Caroline Jacob and her Tomore House school in North Adelaide drives girls' higher education from late 19th Century
Caroline Jacob with a student, probably on one of Tomore House school's excursions in about 1914. Tomore House School with its boarding house in Childrers Street, North Adelaide, in 1904.
Images (school picture by Ernest Gall), courtesy State Library of South Australia
Caroline Jacob was at the vanguard of extending higher education for South Australia girls from the late 19th Century.
Born in 1861 at the mid north town of Sevenhill, she was the daughter of pastoralist John Jacob, and his wife Mary. Well educated by her mother and at Mrs Woodcock's School, North Adelaide, Jacob gained a first-class certificate in general education from the South Australian Institute in 1877, then taught at Winnold House, Mount Gambier, her mother's school, until she joined the South Australian education department and began part-time university study in 1879. She won the Thomas Elder prize for physiology in 1886.
From 1885, Jacob taught at the Advanced School for Girls in Adelaide city under headmistress Madeline Reed George. Jacob bought Tormore House, which she and her sister Annie reopened on new lines in 1898. They intended to prepare girls for university examinations. The excellent response soon enabled them to build new premises in Childers Street, North Adelaide.
Caroline Jacob designed Tormore's balanced curriculum to stretch students’ capabilities, including, as compulsory subjects, English, Latin, mathematics, French or German, class singing and calisthenics, and encouraging botany, physiology and sport. Some boarders learned domestic subjects. Staff included botanist Ellen Benham, artist Rosa Fiveash and old scholars whom Caroline trained through tutorials. She delighted in her students' academic and public attainments, while applauding those who did “woman's highest work: the training of their own children'”.
In 1907-11, Jacob also owned Unley Park School, cycling eight miles between her schools several times weekly. In 1912, an educational tour of England reinforced her admiration of English girls' public schools. Her innovations at Tormore included school diaries to help parental understanding, school uniform to eliminate frippery, Swedish physical training in a fine gymnasium donated by her father; rowing and cricket, and a badge and motto: Aspice finem (Look to the goal).
Jacob worked for the Collegiate Schools Association, the headmistresses' union (that she founded), the kindergarten union and its training college, and the South Australian Advisory Council on Education. Many of her students became teachers, five being headmistresses.
A dedicated Anglican, in 1913 Jacob was appointed to the council of the Adelaide Diocesan Missionary Association. Tormore had close links with the church and, when enrolments declined in World War I, she approached Bishop A. Nutter Thomas to take it over. Both strong-minded, they “failed to come to terms'” and Jacob reluctantly closed Tormore in 1920.
She taught at Launceston Church of England Girls' Grammar and Adelaide High schools and travelled abroad in 1926-27. She later devoted herself to the Girl Guide movement and her old scholars' association. After Jacob died at her Henley Beach home in 1940, Tormore old scholars gave the Caroline Jacob memorial wing in the Erora, New Guinea, mission hospital and erected a memorial plaque in Christ Church, North Adelaide.
