After the Second World War, and interrupting her teaching career, Bailey was flown into Berlin as adviser to the British high commissioner there, with a remit to improve education services. As religious affairs officer in Berlin, she worked with the Evangelical Church of Westphalia. For her work in Germany she was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz 1. Klasse, or Order of Merit First Class of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Bailey was born on 19 September 1913, in Headington, Oxford.[9][10][nb 4] She was the eldest of four siblings, who included Balliol student John Mandell Bailey,[11][nb 5] author Rachel Margaret Moss née Bailey, wife of Reverend Basil Moss,[9][nb 6] and Susan Bailey, an alumnus of Lady Margaret Hall.[12][4][nb 7] The siblings were "brought up in an intellectually rigorous atmosphere".[4] She attended the Dragon Preparatory School for Boys, with her siblings, and then Oxford High School.[4] She gained a scholarship to Oxford University,[12] and between 1931 and 1933 she studied greats and gained her Master of Arts (M.A.) in 1952 at Lady Margaret Hall,[5] where her father was chairman of the college council and an honorary fellow.[1][13]
Character
Bailey's niece recalled that Bailey's "quiet and steady determination held throughout her professional life". The actor Michael Denison said that:[12]
Mary ... a brilliant scholar like [her father] ... was formidable, not because she showed off her intellectual gifts — beyond occasionally cracking private jokes with her father in Ancient Greek — but because of her shyness and long silences, which seemed to demand profound contributions to the conversation.[12]
In September 1945 Bailey, a fluent speaker of German, moved to Berlin,[12][14][15] having joined the Education Division of the Control Commission for Germany. According to her niece Gemma Moss, the brief was to "de-nazify the school curriculum".[12] She was "the first woman to be flown into Berlin after the Second World War with the remit to improve education services in Germany".[16] From 1951 she was an adviser to the British high commissioner in Germany, Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick,[5] and was also the religious affairs officer for Bonn, for the Central Commission for Germany.[17] She would fraternise with her German colleagues at a time when that was not common practice at the Commission.[12] There are letters from Bailey in the archives of the Evangelical Church of Westphalia.[18] In 1952 she received the award Bundesverdienstkreuz 1. Klasse, or Order of Merit First Class of the Federal Republic of Germany.[5]
[It was] the only Federal decoration of Germany and only awarded to a tiny minority of women since its inauguration in 1951, "for achievements that served the rebuilding of the country in the fields of political, socio-economic and intellectual activity".[5]
Between 1960 and her retirement in 1974, Bailey was the fifth headmistress of Simon Langton Girls' Grammar School, Canterbury. On her watch, there were schemes for "branching out", "individualism", and "innovation and progress". This involved the inclusion of the school in The Nuffield Science Project which meant building a new biology laboratory, digging a pond, the formation of a natural history society and some weighty text books. She introduced history projects, geography field work abroad, a modern languages oral programme, and the introduction of sociology, politics, General Studies, and economics as school subjects, besides options to mix the sciences and the arts as sixth form subjects, and new facilities for sixth-form study and socialising.[5]
Bailey encouraged concerts and plays,[5] and, following the 1964 retirement of Miss H. L. White,[19][nb 8] hired a full-time music teacher. She began plans for a new music block at the school, which was completed in 1980 and opened by her after her retirement. She expanded the scope of physical education with the opening of a swimming pool in 1964, and foreign school trips became frequent, with groups travelling in Europe and as far as Russia. When she retired, and in accordance with a trend of the era, she insisted that the job would be offered to both men and women, and indeed a headmaster was chosen. "Individuals mattered to her – saint or sinner – and individuality was respected. Her breadth of vision, humanity and integrity sprang from her deeply held beliefs".[5]
Bailey retired to Aldbourne, Wiltshire, where she lived with her sister Susan, who cared for her in her last illness.[12] She died on 16 August 2008 aged 94 years, at Aldbourne Nursing Home, Aldbourne, on the same day as her sister, who by that time had become ill herself.[12][20] She bequeathed to Lady Margaret Hall the above watercolour painting by Bertha Johnson of her maternal grandmother Louise Creighton.[21]
Notes
^Louise Hume Creighton (7 July 1850 – 15 April 1936). GRO index: Births Sep 1850 Von Glehn Louisa Hume Lewisham V 320. Deaths Jun 1936 Creighton Louise H. 85 Oxford 3a 1361. Her portrait by Walter Stoneman (died 1958) is here.
^ ab"England Census 24 April 1921". findmypast.co.uk. H.M. Government. Archived from the original on 30 December 2023. Retrieved 6 December 2023 – via Find My Past. Father Cyril Bailey not present. Gemma Bailey age 33 (mother). Mary Creighton Bailey age 7 yrs 9 mths. John Mandell Bailey 5 yrs 10 mths (brother), Rachel Margaret Bailey 1 yr 5 mths (sister), and three servants.
^"John Mandell Bailey". apgrd.ox.ac.uk. Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD), University of Oxford. Archived from the original on 9 December 2023. Retrieved 9 December 2023.
^ abcdefghijkMoss, Gemma; Sisam, Celia (April 2009). "In memoriam". The Brown Book:Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Oxford University: 61–65. Retrieved 19 January 2024.
^Ringshausen, Gerhard; Chandler, Andrew, eds. (2019). "1947". The George-Bell Gerhard Leibholz Correspondence. In the long shadow of the Third Reich 1938-1958. London: Bloomsbury. p. 391. ISBN9781474257664. Archived from the original on 30 December 2023. Retrieved 5 December 2023.
^"Conferences". The Living Church. 125 (4): 9. 3 August 1952. Archived from the original on 30 December 2023. Retrieved 5 December 2023. Miss M.C. Bailey, former religious affairs officer for Berlin
^"Greek songs and dances". Herne Bay Press. 23 March 1962. p. 6 col.7. Retrieved 10 December 2023 – via British Newspaper Archive.
^Mary Creighton Bailey. Died 16 August 2009 at Aldbourne Nursing Home, Aldbourne, Wiltshire. Probate 12 February 2009, no.2949948. Proved at Winchester.
^Will of Mary Creighton Bailey, dated 12 January 1999, and proved at Winchester 12 February 2009.
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