Lilian Nixon
At Ladies’ College Cheltenham, Lilian Nixon came under the influence of its famous Principal Dorothea Beale who brought to the realm of women’s education a vision and determination that had transformed it.
Principal Information
- Name:
- Lilian Nixon
- Term:
- 1900 - 1914
- Qualifications:
- BA Cert. Ed Principal
- Country:
- Ireland
Ms Nixon became a highly qualified woman both a graduate of Trinity College Dublin and a trained teacher, which were assets in her plans for the future as a missionary to further women’s education.
Her intellectual strengths, impeccable qualifications and abilities were so impressive, that as a young woman of 26, she was selected by the Church Missionary Society to be the principal of a school for girls in a far-flung colony of the British Empire – Ceylon.
In 1899 Lilian Nixon and Elizabeth Whitney arrived in Ceylon to establish a school for girls. She founded the school for girls in 1900 in a rented bungalow in Union Place, Slave Island. Though the initial furniture, rent and salaries of the missionaries were funded by the C.M.S. the school was to be self-supporting from the start.
Ladies’ College and all that it stands for is proof of the faith and courage with which Ms. Nixon coped with these obstacles. With quiet determination she set to perform an almost impossible task, surmounting these difficulties with donations on personal request from well-wishers abroad, Despite starting off with just two students, with great vision and expectations for this school, she named it C.M.S. Ladies’ College Colombo after her own school. The motto and crest (St. Patrick’s shield of faith) she designed for the school was evidence of that faith.
She resigned in 1914 due to ill health and a difference in opinion with the C.M.S. regarding becoming a “Grant In Aid” school. In the space of 14 years, however, she had laid the foundation on which Ladies’ College was able to prosper and flourish. She left behind her a school which not only boasted of high educational standards but a school which was open to any girls who wished to study, irrespective of their ethnic or religious background.
Ms. Elizabeth Whitney, who had been appointed Principal of Chundikuli in 1909, returned to Ladies’ College in 1914 as Acting Principal till Ms. Opie took office as Principal in 1917.
Excerpts from Ladies’ College a centennial narrative 1900-2000 and History of C.M.S. Ladies’ College (1957)