SE - Miss E.B. Seccombe - June 1909

Advertiser - 16/10/1908 - High School to be opened by Miss Seccombe - comes with the highest certificates of teaching. Assistant in South Kensington High School and has also had experience in the South African colonies. - boarding and day - Government to provide furnished building free.

Advertiser - 20/11/08 - Letter from Miss E.B. Seccombe re school fees

Nicholls - 1910 - a few children came to Nairobi School from 2 new schools established in the past few years: Mrs Ailthorpe's at Parklands and Miss E.B. Seccombe's in Nairobi

Old Africa - 19-1-16 - Christine Nicholls - Miss Emily Blanche Seccombe is interesting because she features in the memoirs of two important East African writers – Elspeth Huxley and Beryl Markham, both of whom attended her private establishment. She had travelled alone to Kenya in 1907, at the age of 21. She was born in Clapham in 1876, the eldest child of Henry Lawrence Seccombe, the son of the Assistant Secretary of State for India, Sir Thomas Lawrence Seccombe. Her father was a senior clerk in the India Office. Blanche opened her private school on Railway Hill in Nairobi in 1909, so she must have arrived with some capital. The school was run on English public school lines in a large building. According to hearsay, Blanche was a charming person and first-rate teacher. Breakfasts could include ostrich eggs, large enough to feed twenty pupils. However, Miss Seccombe did not offer Latin, because Elspeth Huxley had to leave her school in 1923 to attend Nairobi School, in order to learn Latin for Cambridge University Entrance (which she failed).