Blog Archives

Life at St.John’s College, Jaffna, in the 1930 – 1940s – by Victor Benjamin. A recall by a Surgeon in the Health Department of Ceylon/Sri Lanka, now in Australia. Source:Medical batch colombo In January 1937, I entered St. John’s College, Jaffna, as a Fourth Standard student, after studying at Chundikuli Girls’ College. Miss. M. E. Van Den Driesen was my first class teacher. She was called Lorna, a shortened version of her name Eleanor. She was beautiful, intelligent, and very kind. She is the only person who taught me at St. John’s, who is still alive. She leads a very active life in Australia at present. I found the new environment at St. John’s very exciting and different. Ceylon was then a Crown Colony in the British Empire. St. John’s was run by the Church Missionary Society (or C.M.S) from Britain. Chundikuli Girls’ College, the school at Kopay, and a small school in ...