Miss Margaret Goldie (1905 – 1997)

Ellen Avery Margaret Goldie was born on 14th December, 1905 in Bridge of Weir, Scotland. She was educated in Glasgow and at the Froebel Institute in London. She was introduced to F.M. Alexander by the principal of the Institute, Esther Lawrence. Her Alexander Technique lessons had a profound and beneficial effect on her, and when the first instruction course for the training of teachers was opened in 1931, she enrolled. She worked closely with Alexander and in 1935 assumed responsibility for “The Little School”, which had been established by him in 1924 for the teaching of children. She cared deeply for Alexander and for his legacy. She was appointed co-trustee of his estate, with his brother Beaumont Alexander, though she severed her connection with the trusteeship shortly after F.M. Alexander’s death in 1955.  She then joined with Walter Carrington, Irene Stewart and John Skinner at their practice in Bainbridge Street.  Around 1964, she acquired tutoring premises with John Skinner in Soho Square. In 1990, she moved to Southampton Row, Bloomsbury, where she continued to teach until 1996, when increasing frailty prevented her from “coming up to London.” For the last months of her life, she taught from her home cottage in The Alberts, Richmond. She died on the morning of Saturday 25th January. At the little chapel in Mortlake where her funeral service took place, Walter Carrington offered a moving and honourable tribute of her life and work and indicated the debt that those who may be called upon to explore the legacy of F.M. Alexander owe to her.