Archive Photo of The Month – February

Each month we share a piece of the School’s history with our Archive Photo of the Month. This month we share a photo of the School’s magic lantern.

A magic lantern was an early type of image projector that used pictures on transparent plates (usually made of glass), lenses, and a light source. It was mostly developed in the 17th century and commonly used for entertainment purposes. A magic lantern was increasingly used for education during the 19th century. As shown below from the School’s Minute Books, the Local Tax Grant given to the school in 1906, meant that we could allocate some of the funds to buying a magic lantern for the Girls’ School along with some slides. Sadly, we only have two slides in the archive that were left in the slide slot, we don’t know what happened to the other slides.

The school magazines tell us that the Girls’ School had many talks where slides were shown and it is very probable that they used this magic lantern, such as Maths Teacher, Margaret Murray, who, while at Hutchesons’, developed an interest in mountaineering and, in 1929, gave a talk to a large audience in the school hall about her adventures and exhibited some of her slides. Her enthusiasm was clearly an inspiration to others, as in the same year, a pupil at the school drew a picture of a female mountaineer in the Girls’ School Magazine.

School Archive:

Committed to the collection, preservation and maintenance of the records of the school, its activities and pupils, the School strives to record the school’s history and memory and hold a range of archive material from class registers and magazines to photographs, trophies and uniforms. Pupils are encouraged at both Primary and Secondary School to engage with archive material, with the aim to provide a dynamic educational resource for the school and wider community.

Would you like to know more about the School’s History? Contact our School Archivist, Ms Devenney at archives@hutchesons.org with any enquiries.