The Mary Erskine School’s War Dead are Remembered... Again

Following on from International Women's Day 2026, we are featuring work done by the young historians at the Mary Erskine School in Edinburgh. 

Image: Young Historians, Miriam Nadeem and Isabelle Neary mounting the information boards at the temporary MES war memorial

It has been believed for many years that the school did not have any war dead in World War One, a fact that was disputed by the school historian and heritage officer.
 
The girls were tasked with searching through the archive collection of wartime school documentation and past school magazines to see whether there was any evidence of Edinburgh Ladies College (the wartime name of the school) students being involved in war work and had become casualties while on duty.

It took the team less than two hours to track down the obituaries of two former pupils who had died in service during the First World War.

It was then a matter of using the CWGC database, online ancestry websites and the school’s own pupil records to pull together their biographies. 

It seems that the school looked to commemorate their fallen through the raising of funds for various additions to the school rather than creating a specific memorial, and as such, the girls' sacrifice had been forgotten about during the transfer of the school to a new site in 1966.

Beatrice Georgina Frederica Forbes served as a nurse in the Southern General Hospital on Dudley Road in Birmingham. She contracted Spanish Flu and died on 12th May 1918, aged just 32 years old.

Florence Faithfull (pictured) was also a nurse and was sent to Mesopotamia. She was killed on the River Tigris in a boating accident and is buried at the Basra CWGC Cemetery. 

Image: The picture of Florence Faithfull from the school magazine (courtesy ESM Archives)

This research was then presented to the school at various remembrance events, and an exhibition was created in the main corridor outside the Mar Hall.

This has now become the unofficial war memorial. We also uncovered a lot of information about the school pupils’ contributions to the war effort and the war roles taken up by former pupils.

Mary Erskine School (MES) will be combining with Stewart’s Melville College (SMC) this year to create a fully co-educational school called Erskine Stewart Melville. Our Seniors will be based at our Queensferry Road campus, and our Junior School at Ravelston, and we are determined not to forget the Edinburgh Ladies College war casualties again. 

Stewart’s Melville College have an impressive set of memorials already in place, commemorating the 434 former students who were killed in both wars. Plans are now underway to add a plaque commemorating the service and sacrifice of the former Mary Erskine pupils to the existing war memorial and create a second memorial where the names can be displayed.

As the two girls went on to be nurses, we will also be naming the nursing stations on the two sites after Beatrice and Florence. 

Image: The Stewart's Melville War memorial in all its splendour will have a new plaque added in the next session honouring the MES casualties and the war service carried out by the former pupils