From Australia’s Jewish Past: Andrew, Anne de Metz, and daughters – owners and educators of the first seminary for young ladies to the first Jewish day school in Sydney
Andrew was born in 1771, having grown up in London, where he worked as a stockbroking agent.
Cleveland House
Unfortunately, his business was insolvent twice in England. The second insolvency was possibly the main reason for the family’s emigration to Australia and to Sydney, where they settled.
Andrew and his wife Anne stepped ashore from the Sir Joseph Banks on 15 December 1833, accompanied by their six daughters, Esther 22, Julia 21, Angelina 19, Matilda 16, Isabella 15, and Rosetta 13. The family rented temporary accommodation at 105 Pitt Street and quickly started advertising a Ladies’ Establishment to commence in the new year. Anne and the girls were sketchers and teachers in England and, therefore, well qualified to impart the art of drawing to the daughters of the colonial gentry.
The family leased the very beautiful Cleveland House in Surry Hills, which had been designed by Francis Greenaway the Colony’s architect, and opened the De Metz Ladies’ Academy – later known as The Cleveland House School – in February 1834. The academy was operated by the ready-made teaching staff of Anne and Andrew’s daughters. The spacious and fashionable mansion was most appropriate for the students, seventeen of whom attended at any time. It is presumed that they must have done fairly well because the family was able to maintain a coach and horses.
Several interesting people were employed to work in the school and the home, including runaway servants, a dodgy dairyman, and serving convicts. By 1837, seven women and four men were running the household and the academy. There were nursery maids, housemaids, ladies’ maids, laundry maids, and needlewomen and, on occasion, these women were working in other occupations. However, between 1837 and 1839, there were many problems with the servants, either for stealing or absconding from the house after hours without authority. In one instance, two servants were taken to court for being out at night without a pass.
As we know, in times gone by, Jewish scholars were generally boys, whereas a basic education was important for girls. In the nineteenth century, the attitude which continued well into the twentieth century, was that girls were destined to be wives and mothers, so higher education was not essential. The Cleveland House School for girls was the first boarding school for girls in the colony. It was situated on about five hectares on the corner of Elizabeth and Cleveland Streets. In a local publication – Old Chum in 1919 – it stated that the school was ‘very select’ ……the Misses de Metz were considered to have special qualifications for teaching. The school advertised its fees as sixty pounds per year ‘which included the useful and ornamental branches of polite female education, viz writing, arithmetic, geography, French, pianoforte, drawing in various styles, flower and landscape painting, mezzo and oriental tinting and dancing, with plain and fancy needlework. No extras except for books and stationery.’
The school moved from Cleveland House and was continued by the two eldest daughters – Esther and Julia – as a ladies’ seminary until about 1860, when a Jewish School – the Sydney Hebrew Certified Denominational School – providing secular and religious studies, opened its doors. Inspectors from the Education Department visited regularly to check on enrolments, standards, and conditions. It was open to non-Jewish as well as Jewish children. The number of Christian children varied from two in 1869 to half the enrolment in 1877. Mrs Phillip Solomon was in charge of the infants’ section for a time. He husband was later appointed Administrator of Fiji. The school closed in 1882. Soon after, right-of-entry classes for religious instruction, administered by the New South Wales Board of Jewish Education, began in all state schools. In 1985, just over one hundred years later, Sydney supported several Jewish day schools. In all the Jewish day schools and in countless state and private schools, Jewish women teachers have played their part in educating children.
Interestingly, female students had to visit their ‘’professors’’ in pairs. When the first girl graduated in science in 1888, the Illustrated Sydney News on 3 January 1889 presented her in a full-page feature as the ‘sweet girl graduate….. quite unspoiled and nothing of the traditional blue stocking’. The attitude of many nineteenth-century parents towards their daughters usually ranged from – ‘’Oh, she’ll only get married’’ to ‘’I can support my daughter: there is no need for her to earn her own living’’. There were exceptions, and as a result, some outstanding Jewish women have made their contributions to education in this state.
The University of Sydney began life after its Act of Incorporation in 1850 in what is now Sydney Grammar School on College Street. Cleveland House was used as the boarding school. There was no provision for female students for another thirty years after the university had moved to its present site, although a decade earlier girls had been admitted to universities in London and Scotland. In 1882 the first girls in Sydney enrolled in the Faculty of Arts with the first graduating in 1885. Public attitudes ranged from ‘militant approving to militantly disapproving, but in general….benevolent tolerance and some pride’.
Throughout the school’s history, Andrew continued to work as a stockbroking agent, but he became entangled in the business affairs of his two sons-in-law, who both experienced financial difficulties during the severe depression of the 1840s. In November 1843, Andrew was declared bankrupt for a third time. Under the law of coverture (part of English common law), the school belonged to Andrew and could be seized by the creditors. The family moved the school and their home to a less resplendent building in Elizabeth Street near the Supreme Court, opening in 1848, this time in the names of the daughters only. They still kept on a number of convicts, ex-convicts, and the children of former convicts as employees.
By 1843, four daughters were still living at home. Matilda married in 1834, Angelina in 1835, and Rosetta in 1840 but unfortunately, she died during childbirth. Isabella died in 1841 and Esther and Julia remained single. One of the Misses de Metz was still advertising lessons in 1868, thirty-five years after the school had begun, indicating that the business had endured, providing a livelihood for several sisters. Andrew died in 1852 and Anne in 1860.
The AJHS acknowledges the following references in the preparation of this story:-
Beginning with Esther – Jewish Women in New South Wales from 1788 – Lysbeth Cohen; The History of Cleveland House, Surry Hills.
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