Jane Walker-Arnott, accompanied by her sister Emilia, left Scotland for the Holy Land in 1858 for the benefit of her delicate health and worked with the German Basel Mission in the Port of Jaffa, a run-down community of Christian and Muslim Palestinian Arabs under Turkish rule. She returned to Scotland in 1860, but having concern for the plight of the girls and women she had seen in the Holy Land, was drawn back to Jaffa. The eldest daughter of a Glasgow University professor felt her greatest contribution could be in educating locals to give them a measure of dignity and independence in an oppressive society.
Tabeetha, named after Tabitha, a woman of good works, in the Acts of the Apostles, admitted its first pupils, fourteen Christian, Jewish and Moslem girls on 16 March 1863 to a room in Jane Walker-Arnott's house. The girls were taught to read and write, to study the Bible and to become skilled at sewing and lace-making. The lace was sold in Scotland to raise money for the school.
Such was the demand from the local community that within ten years Jane Walker-Arnott sought to build a school. In 1874 a plot was purchased outside the walls of the old city of Jaffa, and a Mr Thomas Cook, who led pilgrimages to the Holy Land, sold his house in Bethlehem and gave half the proceeds, 45 pounds sterling, to Jane Walker-Arnott.
Thomas Cook laid the cornerstone, reputed to have come from the house of Simon the Tanner, on 10 March 1875. In the previous year the wall of the ancient City of Jaffa had been breached as the town expanded, and many of the stones used to build the school are said to have come from the wall. The doors of the new school building opened on 1 November 1875.
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