Annie Watson, of Rochdale, was appointed as a Classics Mistress at the Manchester High School for Girls in 1927. She taught Latin, Greek, Ancient History and Sculpture, and by 1936 had been promoted to Deputy Headmistress.
During the 1933 school year she was given leave of absence to study student education in various European countries. Following her visit she gave talks about her experiences on the continent to the school and the League of Nations Union. Patricia Goldsbrough reported on her talk in The Magazine of the Manchester High School describing how she ‘felt clearly the curiosity of the Danes, the austere courtesy of the Swedes … We saw Stockholm, bright, open, clean, and Amsterdam, old, shut in and not so clean, Germany in a turmoil, Geneva wreathed in mist, and Rome a bewildering conglomeration of antiquity and modernism, a Caesar and Mussolini’.
Annie Watson, 34, married Reginald James (the Endurance Expedition's physicist), 45, at St Chad’s Church, Ladybarn, Manchester, on 23 December 1936. On 3 April 1937, Reginald and Annie sailed for Cape Town, South Africa, following Reginald’s successful appointment as Chair of Physics at the University of Cape Town.
Material kindly supplied by Dr. Christine Joy, Manchester High School for Girls Archive.