We were delighted to hear that an article about Baroness Orczy (author of the Scarlet Pimpernel) for the Kent Digital Maps project https://kent-maps.online/ has been written recently.  The Baroness visited Maidstone Grammar School for Girls in 1914. The article illustrates MGGS at Albion Place.  

“In November 1914, the Baroness was invited to distribute prizes at Maidstone Girls Grammar School. The girls, all dressed in virginal white, were encouraged to do their best in life: “whatever calling they cut out for themselves in life – whether industrial, professional, business, nursing, or scrubbing floors – they should set their minds to do it efficiently.” 15 Considering the number of women who remained unmarried after the first world war, Orczy’s words were prescient. In the following year, she presented prizes at Ramsgate Girls’ Grammar School, but this time her cheering words were more like a battle cry as she spoke in Darwinian terms of the survival of the fittest: The world will have no further use for the ‘half-baked’ individual who can do twenty-three things badly and not one well; it makes no difference whether you sweep a crossing or write a novel. Determine to do whatever you take in hand just a shade better than it has ever been done before.”

Read the full article here https://kent-maps.online/20c/20c-orczy-biography/