We know little of Princes Hill’s first students. Their names and addresses, their parents’ occupations and ethnic origins were meticulously recorded in the pupils’ register, but the register up to February 1928 has been lost. To find out about the 4531 students who enrolled at Princes Hill over this period, we must turn to more fragmentary evidence — various reports in the Carlton Gazette; an extant list of students from 1895; and the school’s index to the pupils’ register, which begins with children born in the 1910s.
Between 1889 and 1901, the Carlton Gazette intermittently published each grade’s award-winners. So, for example, we read that in 1889 Mary Warnock won the gold medal as dux of the school and Constance Camm the silver, while Ada Mussett came third. Ada also won the prize for writing, and Constance the prize for sewing.1 The information, however, is scanty, and most of the pupils remain anonymous.
From that first prize-giving in 1889, the Princes Hill Schools have built an enviable reputation among their students. The schools attracted teachers who were prepared to take bold steps in education. They also had a student population of diverse social, economic and ethnic backgrounds. The combination could easily have been a disaster; but it was not.
This section will tell the story of the students of the Princes Hill Schools; where they came from, the education they received, their lives outside the classroom, and the things they hoped to achieve. Much of the evidence used here is drawn from the evidence of the students themselves. For reasons of privacy, only their first names have been used, and the sources of the evidence are not always identified in detail.