Mabel Hardy

Mabel Phyllis Hardy (11 April 1890 – 5 October 1977) was a South Australian educator who with Patience Hawker founded Stawell School for girls, which ran from 1927 to 1940.

Mabel was a granddaughter of Arthur Hardy (1817–1909) and Martha Hardy, née Price (1821–1904), and daughter of Herbert Mansell Hardy (1856–1927) and Miriam Isabella Hardy, née Cunningham (1855–1950). Mabel and her brother Frederick Mansell Hardy (died 1965) were twins, born prematurely, yet each was to have a long and fulfilling life. The family fortune, once considerable, was quite dissipated, and Mabel was brought up in respectable middle-class Malvern. She was educated at a small school run by the Misses Hack, who lived opposite. She then studied in State schools in Gilles Street and Grote Street. A bursary allowed her to study for a few years at the Jacob sisters' Tormore House School in North Adelaide. Caroline Jacob gave her a position at Tormore House, then from 1907 to 1911 at her Unley Park School, teaching English and History, and the money earned funded evening studies at Adelaide University. She won the Tinline Scholarship in History and the John Howard Clark scholarship in English Literature, and graduated BA in 1914. From 1916 to 1918 she taught at St Peter's College Girls' School in North Adelaide. Following her interest in history, from 1919 to 1921 she worked as a researcher for George Pitt at the South Australian Archives. She next taught at the Church of England Girls' Grammar School (closed 1929) in Bowral, New South Wales, then in 1923 was appointed senior mistress under Dora Gillam at the newly opened Woodlands Girls Grammar School in Glenelg, South Australia. In 1925 she met a new member of staff, Patience Hawker, who had ideas about forming a school of her own based on Frensham School, where she had enjoyed life as a student. Mabel spent the following year in England and on the Continent, studying teaching methods and curricula.

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