The Poplars School for Girls – Everything Poplars

MISSING: Rhoda, 1899

Rhoda Evanston is the first Poplars girl to be officially recorded as Missing — she vanished during the grand Fin De Siècle ball held at the School on December 31st, 1899. Like Eudora and Thea, her disappearance was reported with much excitement by the press. Foolish, flighty Rhoda, so the official story goes, was engaged […]

MISSING: Nellie, 1888

Note: ‘Nellie’ Forbs may not be one of the Missing in the strictest sense. It is not clear, either from Edith’s letters or additional documents, whether “beloved Nellie” refers to the baby girl Cornelia, Edith’s toddler half-sister (b. 1886), or her full sister, Helena (b. 1878). The records regarding both girls are sketchy (birth certificates […]

HISTORY: Letter from a Civil War Surgeon

Dr. Isambard Jackson presided over The Poplars during the Civil War, when it was commandeered as a Field Hospital by the Confederacy. His letters to his sister, Maria, contain two brief references to Clarissa Lowell, a volunteer nurse who vanished in the spring of 1864, during one of the most brutal months of the entire […]

MISSING: Clarissa, 1864

Although she would never, of course, confess it aloud, Clara was not looking forward to the end of the war. She could not imagine returning to her old, ornamental existence. Sometimes, as she spent her days tending to the weakened and dying, bandaging bloody stumps and carrying buckets of the foulest slop imaginable, she flashed […]

HISTORY: Gilbey & Sons Photographers, Part 1

Aloysius Gilbey, gentleman scientist, was a contemporary of Edgar Forbs, although he was educated overseas, in Germany. The two men shared an interest in chemistry, although Aloysius was concerned that his friend focused on the esoteric rather than the scientific. Throughout the 1840s they visited one another regularly, sharing their thoughts on the latest papers […]

HISTORY: Raffney’s Oak

When Thomas Forbs arrived in the valley that was to become The Poplars, in the late 16th century, the only area that wasn’t thick forest was the clearing surrounding the Well. It took Forbs and his people many years to clear the area of trees and start planting their own crops, thus evolving from hunter-gathers […]

INSPIRATION: Passing

As we clock up one more year of the twenty-first century it seems news headlines increasingly reference the past. This week, TMZ reported that a Versace retail assistant “shocked the manager” by revealing he was African American – and was subsequently fired. Presumably, in order to get and keep his job for a luxury brand, […]

INSPIRATION: Jack’s Women

September is Ripper Season. Jack began the autumn of 1888 as a complete nobody and ended it as the most feared man in the United Kingdom. He materialized with the first mists but vanished before the winter frosts took hold, leaving an enduring mystery in his wake. To this day, people are still picking apart what he did, who […]

The Poplars School for Girls has been educating the daughters of the élite since 1896. It’s a very selective establishment. Students self-select because, hey, all actions have consequences, and the consequence of certain actions is to find yourself, dazed, not really sure what-just-happened, being driven through the forbidding iron gates in the back of a black SUV. What you don’t know at that point is, you’re never coming back. At least, not as the regular, messed up, acting out, complete hellion version of you that ended up there in the first place.

Because The Poplars changes you.

Most girls melt down once they realize where they are, because, man-oh-man, the rules. It takes you a week, two, to find your feet, but you can get used to anything in the end, right? Even those godawful uniforms.

Then, once you become used to the discipline, non-stop rain, emerald lawns, peacocks, giant backyard burial mound, colony of black cats, gravel paths, watchful crows, glittering lake, vigilant trees, hungry ghosts and the eccentric hens teaching an out-there curriculum inside the glorious old mansion, you can’t imagine finishing high school anywhere else. Once you embrace being a Poplars Girl, you’ll be one for the rest of your life. And Poplars Girls do NOT grow up to be those well-behaved women who seldom make history.

Quite the contrary.

Not everyone loves it. Some girls twist and shout against the constraints, proudly defiant. Others slink in the shadows, engineering workarounds, bypassing surveillance, trading contraband. Still others shuffle through the grounds for two, three, four years, heads down, never belonging, always pretending.

And some girls disappear. After an initial, cursory search in the forest, someone always comes up with a believable story to explain the disappearance and everyone moves on. Despite the oh-so-convenient explanation (She ran away because she was pregnant! Because her parents couldn’t pay the fees! Because she was meeting a young man! Because she was depressed! Because she had committed a crime!), these missing girls are never heard from again – failing to contact families, lovers, friends in any of the years that follow – and they have a habit of vanishing from official transcripts over time. It’s as if they never existed, not just forgotten, but deliberately wiped away.

Until now.

For the first time, everything we know about The Poplars is collected in one place.

You can peruse example case studies about The Missing, girls who have vanished without explanation at irregular intervals over the past 200 years.
You can listen to a journalist’s investigations into more of these disappearances via a series of podcasts (COMING SOON).
You can explore tidbits of Poplars folklore and history.
You can pry into the secrets of current Poplars girls, via their letters home and diary entries. Pour out the deepest, darkest affairs of your heart, my darling, but never forget there are spies everywhere.
You can sneak around The Poplars buildings and grounds, thanks to the School Photographer and her Depictions.
You can keep up with the stream of events in all categories in the Chronicle.
You can read about the series of books and movies that will attempt to solve the mysteries of the greenest, most fertile valley in all of Virginia.

In the very near future, Poplars girls around the world will also be invited to share their memories and experiences of their time at the School. But you have to earn that privilege, so sign up for the newsletter below and get commenting. Come back and visit regularly – more secrets of The Poplars will be unfolding over time.

Good luck.

I hope you make it out alive.