Edith Creak

Edith Elizabeth Maria Creak (1855 – 1919) was one of the first five students at Newnham College, Cambridge and the founding head of two girls' schools: Brighton and Hove High School, at the age of twenty, and King Edward VI High School for Girls in Birmingham.

Life Creak was born in 1855. Her parents were Bertha Creak and Albert Creak who ran a school for boys in Hove. Her father was a Protestant minister and an alumnus of London University. Women who studied at Cambridge University were not awarded degrees until the mid-twentieth century, so although Creak achieved a second-class pass in Classics and a third in Mathematics, she had to take another examination at University of London to obtain a degree in 1879. This was one of the first University of London degrees which were awarded to women. The other three who all received second-class degrees were Elizabeth Hills, Marianne Andrews and Clara Collet.

She was employed by the Girls' Day School Trust and at the age of twenty she became the head of their new school in Brighton.

In 1883, Creak became the founding head of the Girls' Day School Trust's new girls' school in Birmingham. She was a successful head but as she grew older, she became more conservative. She had supported women's suffrage, but she turned against the idea and established a Birmingham branch of the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League in 1908. Her attitude led to her resignation in 1910. She died on 20 May 1919.