Photo 743/4

Soft-covered album containing mounted prints with handwritten captions. The album records the time spent by Ludlow as headmaster of the school for Tibetans at Gyantse. This is briefly described in David Macdonald's 'Twenty Years in Tibet' (London, 1932), pp.221-223. The school was established in 1923 to provide a western education for the sons of Tibetan officials and wealthy landowners. It opened with forty pupils, but from the beginning there was constant friction between Ludlow and the Tibetan assistant master. The main bone of contention appears to have been disagreement about how long the pupils should have to study each day, the Tibetans considering it necessary that the students should work for many hours without a rest in order to learn the tenets of their faith. The school lasted for only three years and was closed in 1926, partly because of these disagreements, partly because the Tibetan Government did not keep up payments for the headmaster's salary. The albums contains views of the school and its activities, general scenes in Gyangtse and a number of views in Sikkim.

For a fuller history of the school, see Michael Rank, 'Frank Ludlow and the English School in Tibet 1923-1926' (Asian Affairs, vol. 34, no. 1, March 2003, pp. 33-45).