At MHSG, we love to keep in touch with our former students and are looking forward to the Annual and Decades Reunion in September.
The Old Girls’ Association was founded in September 1883 at a meeting in Headmistress Elizabeth Day’s house and launched at a soiree the following December. The London Society of the OGA was founded at a meeting at the London University Club in June 1923, closely followed by The Liverpool Society in June 1926. Branches were then set up all over the country and a branch was even set up in South Africa in 1936!
Miss Day defined the aims of the society in a speech in 1901.
“The chief aims of the OGA are to establish mutual help and sympathy among the many old girls who have gone through the school, to give opportunities for members to meet their teachers and friends and, for those who have the management of the Association, to inculcate good business habits and to train them in these methods.”
In the early days, activities included concerts by old girls, plays, picnics and philanthropic schemes. In 1888, the following were suggested: to support a child in an orphanage, to pay for a baby’s cot in a hospital, to pay for a district nurse, to start and pay for a girls’ club, to pay for visits by poor children to the country, to contribute to the Children’s Holiday Fund. The last was selected and it was agreed to ask members to make two children’s garments a year. The concept of networking was also invented early! The School Magazine of November 1901 reports that the OGA set up an Employment Bureau in which old girls who wanted employment or who had employment to offer could register for a small fee.
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