Educating girls 1800-1870: revised version

The education of women and girls had been an issue in England since the 1790s.[1] Certain social pressures gave the claims of writers like Mary Wollstonecraft[2], that equality of education with boys was a means of securing independence for women, an extra urgency by 1850. Women were still less educated than men. Female literacy rates in 1851 were still only 55% compared to nearly 70% for men. The proportion of women in the population was steadily rising from 1,036 females per 1,000 males in 1821 to 1,054 per 1,000 in 1871. This meant that there was a surplus of women over men and accordingly over a quarter of a million women had little expectation of marriage and the lifetime protection of husband and home. This situation was exacerbated by the rising age of marriage that also left more single women waiting for, and often not achieving, marriage.

The education of women was a class-based as that of boys.[3] Well-to-do girls were educated at home or in small academies in 1830. The academic content was low and, with the transformation of the grammar schools, girls found themselves excluded from establishments they had attended in the eighteenth century. Lower class girls attended the National or British schools along with boys and were destined, if not for the drudgery of a working-class marriage, then for factory work or the vast army of domestic service. The education girls received before 1870 was very similar to that followed by boys, with the probable addition of some sewing and knitting. The concern to develop a more distinctive curriculum with a focus on domestic science, cooking, laundry and needlework came after 1870 and especially in the 1880s and 1890s.

19^th century School group: Bedfordshire Record Office Z50/101/12

With more middle-class women relying on parents or putative husbands and children, they were forced to think in terms of earning their own living in a career. This brought the education issue to the forefront of feminist thinking. The problem between 1840 and 1870 was finding careers for unmarried middle-class ladies and of fashioning an education that would fit them for it. Existing careers were limited in 1850 and becoming a governess was the only means of earning a living for women of gentle birth. In 1851, there were some 25,000 governesses in England but they had no proper training and often an education barely above the accomplishments. Moreover, there were uneasy status incongruities: hired to impart ladylike qualities to her charges, the governess by taking paid employment forfeited her own status as a lady. The gendered nature of elementary education can be seen after the 1870 Education Act with the curriculum for girls stressing ‘domestic skills’. [4]

The governess: Rebecca Solomon, c1858

The Governesses’ Benevolent Institution was formed in 1843 to help active governesses seek positions and aged ones to live in retirement. They tackled the central problem of education by founding Queen’s College in 1848 with an academic curriculum that developed sciences and languages as well as basic subjects and accomplishments (drawing, music, dancing, and needlework). [5] A similar institution, Bedford College, was opened in 1849.[6] Pupils from these colleges influenced many areas of feminist life in the 1860s and 1870s: The English Woman’s Journal, the Social Science Association, the early suffrage and married women’s property movements all stemmed from them. Ex-Queen’s students dominated many areas of feminist development, for example, Sophia Jex Blake, the first English doctor and Octavia Hill, the social work pioneer. But most important were Miss Beale and Miss Buss.

Dorothea Beale and her friend Frances Mary Buss created respectively the girls’ public boarding school and the girls’ grammar school. [7] In 1858 Miss Beale took over the recently founded Cheltenham Ladies College and turned it into the model of the high-quality girls’ boarding school. [8] St Leonards and Roedean were founded after 1870 based on its example. Miss Buss’ North London Collegiate School began in 1850 in Camden Town to meet the problem of the lack of education for middle-class girls. [9] She believed in the important of home life in the upbringing of girls and it deliberately remained a day school. In both institutions the curriculum included subjects like science and Latin. Both institutions might have remained unique in their own areas had not feminist educators brought two powerful factors into play.

Public examinations were opened to girls. Oxford and Cambridge had started Local Examinations for boys’ schools in 1858 providing an external common standard. The Victorians placed great stress on examinations as a means of raising academic performance and deciding the fitness of candidates for public office. Feminists saw that without the standard demanded of boys the new academic girls’ education would not be taken seriously. Emily Davies, the future founder of Girton College and sister of a Principal of Queen’s College, urged Cambridge to admit girls to its Locals that it did experimentally in 1863.

Miss Buss sent 25 candidates and following this success Local school examinations were formally opened to girls by Cambridge, Edinburgh and Durham universities in 1865 and 1866 and Oxford followed suit in 1870. Girls’ education was strengthened and spread after it secured financial aid through endowments. In the 1860s, the Taunton Commission examined the issue of endowments for grammar schools. Feminists saw this as another crucial opportunity. Emily Davies insisted the Commission should examine girls’ education and she, and Miss Beale and Miss Buss, gave evidence before it and Miss Beale edited the volume of the report devoted to girls. The result was the Endowed Schools Act 1869 and the creation of the Endowed Schools Commissioners to reform grammar school endowments. They created 47 new grammar schools between 1869 and 1875 and their successors, the charity Commission, created another 47 after 1875. The North London Collegiate gained an endowment from the reorganisation.[10]

The early movement for higher education for girls and its outcome occupied the 1860s. The prime mover was Emily Davies.[11] She wanted higher education for women to widen the range of occupations open to them, fit them for public life, raise the standard of teaching in girls’ schools, advance the cause of women’s suffrage and match the experience of France, Germany and Italy where women were accepted into universities. She took a house in Hitchen in 1869 to prepare girls for Cambridge examinations and in 1873 moved to Cambridge itself founding Girton College.[12] At the same time Anne Clough moved to Cambridge in 1871 to set up what was to become Newnham College.[13] Owens College in Manchester admitted women in 1869. This was followed by London in 1878 and Oxford in 1879.[14] The timing of these events coincided with the development of civic universities in the 1870s that admitted women as a normal policy.

Some historians have argued that the improvement in middle-class girls’ schooling was linked to the more general attempt at reforming secondary education and owed more to the attention of government through such bodies as the Taunton Commission than to feminist lobbying.[15] This view neglects the role of feminists in widening the concerns of that commission to include girls’ education. Had Emily Davies and other feminists not pursued their case, the Commission would have looked only at the state of boys’ education. Some historians stress that the demand for improved educational opportunities for women was part of a wider extension of democratic rights and liberty for individuals especially the call for women’s suffrage after 1865. A second explanation suggests that industrialisation created a need for more education. This too is problematic. Industrialisation and the entrenching of capitalist values led to a focus upon separate spheres and upon domestic respectability and to a marginalising of the economic role of especially working-class women.[16] A final explanation sees the emergence of the women’s educational reform movement much more centrally to the wider women’s movement. Women saw education as the key to a broad range of activities and freedoms: as a means of training for paid employment, of alleviating the vacuity and boredom of everyday idleness and of improving their ability to fight for the extension of female opportunities in other areas.[17]

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[1] Purvis, June, A History of Women’s Education in England, (Open University Press), 1991 covers the period between 1800 and 1914 and is the best introduction to the subject. It should be supplemented by the following: Bryant, Margaret, The Unexpected Revolution: A study of the history of the education of women and girls in the nineteenth century, (NFER), 1979, Dyhouse, Carol, Girls Growing up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England, (Routledge), 1981, Gorman, Deborah, The Victorian Girl and the Feminist Ideal, (Croom Helm), 1982, Burstyn, Joan, Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood, (Croom Helm), 1980 and Fletcher, Sheila, Feminists and Bureaucrats: A study in the development of girls’ education in the nineteenth century, (Cambridge University Press), 1984, 2008. Bennett, Daphne, Emily Davies and the Liberation of Women 1830-1921, (André Deutsch), 1990 provides a detailed biography, for a brief study see the relevant section of Caine, Barbara, Victorian Feminists, (Oxford University Press), 1992. Hunt, Felicity, (ed.), Lessons for Life: The Schooling of Girls and Women, (Basil Blackwell), 1987 contains some useful papers. Spender, Dale, (ed.), The education papers: women’s quest for equality in Britain 1850-1912, (Routledge), 1987 is a valuable selection of documents on women’s education.

[2] Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters with Reflections of Female Conduct in the More Important Duties of Life, (J. Johnson), 1787.

[3] See, Roach, John, ‘Boys and girls at school, 1800-70’, History of Education, Vol. 15, (1986), pp. 147-159.

[4] Gomersall, Meg, ‘Ideals and realities: the education of working-class girls, 1800-1870’, History of Education, Vol. 17, (1988), pp. 37-53, Horn, Pamela, ‘The education and employment of working-class girls, 1870-1914’, History of Education, Vol. 17, (1988), pp. 71-82.

[5] Kaye, Elaine, A History of Queen’s College, London 1848-1972, (Chatto and Windus), 1972

[6] Tuke, D.M.J. and Tuke, M.J., A History of Bedford College for women, 1849-1937, (Oxford University Press), 1939.

[7] Dyhouse, Carol, ‘Miss Buss and Miss Beale: gender and authority in the history of education’, in Hunt, Felicity, (ed.), Lessons for life, the schooling of girls and women 1850-1950, (Basil Blackwell), 1987, pp. 22-38.

[8] Clarke, A. K., A history of the Cheltenham Ladies’ College, 1853-1953, (Faber), 1953. See also, Raikes, E., Dorothea Beale of Cheltenham, (A. Constable), 1908.

[9] Scrimgeour, Ruby Margaret, (ed.), The North London Collegiate School, 1850-1950: a hundred years of girls’ education, (Oxford University Press), 1950. See also, Ridley, A.E., Frances Mary Buss and her work for education, (Longmans), 1986.

[10] Sondheimer, Janet and Bodington, P.R. (eds.), The Girls’ Public Day School Trust, 1872-1972: a centenary review, (Girls’ Public Day School Trust), 1972 and Kamm, Josephine, Indicative Past: A Hundred Years of the Girls’ Public Day School Trust, (Allen & Unwin), 1971.

[11] Bennett, Daphne, Emily Davies and the Liberation of Women, 1830-1921, (Andre Deutsch), 1990 remains the best study; Davies, Emily, The Higher Education of Women, (Portrayer), 2002 facsimile reprint of 1866 edition. See also, Robinson, Jane, Bluestocking: The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education, (Viking), 2009.

[12] See Stephens, B.N., Emily Davies and Girton College, (Constable & Co.), 1927.

[13] Clough, B.A., A memoir of Anne Jemima Clough, (E.Arnold), 1897 and Gardner, Alice, A Short History of Newnham College, Cambridge, (Bowes & Bowes), 1921.

[14] Stevenson, Julie, ‘Women in higher education, with special reference to University College, London, 1873-1913’, in Blanchard, I., (ed.), New directions in economic and social history, (Newlees), 1995, pp. 101-109.

[15] Moore, Lindy, ‘Young ladies’ institutions: the development of secondary schools for girls in Scotland, 1833-c.1870’, History of Education, Vol. 32, (2003), pp. 249-272, Sperandio, Jill, ‘Secondary schools for Norwich girls, 1850-1910: demanded or benevolently supplied?’, Gender & Education, Vol. 14, (2002), pp. 391-410.

[16] See, Jordan, Ellen, The women’s movement and women’s employment in nineteenth century Britain, (Routledge), 1999, pp. 107-122 and Delamont, Sara, ‘The Domestic Ideology and Women’s Education’, in Delamont, Sara and Duffin, Lorna, (eds.), The Nineteenth Century Woman, (Croom Helm), 1978 pp. 164-187.

[17] See, Aldrich, Richard, ‘Pioneers of female education in Victorian Britain’, History of Education Society Bulletin, Vol. 54, (1994), pp. 56-61.

Technical education 1820-1900

In the 1820s, there was an attempt to create a scientific culture and technical education for the working-classes.[1] George Birkbeck, a Glasgow doctor who had settled in London, was instrumental with Benthamite radicals in establishing the London Mechanics’ Institute in 1823. His aim was to provide tuition in physics and chemistry for artisans and mechanics of various kinds and this became the model for a provincial movement. By 1826, there were 100 mechanics’ institutes, by 1841 over 300 and had more than doubled to 700 by 1851. [2] In some cities, initially at least, they tried to serve a serious educative and scientific purpose. In Leeds, for example, local businessmen were strongly in favour of scientific education.[3] Things, however, began to go wrong. Birkbeck had doubted that literacy levels in England were high enough to support further education of some rigour. His doubts were well founded and, as a result, many of the institutes took different paths in response to various other social pressures. Many concentrated on basic education in reading and writing while others became social clubs foreshadowing the working men’s club movement of the 1860s and some centres of radical political activity.[4]

Most institutes forgot their origins and were taken over by the middle-classes either as cultural centres for themselves or as institutions in which an attempt could be made to persuade the working-classes of the virtues of temperance or classical political economy; in Sheffield, 88% of members were business or professional men. [5] Two things are clear about this movement. The institutes were not an entire failure. They fulfilled a variety of useful roles relevant to their time and locality and whatever path away from their original intention was taken as a result of local circumstances. [6] Whatever Birkbeck had hoped, the mechanics’ institutes did not prove to be a mass movement giving working men that scientific culture that the middle-classes had enjoyed since the mid-eighteenth century. [7]

In the mid-century, the state became involved in the promotion of technical education in national institutions focused in London. In 1845, the Royal College of Chemistry was established and the Government School of Mines followed this in 1851. Both these institutions benefited from the Great Exhibition of 1851 whose profits of £186,000 together with a Government grant purchased the site in South Kensington where it was intended to gather various scientific institutions. In 1853, the School of Mines incorporated the nationalised College of Chemistry, the latter transferring to South Kensington in 1872 and the former joining it piecemeal thereafter.[8] In 1853, government created the Department of Science and Arts that controlled the School and the College. It also tried to create science schools in the provinces but with limited success. More importantly, in 1859 the new Department began a series of science examinations for schools and paid grants to such schools for successful pupils on a payment by results system. In 1860, nine schools with 500 pupils participated but by 1870, there were 799 schools with over 34,000 pupils. This represented a considerable effort to introduce science teaching into schools, its standards secured by the financial control of inspectors.

So how successful was the development of technical education? Britain had won most of the prizes at the Great Exhibition of 1851 but performance sixteen years later in Paris was poor. Despite government involvement in technical education, there was a strong feeling that we had fallen behind France and Prussia.[9] National unease generated the civic university movement of the 1870s and 1880s but found immediate expression in the 1868 Parliamentary Select Committee on scientific education chaired by the ironmaster Bernhard Samuelson.[10] This began twenty years of various parliamentary inquiries into science, industry and education that led to improvements in technical education especially after 1890.[11]

Two major points emerge from this. The industrial revolution seemed to have struck an economically efficient balance in its provision of education whatever its social deficiencies.[12] Little serious effort was made before 1830 to maintain the elementary education of the mass of the population and this did not have any real adverse effects on economic growth since most of the new occupations created did not require literate labour. After 1840, Britain was sufficiently rich to finance expensive projects like its railway building and the considerable expansion of investment in education. Expenditure on education was postponed but so too was a problem. While scientific and technical information circulated in middle-class institutions, for working men the attempt to create a technical education was a failure. Apart from the central institutions in South Kensington and the introduction of technical examinations into schools in the 1860s, there was a dangerous deficit in the provision of technical education. The roots of a great deal of anxiety about the level of education vis-à-vis Germany in the 1870s and 1880s lay in the lack of development in the 1850s and 1860s. [13] Industrial success bred a lack of urgency to make rising literacy the basis for a higher level of working-class scientific training. Britain’s economic challenges from the 1870s was, in part, a result of this.[14]

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[1] Cronin, Bernard P., Technology, industrial conflict, and the development of technical education in 19^th century England, (Ashgate), 2001, Summerfield, Penny and Evans, E.J., (eds.), Technical education and the state since 1850: historical and contemporary perspectives, (Manchester University Press), 1990 and Roderick, G.W., and Stephens, M.D., (eds.), Scientific and technical education in 19^th century England: a symposium, (David & Charles), 1972.

[2] Hudson, J.W., The History of Adult Education, (Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans), 1851, pp. 222-236 and Cliffe-Leslie, T.E., An Inquiry into the Progress and Present Conditions of Mechanics’ Institutes, (Hodges and Smith), 1852 provide details of numbers and location of Institutes. For a useful case-study see, Tylecote, M.P., The Mechanics’ Institutes of Lancashire and Yorkshire before 1851, (Manchester University Press), 1957.

[3] Garner, A.D. and Jenkins, E.W., ‘The English Mechanics’ Institutes: The case of Leeds 1824-42’, History of Education, Vol. 12, (1), pp. 139-152.

[4] Munford, W.A., ‘George Birkbeck and Mechanics’ Institutes’, in English libraries, 1800-50 (University College London: School of Librarianship & Archives), 1958, pp. 33-58 and Kelly, Thomas, George Birkbeck: pioneer of adult education, (Liverpool University Press), 1957. See also, Royle, Edward, ‘Mechanics’ Institutes and the Working Classes 1840-1860’, Historical Journal, Vol. 14, (2), (1971), pp. 305-321.

[5] See Inkster, I., ‘Science and the Machanics’ Institutes, 1820-1850: The Case of Sheffield, Annals of Science, Vol. 32, (5), pp. 451-474.

[6] Mechanics’ Institutes, largely inspired by British models emerged in the United States and throughout the British Empire. Although American Institutes were soon involved in large-scale technical research projects that were seen as ‘useful’ by American manufacturers and politicians, in Britain they appeared more concerned with remedying social disorder and no contemporary Institute sought to translate its utilitarian rhetoric of applied research into reality.

[7] Tylecote, M.P., The mechanics’ institutes of Lancashire and Yorkshire before 1851, (Manchester University Press), 1957 provides a good regional study.

[8] Rodereick, G.W. and Stephens, M.D., ‘Mining Education in England and Wales in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century’, Irish Journal of Education, Vol. 6, (2), (1972), pp. 105-120.

[9] Floud, Roderick, ‘Technical education and economic performance: Britain, 1850-1914’, Albion, Vol. 14, (1982), pp. 153-168.

[10] Samuelson chaired the Royal Commission on Technical Instruction in thre early 1880s, see Argles, M., ‘The Royal Commission on Technical Instruction, 1881-4: Its inception and composition’, Journal of Education & Training, Vol. 11, (1959), pp. 97-104.

[11] See, Stephens, M.D. and Roderick, G.W., ‘The later Victorians and scientific and technical education’, Annals of Science, Vol. 28, (1972), pp. 385-400, Bailey, Bill, ‘The Technical Education Movement: A Late Nineteenth Century Educational ‘Lobby’’, Journal of Further and higher Education, Vol. 7, (3), (1983), pp. 55-68 and Betts. Robin, ‘Persistent but misguided?: the technical educationists 1867-89’, History of Education, Vol. 27, (3), (1998), pp. 267-277

[12] Roderick, G.W. and Stephens, M.D., (eds.), Where did we go wrong?: industrial performance, education, and the economy in Victorian Britain, (Falmar Press), 1981.

[13] Haines, George, ‘German Influence upon Scientific Instruction in England, 1867-1887’, Victorian Studies, Vol. 1, (3), (1958), pp. 215-244.

[14] Sanderson, Michael, Education and economic decline in Britain, 1870 to the 1990s, (Cambridge University Press), 1999, pp. 3-54 summarises the contrary arguments.