on 14 November 1919, to Claude De Sola Pinto and his
wife, Sybil Idalia Delgado. It is a measure of the diversity and ecumenicism of
Jamaican life that she, an observant Jew, not only taught at a Christian
school, founded by Presbyterians and Methodists, but also at St. Hugh’s High School,
an Anglican institution, and became Headmistress of Wolmer’s High School from
1962 to 1984. Audrey Pinto died in 2011.
In my next
post I’ll continue my reminiscences about some of my teachers at SAHS.
