| Katherine Tristram | |
| Birth Date: | 29 April 1858 |
| Birth Place: | Castle Eden |
| Death Place: | Bristol |
| Nationality: | British |
| Education: | London University |
| Occupation: | headteacher |
| Employer: | Church Missionary Society |
| Known For: | Head of Bishop Poole's Memorial Girls School in Osaka |
Katherine Alice Salvin Tristram (29 April 1858 – 24 August 1948) was a British missionary and teacher in Japan. She was employed by the Church Missionary Society and for about forty years she led the Bishop Poole's Memorial Girls School in Osaka.
Tristram was born in 1858 Castle Eden in County Durham. Her parents were Eleanor Mary (born Bowlby) and Henry Baker Tristram. She was educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College before teaching mathematics as the first resident lecturer at Westfield College, London.[1] She sent on to the University of London where she graduated in 1887.[2]
She was accepted as a missionary of the Church Missionary Society (CMS). She was the first woman missionary with the Church Missionary Society to have a degree.[3] She was assigned to the Japan Mission and she became the head teacher of the CMS's school for girls in Osaka. The school would later to be called the Bishop Poole's Memorial Girls School[4] after ex-missionary Arthur William Poole who was, briefly, the first Bishop in Japan from 1883. He died in 1885.[5]
Her father was very involved with work for the CMS and he made a special trip to visit her in Japan in 1891,[6] although while he was there he continued his study of ornithology and Katherine helped with his collecting by acting as his translator.[7]
Tristram resigned from the Osaka school in 1928. When she retired she went to Tokyo where she worked in a sanatorium that looked after patients with tuberculosis.
Tristram died in Bristol.[1] Her papers and letters are held in Birmingham. The letters to and journals of her friend Alice Hodgkins are also in that collection.[8]