Betty Archdale

Helen Elizabeth "Betty" Archdale (21 August 1907 – 11 January 2000) was an educationalist and cricketer. She was a captain of the English women's cricket team in 1934 and 1935. In 1934/35 she led the first English cricket team to tour Australia and New Zealand, the result of which was a 2-0 victory over Australia. This tour did much both to raise the status of women's cricket and to heal some of the damage done to Anglo-Australian cricket relations by bodyline two years earlier.

Biography
Archdale was born in London, the daughter of Helen Alexander Archdale (née Russel), a suffragette who was at one time jailed for smashing windows at Whitehall, and was later renowned as a leading British feminist; and an Irish professional soldier in the British Army, who died in World War I when she was eleven. Her godmother was Emmeline Pankhurst. Archdale attended Bedales School in Hampshire where she learned to play cricket and, thence, to St Leonards School in St Andrews, Fife.

After school Archdale attended McGill University in Montreal, graduating in 1929 with a BA in Economics and Political Science. She studied Law in London. Specialising in international law, she conducted part of her studies in the Soviet Union. In 1938 she was called to the Bar at Gray's Inn.

During World War II, she served in the WRNS as a wireless operator in Singapore. She was awarded an Order of the British Empire for helping nurses escape from the conflict.

Having moved to Australia, in 1946 she was appointed principal of Sydney University's "Women's College", a post she held for 10 years. Archdale was a member of the University Senate for 25 years, and a television and radio personality throughout the 1960s.

Archdale was headmistress of the private girls school Abbotsleigh in Wahroonga, Sydney for 12 years from 1958. Archdale was credited with breaking down the rigid system of discipline at the school, with introducing sex education and abandoning the gloves and hat as part of the school uniform. She also reformed the curriculum, introducing physics and cutting back on British, in favour of Australian, history. The Assembly Hall (1963) and Chapel (1965) both date from this time. She lived on an estate in Galston, Sydney with her brother Alexander Archdale, an actor.

Honours and legacy
In 1997, she was listed as an Australian Living Treasure. In March 1999, Archdale was one of the first ten women to be granted Honorary Life Membership of Marylebone Cricket Club in England. She died in January 2000 at the age of 92, in Sydney.

The Association of Heads of Independent Girls' Schools, 'Archdale Debating' competition (for Sydney's private and catholic girls' schools) is named in her honour.