Charles Rathay Smith

Charles Rathay Smith, the School’s fourth Headmaster (1919-1924), was born in the Orkney Islands, Scotland on 29 December 1859.

A graduate of Aberdeen University (MA), he arrived in Sydney and joined the government teaching service in November 1883. He taught for a short time at Bathurst, Goulburn and Sydney High Schools, before moving to Fort Street Superior Public School and then Leichhardt Superior Public School.

He rejoined Sydney Boys’ High as a teacher in 1897 where it is reported he took classes in the assembly room at the School in Ultimo, teaching Latin, Greek, French and German. He could be seen moving quietly among groups of boys, some of them studying Greek, others German, and each divided into small groups according to their grade. His efforts in this regard were attended with great success. Under his direct tuition in Greek, Wilfred Porter won the Cooper Scholarship for Classics in 1902. Mr Smith’s pupils won the medals for German in the Junior University Examination on four separate occasions and, in the 1905 Senior University Examination, his pupils won the medals for both French and German.

He left Sydney High in 1906 to become the first Headmaster of Newcastle High School and then spent three years at North Sydney Boys’ High.

He returned to Sydney High as Headmaster in 1919. Under his Headmastership, the School continued to excel at languages, with boys winning the Cooper Scholarship on three occasions and the Lithgow Scholarship for French and German on four occasions. In sport, rowing was established during Mr Smith’s term of office. The 1st IV won the Yaralla Cup at the GPS Regatta on its first attempt in 1924.

Many years later, one Old Boy recalled of Mr Smith:

He was a dapper little man with a white moustache. I guess he was a Latin specialist, as the boys almost immediately christened him “Caesar” and therefrom his office was known as “Caesar's Winter Quarters”. This was coined from a Latin text book Caesar’s Gallic Wars where the phrase occurred frequently. Nevertheless it was appropriate, as the office was, in fact, a dark cold room.

At his retirement, The Record said of him:

“The remarkable scholastic success gained by the School in the last six years, during his regime, is the monument and record of his influence. The love and esteem felt by the boys towards him is the outcome of his never-varying straightforward and manly method of dealing with them.”

He died on 10 June 1941.