History revealed of Old Stamfordian, Dora Abdy

This article by James Buckman first appeared verbatim in the Old Girls' Magazine 2018/2019.

Amongst the material in the SHS archive, I came across the admissions registers. These go as  far back as the School’s origins in 1877. They give the names of the thirty-two girls who walked up St Martin’s, and were received at the front door to the new School by Miss Chervet. I took the name of each girl and ran it through the censuses on Ancestry to try and find out the lives she led after leaving the School.

Dora Channing Abdy was born on 16th November 1872. This was just months after her family moved to Stamford for her father, the Reverend Albert Abdy, to take up the post of Rector at St Mary’s Church.

Dora was the third of ten children. Mary Abdy, the eldest child, joined the recently opened Stamford High School in 1879. Dora was admitted in 1883, along with her younger sister, Agnes. Mary left the school after five years, while Dora and Agnes’ time was cut short after three years by a tragedy.

Just five days after Dora’s thirteenth birthday, on 21 November 1885, her father died from apoplexy. Dora and Agnes were withdrawn from Stamford High School in Midsummer 1886, and the family relocated to Guildford, Surrey. Dora completed her school days at Guildford High School. In the summer of 1894, Dora received a certificate in the first Oxford University examination for women, and went up to study at St Hugh’s Hall, Oxford.

During her university days, people and things were Dora’s interests before abstractions and the fine arts, and the Church always came first. A friend claimed that Dora had a tendency to attend unorthodox meetings which were addressed by independent labour speakers, Christian socialists and the like; at a time when socialism was not fashionable in academic circles.

Furthermore, Dora became friends with the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name, ‘Lewis Carroll’. On many occasions, they had dinner together or went for walks in Guilford or Oxford. Dora came down from St Hugh’s Hall in 1897 with a first-class honours degree in English. This would have been the qualification with which she was able to fulfil her ambition to become a teacher. Her first teaching job was at St Mary’s College, London.

This was followed by a post at Tunbridge Wells High School in Kent and at the turn of the century, she made a life-changing decision.

Dora and her family had a deep interest in the work of missionaries, though Dora never envisaged that she would become one herself. However, she kept this interest very much at heart. In the end, she found the temptation too strong. She joined a group called the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa. On 9 January 1902, she set sail for Magila in German East Africa. Her adventure had begun.

Dora’s first role was as Headmistress to a school for Indian children in Zanzibar. One year after her arrival, her school took in the pupils from another school. As a result, Dora was not only overseeing the education of children from three different nationalities, but she was attempting a co-educational system.

In October 1905, Dora was transferred to German East Africa (modern day Tanzania). At the time, gender inequality was rife. Girls were taught that their duties were to cook, work the fields and bear children. Fathers could not see any benefit in having their daughters educated. From 1906, Dora trekked from village to village. In each one, she attempted to bring communities together to form girls’ schools.

This was an experiment without funding or even a building. The schoolhouse was the shade under a tree. Every morning, the teacher would bring all her school materials and collect the children as she went along. The task of finding a woman who would be willing to educate the girls was very much a challenge in itself.

Dora made her first attempt to overcome that problem in August 1906. She knew that the former students of a fellow missionary were now the wives of male teachers. The solution was to ask them if they would teach the girls and work side-by-side with their husbands. These women would work for only one hour a day so that the job did not interfere with the domestic work at home.

Dora aimed at giving these girls a secular education and religious instruction. The hope was that these ‘out-schools’ would help spread the Christian faith among the women and girls who lived far away from the Mission Centres. Dora wrote that most of the female teachers managed to collect fifteen to twenty girls through their own efforts. However, there were some cases when her intentions did not always work out.

On one occasion, a teacher’s husband declared that his wife could not perform two types of work and her priority was to weed his field. No substitute could be found, so a European teacher had to be brought in to oversee the girls. Furthermore, these schools were subject to opposition from the parents. Dora recalled another teacher, half of whose students were taken away by their parents who insisted on sending them to an initiatory tribal dance. Nevertheless, it seems that the teachers did not allow themselves to be daunted by this resistance.

By 1907, Dora had lots of people to teach at odd times. The teachers’ wives were coming to her on a regular basis. Those who did attend teacher training were known as “Miss Abdy’s Grey Angels”.

When the Great War broke out in the summer of 1914, Dora was in Britain on leave. The conflict prevented her from returning to her missionary duties and severed all communications between her and her fellow workers in German East Africa. Under her direction, the King’s Messengers of the Leatherhead Missionary Association gave a very successful Christmas play.

This raised £6 towards the work of missionaries. In April 1915, Dora returned to Zanzibar. She then waited anxiously for over a year before the British Army finally managed to force the Germans into retreat from East Africa. By 1917, Dora and the rest of the Mission Staff were back on mainland Africa, and were able to revive their work which had been shattered by the war.

Dora provided invaluable help with this recovery. She spent the mornings teaching women and girls, and would then travel the countryside visiting all the out-schools. She encouraged and helped the teachers and looked after both the lost and the strayed. After the war ended in 1918, Dora began to feel the strain of teaching and long walks. She resigned from the Universities’ Mission in 1919 and returned to Britain.

On her return to Britain, Dora went to work with the U.M.C.A. Sisters at the Christ Church Mission House of St Frideswide’s, Poplar. After two years, she relocated to Reading, Berkshire where her widowed mother resided until her death in 1924. Dora attempted many jobs, both missionary and educational, as time and strength would allow. She started to write her own books. Her first book published in 1922 was a non-fictional account on the life and work of the pioneer, Dr David Livingstone. The Universities’ Mission commented that this book was not only recommended for readers who were interested in the history of the Mission, but it would also be useful as a textbook in a series of school lessons on the subject.

One year later, Dora published her second book, ‘Dafa Wins Through’. This story was a work of fiction, in which Dora used her knowledge and experience to provide a vivid account of African school life. As soon as she learnt about a plan to reorganise a Central School in Zanzibar, Dora wrote to the Universities’ Mission, and offered assistance with this project. This was accepted by the Mission Staff in the diocese of Zanzibar who considered it a sporting offer.

The headmaster to the Central School took leave in preparation for his new duties, so the first stages of the reorganisation were carried through by Dora herself. She shouldered the way through any initial difficulties, and the school started off on the right lines. The most

important development with this project was the start of a training college for Grade II teachers. The padres and school inspectors of the diocese had asked if this could be established, but it was Dora who took on the pioneering role. She capitalised on her rich experience in the needs of village schools, and of the village school teacher. Dora laid the foundations of a training course in which training was practical as well as theoretical.

Dora’s return to Africa was always intended to be a temporary posting, but none of the staff could have anticipated how significant her contribution would be, nor how long she would stay for this period of service. Both the diocese and the Mission were very grateful to Dora.

Her second resignation from the Universities’ Mission in 1932 was no small loss. Dora continued to be involved with the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa until the end of her life. She returned to Africa for one final period of service in 1936. This was a temporary posting and was to help cover a shortage in staff. At home in Britain, Dora taught Swahili to candidates for the Universities’ Mission; a language which she spoke fluently. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Dora provided tireless help to refugees from Europe. In 1940, Dora was elected onto the General Council of the Universities’ Mission. She retained this role until her death during the early hours of the morning on 15 April 1950, at the age of 77.

Dora Abdy had been with Stamford High School for only three years and was never actively involved with the SHS Old Girls’ Guild. However, the Guild’s committee were proud to acknowledge the connection between the School and Dora, “…the pioneer of secondary education for women in Africa.” A priest associated with the Universities’ Mission said in tribute to Dora, that the success of her efforts in the founding of girls’ schools became the foundation for a complete revolution in the African attitude to women’s education.

My impressions of Dora are that she was a woman ahead of her time in two ways. Firstly, Dora had grown up in a time when women were only expected to get married and have children, but she clearly did not intend to go down that path. Her ambition was always to take up employment. Secondly, she believed that girls deserved to be educated to the same level as boys, even if it meant changing the expectations of African women and encouraging them to break with their customs.