Whitney Institute Middle School

For more than 120 years, Whitney Institute has been an educational center for the central and eastern parishes of Bermuda and it has been of inestimable value to the community.

The idea for the building of a schoolhouse was launched during the winter of 1878 when a general meeting of parishioners unanimously endorsed the proposal, and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Pearman offered about a third of an acre of land for the site. The building went on, until by August 1880 the walls were finished and ready for the roof.

Unfortunately, the great hurricane of 1880 one of Bermuda’s most disastrous storms, destroyed all the work and effect of the preceding months.

When the schoolhouse was completed in 1883, it was named the Whitney Institute.

The first headmaster was E.C. Pfeiffer (1884 -1886). His successor was Reginald Fessenden,(1886 -1887) a man of outstanding genius, whose subsequent work in the virgin field of radio science brought him recognition as one of the great inventors of our age. Mr. A.H. Cotton served as the next headmaster (1887 - 1890) In the early nineties a newspaper editor,James McLaughlin, became the next headmaster, (1890 - 1929) Under the leadership of Mr. C Parsons Smerdon (1935 - 1939), Whitney Institute produced its first Rhodes Scholar, James Outerbridge (1939). The history of administrative leadership of Whitney Institute continued with Mr. Gilbert J. Butland, (1940 - 1941, Mr. John S. Giffard (1942 -1943, Mr. John Roswarne (1943 - 1950), Rev. J Catell, (1951 - 1959), R. Cripps Brown, who led the school through intergration,(1960 - 1989) Mrs. Gail Graham, the 1st born Bermudian and 1st woman to lead the school. (1990 - 2002). The current headmaster/prinicpal is Freddie Evans the 1st administrator of African heritage. (2002 -present) Taken from the Whitney Institute Archives as written by William Zuill Sr. 1946