Her mandate in 1888 was to start a girls' school in Singapore in an enclave called Telok Ayer.

During that time, education for girls was definitely not favoured by the early traditional Chinese immigrants, even among the liberal-thinking Baba merchants.

They had started to pass the word that the young missionary lady was in fact a 'mati-mati' agent who was helping the British government enforce its new law against gambling.

She recalled, How pleased we were when one little girl, hearing of the school, clapped her hands and begged her mother to let her attend.

[9][10] In 1893, the new principal, Emma Ferris,[11] found that the furniture had been removed because the landlady had decided to rent the room out to someone else to be used as a shop.

She managed to find a new site for the school in a corner house along Telok Ayer Road.

[15][16] By 1917, the growth of the school had forced a hundred Fairfield girls to study in a dark shophouse.

[19] After Olson, Lim Bock Kee became the first Asian Principal to lead Fairfield Girls’ School in 1946.

In 1983, the school moved to its current Dover campus to accommodate a larger population of students.

Fairfield Methodist Secondary School was granted autonomous status in 1996, for its academic and co-curricular achievements.

The school's Boys’ Brigade won Gold in the JM Fraser Award for Excellence.

Fairfield's English Drama won consecutive Gold with Honors in the years 2009 and 2011, for their performances of Hamlet and Over the Wall.