Miss Harold’s Commemoration Day speech in 1948 included the following:
On 11 August 1947 Miss Brooke, a Junior School teacher at Acton, left Southampton aboard the SS Marine Jumper bound for New York. The SS Marine Jumper was a troopship that had been specially chartered for the trip as all other ships crossing the Atlantic were fully booked with post WWII traffic. Of the 256 British adult passengers on board that ship 123 of them were teachers. They were participants in an International Teacher Exchange programme organised by the US Department of Education and Britain’s Central Bureau for Educational Visits and Exchanges (CBEVE). This annual programme was started in 1924 initially for female, junior school teachers up until WWII when it lapsed. In 1946 it resumed with the inclusion of male teachers and those who taught at secondary schools. One of our Old Girls’, Joan Camp (Class of 1932), was in the 1946 party and later became Chair of the CBEVE Committee.
The format was a direct exchange of teachers and so whilst, Miss Brooke was heading to Vine School, Kalamazoo, Michigan to spend the 1947/48 academic year, Miss Madeline Beute was sailing to the UK to spend a year teaching in Acton.
Miss Beute wrote this article for the school magazine:
Miss Madeline Beute was 35 years old when she came to Acton. She was born in Michigan of Dutch heritage. She attended Kalamazoo High School leaving in 1928 followed by Kalamazoo College until 1932 where she played for the college tennis team. Upon her return from the UK, it was reported in the College Alumnus magazine that she spoke to the Kalamazoo Association of Childhood Education about her experience of teaching in London for a year. Research would tend to indicate that she spent her whole life in Kalamzoo although there is a record of her crossing the Atlantic on a return trip from Southampton to Quebec in 1951. It would be good to think that she was visiting friends made in Acton a few years earlier. She died in September 2012 aged 101. (See below for a photograph of Madeline taken in 1931.)
An obituary written by Patricia Kirkland an Old Girl (Class of 1963) and former member of the Junior School staff was published in the HAOGC newsletter:
“It was with great sadness that the Old Girls’ Club learnt of the death of Monica Jameson on 19 December 1994. As Miss Brooke she joined the staff at Acton in 1943. The school had been evacuated during the war years but by 1943 had returned to Acton and one of her earliest memories of the school was that staff duties included taking your turn on fire watch. In 1947 she went to Kalamazoo in Michigan on a year’s exchange, an experience she often recalled with great pleasure and through which she made many lasting friendships. During that year, the children in Kalamazoo received a scrapbook from Acton which even included a hatband – in those days hand embroidered. Following the retirement of Miss G.M. Smith in July 1963, Miss Brooke became Head of the Lower School. In 1961 she had overseen the move of the two Second Forms, the First Form and Upper and Lower Transition into the new Lower School building erected on the site of the caretaker’s lodge. Generations of girls were taught by her in the 30 years she served the school. She remembered everyone, never forgetting a name or face, and maintained a keen interest in each girl’s progress throughout the ensuing years. She set the highest standards and earned the respect of all her pupils. There will be many old girls who still treasure the teddy bears they made in her class! Monica Jameson took great pride in the school, its traditions and all it stood for, seeking always to maintain links between the past and the present. Her decision to take early retirement in summer 1973 was enforced by the plans to remove, the school to Elstree. Her long and distinguished service was honoured by the Company with a lunch and presentation at the Haberdashers’ Hall. It was not, however, to be the end of her participation in the school’s events or her interest in its development. Retirement brought the opportunity to spend more time in France each year and to enjoy many diverse interests. Although born in Oxfordshire she spent her early years in Bolton, Lancashire. Both she and her husband, Derrick, who she married in 1965, were proud Lancastrians and were much involved in the Association of Lancastrians in London. Despite a very full and active retirement “the great family of Haberdashers” remained predominant in her affections. She maintained contact with numerous Old Girls and ex-members of staff, frequently providing the link between one and another, always giving generously of her time and of herself. Monica Jameson’s allegiance to our school extended over 50 years. She will be remembered with affection and esteem by those she taught and all with whom she worked.”
