Crime and the courts

There has been an unprecedented growth of academic research and publications in the history of crime.[1] Until recently, most books dealing with crime tended to be ‘popular’ rather than narrowly ‘academic’ in character and concentrated on particular, notorious events or personalities and many depended on largely anecdotal and literary sources. Since the 1970s, historians have increasingly turned their attention to crime and how former societies understood it and sought to deal with it.

Some historians have made a distinction between ‘real crime’ such as murder, rape and theft and ‘social crime’ or offences that had a degree of community acceptance or that can be linked with social protest.[2] John Rule has suggested that it is useful to think of two main types of social crime during the late-eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century. First, some crimes drew society’s support because of their protest nature. In this category he includes rioting over the high cost of food, over enclosures, recruiting for the army or navy or over turnpike tolls.[3] Secondly, some crimes were not regarded as criminal by those who committed them. ‘Perks’ or the appropriation of things from the workplace became increasingly the object of criminal prosecution by employers in the nineteenth century. Poaching fell into the same category.[4] The poor did not look upon it as a crime

...they almost universally look upon game, when in a wild state, as not being the property of any individual. [5]

Bow Street court c1910

The degree to which the state criminalises certain types of behaviour and not others has always been a matter of debate. The traditional view is that humanitarian reformers like Sir Samuel Romilly and Sir James Mackintosh gradually created awareness both inside and outside Parliament that England’s Bloody Code needed drastic revision. While such men stressed the barbarity of the legal code, other reformers like John Howard paved the way for improvement in the penal system. This picture fitted well with the Whig idea of history as progress and implied a logic that neglects the economic, social and political context for change.

Christabel Pankhurst, Mrs Pankhurst and Flora Drummond at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court, 1913

Eighteenth century Parliaments tended to pass laws to deal with local problems but gradually government saw crime in its national context. Sir Robert Peel‘s reorganisation of the criminal law during the 1820s was symptomatic of this change. Yet national laws still had to be implemented at local level by local people, whose perceptions were not always the same as those in Parliament. The law may have been seen as impartial but, it had to be interpreted and enforced by local agents such as the magistracy who had their own assumptions, interests and prejudices and who could, on occasions, be at odds with each other. [6]

Offenders in England and Wales were brought before three main kinds of court during the nineteenth century.[7] Before the appointment of professional prosecutors in the late-nineteenth century, criminal cases were initiated by complaints from private citizens, usually the victims, to local magistrates. Their role was to assess the allegations and, if proceedings seemed warranted, to choose the appropriate course of action. Criminal prosecution was rather more like civil litigation. Private prosecution was expensive and only wealthy people could afford to pay for a lengthy court trial. The cost of the litigation meant that for the masses of the poor recourse to criminal justice was not possible and often they ‘took the law into their own hands’.

The main developments during the nineteenth century were the decline in private prosecution and the extension of use of the courts by the working class. The criminal justice system, in particular the magistrates courts, moved into the working-class areas of the expanding cities and was part of the same dynamic that resulted in the formation of the modern police. The increasing use of the magistrates’ courts, known, appropriately, as police courts, by the masses was a key feature of these developments. The main vehicle of this change was the extension of access to the courts for the masses through the expansion of summary jurisdiction. The percentage of offences in England and Wales tried in front of lay magistrates rose from 66 percent in 1857 to 80 percent by 1911. Misdemeanours, the least serious offences such as drunkenness, soliciting, and vagrancy were dealt with summarily by magistrates sitting alone or in pairs on the bench, although those accused were allowed to employ a defence counsel. These summary powers were extended during the nineteenth century to include some cases of petty larceny and assault with the passage of the Juvenile Offenders Acts in 1847 and 1850 and the Criminal Justice Acts of 1855 and 1879.[8] At the beginning of the nineteenth century, individual magistrates frequently tried summary offences in their own home but this became less common by the 1830s and was abolished in 1848 by the Summary Jurisdiction Act. After this, all summary trials took place at formally constituted Petty Sessions, before at least two magistrates. Petty Sessional courts had since the eighteenth century but in 1828, legislation had tightened up procedures and carefully defined Petty Sessional divisions within counties. In the larger towns and cities, stipendiary or paid magistrates, acting in what were increasingly referred to as ‘police courts‘ took on more and more of the burdens of summary justice.[9] Summary jurisdiction benefitted the working-classed by making access to the courts quick and cheap but also entailed ‘handing over’ to the police and increasingly middle-class magistrates by the masses of the right to sort out their conflicts.

When the offence appeared more serious, the magistrate drafted a bill of indictment for a grand jury which, if satisfied that there was a case to answer, sent it for trial by jury in one of two venues.[10] More serious offences or felonies were prosecuted on indictment and were heard at Quarter Sessions that met four times a year in the county town and in those boroughs where the right for a borough session was included in its charter. These courts were held before a bench of county justices or magistrates appointed by a borough corporation, with a jury. Quarter Sessions were regarded as consistently poor throughout the nineteenth century due to failure by chairmen, who did not have to be legally qualified, to take proper note of evidence, often displaying open hostility to prisoners and the severity of sentences compared to the Assizes.

The most serious offences were tried before professional circuit judges and juries at Assizes that generally sat twice a year. Before 1842, when legislation assigned all capital offences and those with life imprisonment for the first offence to the Assizes, the line between Assize and Quarter Sessions cases was rather blurred. It has been estimated that in the early-nineteenth century, trials lasted about 20 minutes with Assizes hearing 20-30 cases a day. Traditionally, English felony trials consisted of a relatively unstructured exchange between the victim of the felony or a hired prosecutor and the accused generally appearing without a lawyer.[11] In cases of high treason, the right to make a defence had been established in 1696 [12] but it was not until 1836 that the Prisoners’ Counsel Act recognised the defendant’s right to legal counsel in felony trials and lifted many restrictions on the activities of defence lawyers.[13] This recognised the growing practice, which had developed during the previous century, of judges allowing counsel to examine witnesses on the defendant’s behalf.[14] In the early-nineteenth century, there were two assizes per year held in the major county towns of most counties at Lent and during the summer. Emergencies, such as food riots or other types of public disorder, could lead to a special assize being called. The metropolitan equivalent of the assizes was the court at the Old Bailey that, by the 1750s, held eight sessions a year. In 1834, it was enlarged and re-housed in the new Central Criminal Court.[15]

The King’s or Queen’s Bench was the monarch’s personal court concerned with protecting the interests of the Crown. Cases could be referred to it where it was believed that a fair hearing in a particular locality was impossible. It was also a court of review for magistrates, who could ask it to rule on points of law. Judges at the Assizes normally consulted their colleagues on points of law but, in 1848, the Court for Crown Cases Reserved was set up for this. During the nineteenth century, there was no appeals procedure or court of appeals. A convicted criminal’s only hope was the Royal Pardon, in practice delegated to the Home Secretary. A Court of Criminal Appeal was finally established in 1907.[16]

Magistrates and judges were not the only agents of the law who were called upon to interpret the law. The nineteenth century saw the creation of a new police force in Britain. The police had some discretion in identifying behaviour as criminal or not and in deciding what action to take. It was largely victimless crimes that were open to such discretion: drunkenness, prostitution, street gaming and especially Sunday street-selling.

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[1] Emsley, C., Crime and Society in England 1750-1900, 4^th ed., (Longman), 2010 is the most recent general text and should be read in conjunction with his Policing and its Context 1750-1870, (Macmillan), 1983 and ‘Crime in Nineteenth Century Britain’, History Today, Vol. 38, (4), (1988), pp. 40-46, Gattrell, V., ‘Crime, authority and the policeman-state‘, in Thompson, F.M.L., (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750-1950: Vol. 3 Social Agencies and Institutions, (Cambridge University Press), 1900, pp. 243-310 and the older study by Tobias, J.J., Crime and Industrial Society in the Nineteenth Century, (Batsford), 1967. See also, Taylor, David, Crime, policing and punishment in England, 1750-1914, (Macmillan), 1998, and McLynn, Frank J., Crime and punishment in eighteenth-century England, (Routledge), 1989.

[2] Taylor, H., ‘Rationing Crime: The Political Economy of Criminal Statistics since the 1850s’, Economic History Review, Vol. 51, (1998), pp. 569-590 and Sindall, R.S., ‘The criminal statistics of nineteenth-century cities: a new approach’, Urban History, Vol. 13, (1986), pp. 28-36 consider the problem of crime statistics.

[3] Shakesheff, T., Rural conflict, crime and protest: Herefordshire, 1800 to 1860, (Boydell), 2003, pp. 78-112, 141-175 provides a good local study on this issue.

[4] Osborne, Harvey and Winstanley, Michael J., ‘Rural and Urban Poaching in Victorian England’, Rural History, Vol. 17, (2006), pp. 187-212 and Hopkins, H., The Long Affray: the poaching wars, 1760-1914, (Secker and Warburg), 1985.

[5] A Bedfordshire JP to the Select Committee on Criminal Commitments and Convictions, Parliamentary Papers 1826-7, Vol. 6, p. 34.

[6] Zangerl, C.H.E., ‘The Social Composition of the County Magistracy in England and Wales, 1831-1887’, Journal of British Studies, Vol. 11, (1971), pp. 113-125, Philips, D., ‘The Black Country Magistracy 1835-1860’, Midland History, Vol. 3, (1975), pp. 161-190 and Swift, R., ‘The English Urban Magistracy and the Administration of Justice during the early Nineteenth Century: Wolberhampton 1815-1860’, Midland History, Vol. 17, (1992), pp. 75-92.

[7] Cottu, Charles, On the Administration of Criminal Justice in England: and the Spirit of the English Government, (R. Stevens), 1822 provides a contemporary view. Bentley, D.J., English Criminal Courts in the Nineteenth Century, (Continuum), 1998 and Langbein, John H., The Origins of the Adversary Criminal Trial, (Oxford University Press), 2003. See also, King, Peter, Crime, Justice and Discretion in England, 1740-1820, (Cambridge University Press), 2000 and Cornish William, Anderson J. Stuart, Cocks Ray, Lobban Michael, Polden Patrick and Smith, Keith, (eds.), The Oxford History of the Laws of England, Volumes XI, XII and XIII, 1820-1914, (Oxford University Press), 2010, Vol. XI for detailed discussion of the development of the criminal justice system.

[8] The Juvenile Offenders Act of 1847 permitted summary trial for larceny by offenders aged under 14. This was raised to 16 in 1850. The Criminal Justice Act of 1855 extended summary jurisdiction with the consent of the accused to all cases of simple larceny.

[9] Davis, J., ‘A poor man’s system of justice: The London police courts in the second half of the nineteenth century’, Historical Journal¸Vol. 27, (2), (1984), pp. 309-335.

[10] Grand juries met to assess the indictments and decide whether there was sufficient evidence to try the case before a trial jury. At this point prosecutors and their witnesses, but not defendants, could testify. Those cases for which a grand jury believed the evidence was sufficient to warrant a trial were approved as ‘true bills’; those rejected were labelled ‘ignoramus’ or ‘not found’ and the case was dropped. There were repeated calls throughout the nineteenth century for the abolition of the grand jury but it was not until 1933 that England abandoned them in favour of a committal procedure. See, Hostettler, John, The Politics of Criminal Law Reform in the Nineteenth Century, (Barry Rose Law Publishers), 1992, pp. 150-154 and The Criminal Jury Old and New: Jury power from early times to the present day, (Waterside Press), 2004, pp. 109-125.

[11] Although victims could hire a lawyer to present their case before the courts but in practice few did so. In most felony trials, the judges were the only participants with any legal training. Consequently, they dominated the courtroom and orchestrated the brief confrontation between the accused and the victim that lay at the heart of the trial.

[12] See, Shapiro, Alexander H., ‘Political Theory and the Growth of Defensive Safeguards in Criminal Procedure: The Origins of the Treason Trials Act of 1696’, Law & History Review, Vol. 11, (2), (1993), pp. 215-255.

[13] Beattie, J.M., ‘Scales of Justice: Defense Counsel and the English Criminal Trial in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, Law & History Review, Vol. 9, (2), (1991), pp. 221-267 examines the development of defence in felony cases.

[14] Langbein, John H., ‘The Prosecutorial Origins of Defence Counsel in the Eighteenth Century: The Appearance of Solicitors’, Cambridge Law Journal, Vol. 58, (1999), pp. 314-365.

[15] May, Allyson M., The Bar and the Old Bailey, 1750-1850, (University of North Carolina Press), 2003.

[16] In Scotland, the nineteenth century justice system consisted of two courts, the Sherrif Court and the High Court (based in Edinburgh). Both of these courts travelled on a circuit to different regional locations where cases would be tried. The most common crimes to be tried in the Sherrif Court were theft and assault while more difficult cases were referred to the High Court, the supreme criminal court of Scotland.

Higher education 1870-1914

The vast growth in and attempt to systematise secondary education was paralleled by a significant, though relatively small, growth and innovation in the university sector. Higher education was still only accessible to a tiny minority. There were changes in the composition of the university population, in the structure of university government and in the curriculum. The 1870s saw the arrival at Oxford and Cambridge both of Nonconformists and of women. The 1871 legislation abolishing university tests untied both undergraduate places and fellowships and in the process allowed fellows to marry. The growing regiment of dons’ wives was augmented by a small number of women students. Girton and Newnham at Cambridge in the early 1870s were joined by Somerville, Lady Margaret Hall and St Anne’s at Oxford in 1879 followed by St Hugh’s and St Hilda’s in 1886 and 1892 respectively. By 1900-1901, there were 296 women students at Cambridge and 239 at Oxford compared to 2,880 and 2,537 male students respectively. Women did not become full members of the university in Oxford until 1919 and in Cambridge until 1948 whereas they were admitted to all the University of London degrees in 1878.

The Royal and Statutory Commissions of the 1850s had begun the process of overhauling college statutes and strengthening the central organs of university government. This was continued in the 1870s but the more ambitious plans were spoiled by the fall in colleges’ income brought about by the agricultural depression. At the same time, a reassertion of control over teaching and pastoral responsibilities by many colleges counter-balanced such trends towards centralisation very powerfully. The breaches in the dominance of Classics and Mathematics towards the end of the 1840s continued and in the early 1870s separate courses in History and Law emerged and the 1890s saw the arrival of courses in English and Modern Languages. Parallel to this was the emergence of research as a systematic postgraduate activity.

Operating theatre at London medical school

Change in Oxbridge, however, was a pale reflection of the changes outside it. By 1900, there were more students, women as well as men, in higher education in Great Britain outside than within Oxford and Cambridge. The sequence of foundations was as follows: Newcastle 1871; University College of Wales, Aberystwyth 1872; Leeds 1874; Mason College, Birmingham 1874; Bristol 1876; Firth College, Sheffield 1879; Liverpool 1881; Nottingham 1881; Cardiff 1883; Bangor 1883; Reading 1892; Southampton 1902. Many of these institutions began by taking external London degree examinations before seeking Royal Charters to enable them to grant their own degrees.[1]

Other institutions, often also exploiting the external London examining umbrella, grew in London itself: medical schools attached to the teaching hospitals; in South Kensington the Royal School of Mines, the Royal College of Science and the Central Technical College formed the great Imperial College of Science and Technology in 1907; the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1895; and the women’s colleges, Bedford (1849), Westfield (1882) and Royal Holloway (1886). But the University of London only acquired a teaching as well as an examining role in 1899, following the University of London Act 1898 that brought all these and other institutions together in a complex and uneasy federation. By 1900-1901, full-time students outside Oxford and Cambridge totalled almost 8,000 in England and a further 1,250 in Wales.

Funding the civic university movement proved problematic and most universities were operating on a shoe-string compared to the endowments of Oxbridge. In individual cases, university colleges benefited from the generosity of local business: in Birmingham, for example, the Chamberlains played a central role. But this was not enough. From 1839, the University of London had small recurrent grants in recognition of the imperial and colonial as well as the domestic function of its examining role. In 1883-1884, the Welsh parliamentary lobby succeeded in securing short-term grant aid for the three Welsh colleges; and in 1880 the Treasury finally conceded the principle of grant aid to the English institutions outside Oxbridge. By 1906, direct Treasury grants to universities amounted to £100,000.

The full-time student population in all English and Welsh universities in 1914 only accounted for one% of the age group. Universities still catered for the elite. The advance of the new professional middle-classes gradually reduced the dominance of the landed gentry and clergy and outside Oxbridge, by 1914, the children of the lower middle-classes and skilled artisans were beginning to appear.

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[1] Walsh, J.J., ‘The University Movement in the North of England at the End of the Nineteenth Century’, Northern History, Vol. 46, (1), (2009), pp. 113-131.

Grammar and public schools, 1870-1914: revised version

Between the Endowed Schools Act 1869 and the appointment of the Bryce Commission in 1895, four main developments had taken place in secondary education. First, the endowments and management of the grammar schools had been widely reformed. Secondly, their curriculum had become subject to greater scrutiny and change. Thirdly, the middle-class character of the schools had been further reinforced though opportunities for the recruitment of a small number of working-class children to the secondary system and, finally secondary education for middle-class girls had made considerable advances.

In spite of the reforms, many schools remained insecure. The Bryce Commission found in the 1890s many of them, mainly smaller schools, were prone to fluctuating numbers and decline.[1] Its report led to the establishment of the Board of Education and, after the Cockerton Judgement, to the 1902 Act. It recommended that for every 1,000 of the population, secondary education should be made available to just ten children, of whom eight would be in the third grade. This meant that, out of 4,000,000 children, 64,000 would be educated in the first and second grade schools and 256,000 in the third grade. ‘It is obvious’, the Commission commented, ‘that these distinctions correspond roughly, but by no means exactly, to the gradations of society’. [2] It was the question of access to secondary schools that was on the point of becoming a major issue. The Education Act 1902 was central to the process of change for grammar schools.

The Endowed Schools Commissioners had power to make provision for girls and was widely used by them. By the time of their demise in 1874, they had created 27 schools for girls and schemes for another twenty were in the pipeline. The Charity Commissioners proceeded at a much slower pace but as further 45 girls’ schools had been added by 1903. Parallel to these developments went the creation of proprietary schools for girls. In 1892, a Girls’ Public Day School Company was formed and by 1880, it had opened eleven schools in London and eleven elsewhere. A handful of new girls’ schools, such as Cheltenham, Wycombe Abbey and Roedean, were boarding, modelling themselves more or less on boys’ public schools; but the vast majority were day schools.[3]

The elementary and endowed and private school systems remained broadly defined by the criteria of social class. It is not surprising that the public schools managed to maintain their social identity though criticisms continued to be levelled against their traditions and preoccupation with games and athleticism. The public schools perpetuated an aristocratic element in English education and the proprietary and endowed schools continued to uphold it as an educational ideal. The sons of the expanding commercial and industrial middle-classes were trained in the older traditions and codes of gentlemen, an education that left them ill prepared for their role in an increasingly competitive world.[4] Modern subjects were often left optional and between 1860 and 1880 games became compulsory, organised and eulogised at all the leading public schools. There was no overall change in their structure, objectives or curriculum until after 1918.

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[1] Rankin, James R., The Bryce Commission: an historical study of its contributions to the development of English secondary education, (Department of Education, University of Chicago), 1963.

[2] Roach, John, Secondary education in England, 1870-1902: public activity and private enterprise, (Routledge), 1991, pp. 3-86, 119-156.

[3] Avery, Gillian, The best type of girl: a history of girls’ independent schools, (Deutsch), 1991.

[4] Berghoff, Hartmut, ‘Public schools and the decline of the British economy, 1870-1914’, Past & Present, Vol. 129, (1990), pp. 148-167.

Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1840-1882

 

Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1840-1882 is the second volume of a trilogy on resistance and rebellion in the British Empire. It examines the Irish dimension in Britain’s Empire, evident in Three Rebellions: Canada 1837-1838, South Wales 1839 and Victoria, Australia 1854, through attempts especially by the Young Ireland and Fenian movements to achieve Ireland’s independence through rebellion between 1840 and 1882 and by the populist and parliamentarian constitutionalist Repeal Association and campaign for Home Rule to achieved devolved government. Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1840-1882 focuses on:

• The nature and impact of the Famine in its global Irish context in Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia
• Why, how and where Irish emigrated and how they settled into their new communities
• How different approaches to Irish nationalism evolved in Ireland, British colonies in Canada and Australia and in the United States and why it failed to achieve its objectives between 1840 and 1882
• The nature and differences in the character of Irish rebellion in Ireland, mainland Britain, Canada and Australia in 1848 and during the 1860s looking especially at its military character and failure
• The role played by individuals such as Daniel O’Connell, Thomas Davis, John Mitchel, John O’Mahony, James Stephens, John O’Neill, John Devoy, Michael Davitt, Isaac Butt and Charles Stewart Parnell
• The political character of the Irish diaspora

Richard Brown was, until he retired in 2006, Head of History and Citizenship at Manshead School, Dunstable and has published widely on nineteenth century history He is the author of The History Zone, a blog that has proved popular amongst students and researchers and has just finished writing Resistance and Rebellion in the British Empire, 1600-1980, the final volume of his trilogy.

Retail price: £25.95

Elementary education 1870-1914

Religious squabbling continued in the elections for School Boards and in the attempts[1], particularly by Anglicans in county areas, to forestall the imposition of the School Boards.[2] Initially the advantage lay with the existing voluntary schools and even by 1880 only one sixth of children were in board schools but the potential for growth lay with School Boards and by 1900, 54% of the elementary school population were in their schools. Many of the larger boroughs imposed bye-laws making education compulsory, that in turn increased revenue, since grants were still related to attendance, and it was partly as a means of helping the rural voluntary schools that Disraeli’s ministry turned its attention to compulsion.

For these schools, Lord Sandon the Vice-President, told the Cabinet in 1875 it was a matter of ‘life or death’. The result, in 1876, was Sandon’s Education Act that set up School Attendance Committees and placed the responsibility for ensuring attendance firmly on parents. It also gave voluntary schools the right to make attendance compulsory. Various loopholes were removed by the incoming Liberal ministry when Mundella’s Education Act 1880 made attendance compulsory for children between five and ten.[3] By the early 1890s, attendance within this age group was falling short at 82%. Many children worked outside school hours: in 1901 the figure was put at 300,000 and truancy was a major problem due to the fact that parents could not afford to give up income earned by their children. Compulsory education was also extended to blind and deaf children under the Elementary Education (Blind and Deaf Children) Act of 1893, which established special schools. Similar provision was made for physically-impaired children in the Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act of 1899. Further legislation in 1893 extended the age of compulsory attendance to 11, and in 1899 to 12.

Late-nineteenth century photograph showing a primary class. Durham County Record Office, ref D/Ph162/15

This inevitably sharpened the debate about fees, that averaged about 3d per week per child and many School Boards waived the fee for needy children.[4] The Fee Grant Act 1891 virtually established free elementary education and by 1895 only about one-sixth of the five million needy elementary children were paying fees. The availability of free education through School Boards made it easier to integrate pauper children into the general education system. An Act of 1873 had made school attendance a condition of outdoor relief for children, an option that had been open to guardians since Denison’s Act of 1855 had empowered guardians to pay school fees. By 1900, the vast majority of Unions sent children to their local board school and so the distinctive badge of pauperism was gradually removed. The pernicious effects of payment by results were removed. The system had been severely criticised by the Cross Commission that reported in 1888 and in the 1890 Code grants for examinable attainments in the 3Rs were abolished. [5]

It is important to recognise the achievements that resulted from the 1870 Act. The figures for the final decades of the century show the almost complete elimination of illiteracy as measured from parish registers. The gains were greater for women than men. Had it not been for the 1870 Act progress in literacy would have slowed down simply because illiteracy was concentrated in those classes and regions that were hardest to provide for under the voluntary system. The 1870 Act was responsible for the mopping-up operation by providing more school places and improvements in attendance and length of school life. There were certainly improvements in attendance but by 1897 it was still only just over 80%. Legislation helped but machinery of enforcement was necessary. The main pressure was that of the attendance officer (commonly called the ‘board man’) and ultimately a summons. This did not always prove effective and authorities were often unwilling to prosecute or convict parents especially in rural areas where cheap child labour was essential for farmers and parents. The Agricultural Children Act 1873 was intended to improve attendance, but fines were so low if imposed at all.[6] The quality of literacy was governed by things other than directly educational ones. The factory legislation of the late 1860s and 1870s encompassed children in industries not covered before. From the 1870s, future patterns of leisure and holidays began to take rudimentary form. New skilled and semi-skilled occupations were being created and white-collar occupations were expanding. Literacy was essential in all of these areas.

The 1870 Act itself made access to higher-than-elementary education inevitably a more prominent issue. Apart from evening and adult education, such access became available mainly in two ways: the evolution of a higher stage within the elementary system, and the scholarship ladder from the elementary school to the grammar school.

The historian G.M. Young characterised the absence of any substantial educational provision in England and Wales for much of the nineteenth century as ‘the great Victorian omission’.[7] The 1870 Education Act represented a significant move forward and by the 1890s, over 2,500 new school boards had been created in England and Wales and there were also some 14,000 committees of management for individual voluntary schools. However, this dual system of elementary education was uneven in administrative terms and voluntary schools were often at a financial disadvantage since they were funded not from the local rates but by direct government grants. By 1900, important factors were altering attitudes towards the pattern of education as it had evolved since 1870.[8] The elementary system had produced what for many people seemed to be pseudo-secondary features in its higher-grade schools and evening classes. The still insecure basis of very many grammar schools was in many cases withering under pressure from school board initiatives. The board schools were outpacing the voluntary schools. Many were in serious financial difficulties in a period of declining church attendance. The voluntary agencies were divided on the desirability of further state aid and intervention. State intervention was in society generally being more actively advocated and tolerated. The 1895 Bryce Commission[9] recommended the creation of a central authority for education and a Board of Education was created in 1899.[10] Local councils also entered the education field mainly under the Technical Instruction Acts as competitors of the school boards.

Such changes threatened the uneasy 1870 settlement. School boards came under fire before the end of the century, particularly for their higher-grade schools and what the church party considered excessive expenditure of ratepayers’ money. Leading Conservatives, especially Sir John Gorst, attacked the boards and attempted to reduce their powers or transfer their powers to the county and county borough councils. The boards themselves, nonconformist and labour bodies expressed hostility to such moves and defended their record. Sir Robert Morant[11], who became Gorst’s private secretary in 1899 and permanent secretary of the Board of Education from 1903, was able to engineer a test case. The Local Taxation Act of 1890 led the Government to put a tax on whisky and the so-called ‘whisky money’ was used to fund technical education. However some school boards used the revenue to fund secondary education. In the Cockerton judgement in 1899, London school board expenditure on high elementary classes was disallowed by the district auditor.[12] This allowed Morant and Gorst to achieve a dual objective: the prevention of further post-elementary developments in board schools and the possibility of using the councils as all embracing educational authorities. In drafting the new education bill, Morant was able to bring elementary and secondary education under one authority and at the same time bring relief to the voluntary schools.

The 1902 Education Act was a deeply reactionary piece of legislation that consciously set out to dismantle the popular schooling system developed by the school boards that had been created by the 1870 education act. The purpose of this dismemberment was to buttress the control of education by religious groups and by the grammar schools...[13]

The debate on the education bill, steered by the Prime Minister A.J. Balfour through Parliament, saw a stalwart defence of the board schools.[14] However, the separate administration of board schools, grammar schools, Science and Art Department grants, technical instruction committees and the independent management of voluntary elementary schools was chaotic. The creation of 131 local education authorities based on county and county borough councils and 202 minor authorities replaced 2,568 School Boards and 14,238 School Attendance Committees in elementary education alone. [15] It was, however, the notion of ‘Church schools on the rates’ that provoked fierce and sustained resistance especially from Nonconformists.[16] Opposition was especially intense about state-support for the Catholic Church. Inside and outside Parliament there was outcry against ‘Rome on the rates’. Church of England schools generally heeded the rule that no pupil or teacher should be required to conform to religious belief or ritual. Roman Catholic schools were less enthusiastic and enforced religious observance more strictly. In 1917, the church issued a canon expressly forbidding Catholic parents from sending their children to non-Catholic schools on pain of excommunication.

The Act also empowered LEAs to support teacher training colleges. Most of the existing colleges were church owned, though new non-denominational colleges, for example, Froebel, Edge Hill and Charlotte Mason had opened in the last years of the nineteenth century, as had teacher training departments in the universities, 16 of them by 1900. The expansion of LEA teacher training meant that by 1906 not all places at denominational colleges were being filled. The Board of Education therefore decided that if the church colleges wished to receive grant aid, they must forfeit the right to use denominational criteria in offering places. The Church of England and the Catholic Church protested, the government backed down and the churches were allowed to recruit up to half their students on the basis of their denominational allegiance.[17]

The most far-reaching effect of the 1902 Act was its influence on the structure of elementary and secondary education. It did not make it mandatory for local authorities to provide secondary education but it did require them to perform the functions previously performed by the school boards and the technical instruction committees. The result of this was a massive expansion in the physical provision of secondary schooling in the years up to 1914. [18] In 1904, the Board of Education published its Secondary Regulations, defining a four year subject-based course leading to a certificate in English language and literature, geography, history, a foreign language, mathematics, science, drawing, manual work, physical training, and household crafts for girls. This was followed in 1907 by Elementary Code of 1907 sought to clarify the aims and improve the quality of elementary education.

The government did not neglect the question of access for elementary school pupils to the new fee-charging secondary schools. The Free Place Regulations of 1907 made available enhanced government grants to all secondary schools prepared to offer at least a quarter of their places without fees to pupils who had spent at least two years at public elementary school and received £5 per head for each scholar. Would-be ‘free placers’ were expected to sit a simple qualifying examination. Pressure of numbers soon made this as ferociously competitive as any of the existing scholarship tests. By 1912, 49,120 children, 32% of the total population of maintained secondary schools, were ‘free placers’.

There was much concern both within and outside Parliament that there should be more measures to ensure that children were healthier. The Boer War (1899-1902) revealed the extent of ‘physical deterioration’ when a government committee investigated the causes of the poor physical condition of potential recruits. The need for developments in child health, orchestrated by Morant and Margaret McMillan, was legislation in 1906 and 1907 and in setting up a medical department of the Board of Education.[19] In 1906, needy schoolchildren received further assistance under the Education (Provision of Meals) Act. It allowed local authorities to provide meals free of charge when parents could not afford to pay. This was made compulsory under an Act of 1914. The Education (Administrative Provisions) Act of 1907 required education authorities to see that all schoolchildren under their care received a medical inspection. Free school meals and medical inspections were a further attack on the existing poor law system as well as a major advance in the role of the state in education.

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[1] Richards, N.J., ‘Religious Controversy and the School Boards 1870-1902’, British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 18, (1970), pp. 180-196.

[2] Ibid, Jackson, Patrick, Education Act Forster: a political biography of W.E. Forster (1818-1886), pp. 181-206 considers the implementation of the legislation through to 1874.

[3] See, Roper, H., Administering the Elementary Education Acts, 1870-1885, (Museum of the History of Education, University of Leeds), 1976.

[4] See for example, Lewis, Jane, ‘Parents, children, schhol fees and the London School Board 1870-1890’, History of Education, Vol. 11, (1982), pp. 291-312.

[5] Moore, Marianne, ‘Social Control or Protection of the Child? The Debates on the Industrial Schools Acts, 1857-1894’, Journal of Family History, Vol. 33, (2008), pp. 359-387.

[6] Horn, P.L.R., ‘The Agricultural Children Act 1873’, History of Edication, Vol. 3, (2), (1974), pp. 27-39.

[7] Young, G.M., Victorian England: Portrait of an Age, (Oxford University Press), 1953, p. 165.

[8] Dalglish, Neil, Education Policy-making in England and Wales: The Crucible Years 1895-1911, (Woburn Press), 1996

[9] Anon. Royal commission on secondary education: report of the commissioners plus Minutes of evidence etc. Parliamentary papers, [C. 7862] H.C. (1895): Vol. XLIII, 1, [C. 7862-I-VIII] H.C. (1895), Vols. XLIV-XLIX.

[10] Gosden, P.H.J.H., ‘The Board of Education Act, 1899’, British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 11, (1962), pp. 44-60.

[11] Lowe, Roy, ‘Personalities and policy: Sadler, Morant and the structure of education in England’, in Aldrich, Richard, (ed.), In history and in education: essays presented to Peter Gordon, (Woburn), 1996, pp. 98-115. See also, Allen, B.M., Sir Robert Morant; a great public servant, 1934 and Dugdale, B.E.C., ‘Arthur James Balfour and Robert Morant’, Quarterly Review, Vol. 260, (1933), pp. 152-168.

[12] Taylor, Tony, ‘The Cockerton case revisited: London politics and education, 1898-1901’, British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 30, (1982), pp. 329-348.

[13] Manton, Kevin, ‘The 1902 Education Act’, History Today, Vol. 52, (12), (2002), p. 18.

[14] Simon, Brian, ‘The 1902 Education Act: a wrong turning’, History of Education Society Bulletin, Vol. 70, (2002), pp. 69-75, Reeder, David A., ‘The Education Act of 1902 and local governance: some reflections on Brian Simon’s critique’, History of Education Society Bulletin, 70, (2002), pp. 101-108, Pugh, D.R., ‘The 1902 Education Act: the search for a compromise’. British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 16, (1968), pp. 164-178 and Chambers, B., ‘The 1902 Education Act: The Making of a Part III Authority’, History of education researcher, Vol. 78, (2006), pp. 61-71.

[15] In Scotland the school boards survived until 1918 when they were replaced by elected county authorities, and in 1929 by the county councils

[16] See, Gullifer, N.R., ‘Opposition to the 1902 Education Act’, Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 8, (1), (1982), pp. 83-98 and Pugh, D.R., ‘English Nonconformity, Education and Passive Resistance, 1903-6’, History of Education, Vol.19 , (4), (1990), pp. 355-73 and ‘The Church and Education: Anglican Attitudes, 1902’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 23, (1972), pp. 219-232.

[17] Gore, Charles, Objections to the Education bill, 1906, in principle and in detail, (Murray), 1906 indicates the extent of opposition. See also, Dalglish, N., ‘Lloyd George’s Education Bill? Planning the 1906 Education Bill’, History of Education, Vol. 23, (1994), pp. 375-384.

[18] Robinson, Wendy, ‘Historiographical Reflections on the 1902 Education Act’, Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 28, (2002), pp. 159-172 offers a valuable overview of a hundred years of historiography of the 1902 Education Act.

[19] Steedman, Carolyn, Childhood, culture and class in Britain: Margaret McMillan, 1860-1931, (Virago), 1990.

The Ninety-Two Resolutions

Since the tentative attempt in 1822 to impose a union between Upper and Lower Canada, there had been conflict between the Assembly, dominated by deputies elected by the French Canadian population and the Executive Council dominated by members of the ‘British party’. In 1828, the British Parliament appointed a ‘committee on Canada’ that made recommendations for concessions to the Canadians on a number of points especially on the colonial administration, the administration of land and the use of colonial patronage in public appointments. But on the fundamental question of parliamentary control of finance, the committee recommended ‘la recette et la dépense de tout le revenu public sous la surveillance et le contrôle de la Chambre d’assemblée’ with the exception of the civil list covering the expenses of the governor, the Executive Council and the judiciary. The removal of Governor Dalhousie, the introduction of a new electoral structures and the reduction of the civil list reduced tensions. However, this only created an uneasy equilibrium especially as effective reform was slow to materialise.

In 1832, the army intervened during an election in Montreal and three Canadians were killed. An enquiry held by a grand jury exonerated the army of all blame and the fact that Governor Aylmer accepted its conclusions led to a revival of constitutional conflict. At the end of the session, a vote of censure was passed against Aylmer as part of the tactic of harassment by the deputies on the question of subsidies and of the eligibility of members of the Legislative Council. The scene was set for an escalation of political conflict that was not only one between individuals but between social classes.

The 92 Resolutions were deposited in the Chamber of the Assembly of Lower Canada on 17 February 1834. Thomas Chapais attributed the genesis of this text to a small committee composed of Louis-Joseph Papineau, Elzéar Bédard, Augustin-Norbert Morin^[1] and Louis Bourdages and stated that it spent five consecutive nights finalising its preparation.[2] More recent research, however, suggests that Papineau was the main inspiration behind the text and that Augustin-Norbert Morin acted largely as its drafter. There is some doubt today of the extent of participation by Bédard. Chapais maintained that this was limited to his presentation of the document to the Assembly largely to satisfy his vanity. In effect, it was a strategy designed to persuade the Patriote deputies in the region of Quebec who were very tempted to give in to appeals for moderation from the governor Lord Aylmer. In a letter to his wife, Papineau called Bédard the ‘père putatif’ of the 92 Resolutions. After a stormy debate that lasted five days in full committee, the 92 Resolutions were adopted on 22 February by 56 votes to 23. John Neilson, Andrew Stewart and Joseph Quesnel, Patriote deputies or ex-deputies formed part of the opposition. Once the document was adopted, Papineau prepared an address that was approved by the Chamber on 1 March. Added to a petition and with some annexes, it was entrusted to Augustin-Norbert Morin to carry to the House of Commons in London.

The primary objective of the 92 Resolutions was to draw the attention of the British government to the discontented situation that existed in Lower Canada as a result of the poor operation of a system of government that was judged to be inadequate. A list of grievances but also a political manifesto, the 92 Resolutions represented the sum of all the demands that the Parti canadien then le Parti Patriote had accumulated in the course of their battle to obtain responsible government since the Constitutional Act of 1791.

After having affirmed their loyalty and the attachment of the Canadien people to the British Crown (resolutions 1-8), the document launches into an attack on the Legislative Council, the seat of all that is wrong in the colony (resolutions 9-40). It is not only the method of nomination to the Council that is criticised but equally ways in which it operated especially its role in vetoing the legislative powers of the Assembly. Between 1822 and 1834, it had rejected 302 laws approved by the Assembly. The Resolutions demanded that the Council should be transformed into an elective body. Since the early 1830s, the Parti Patriote had changed tack and moved away from the question of subsidies as a way of attacking the Legislative Council. In the following section (resolutions 41-47), they demanded that political institutions should reflect the social state of French Canadians using the example of the American Revolution (48-50) and the problem of French Canadian rights especially their language. Yvan Lamonde argues that

Les États-Unis sont présentés comme un modèle contre les abus, comme un rappel de la différence sociale entre les Amériques et l’Europe et donc comme le paradis de l’électivité des fonctions civiques. Et il se pourrait même, de l’avis des ‘résolutionnaires’, que les colonies britanniques d’Amérique du Nord fassent un jour ce que firent les colonies du Sud en 1776. [3]

Resolutions 64-74 considered the control of public funds by the Assembly and in 79-83 it called for the same powers, privileges and immunities as the British Parliament. Among their particular grievances were: the governor Lord Aylmer (resolution 85), the secretary of the colony and the issue of the expulsions of Dominique Mondelet and Robert Christie (resolution 63). There was also the question of the weak representation of French Canadians in public office (resolution 75). Resolutions 56-72 concerned reform of the laws of tenure. Thomas Chapais estimated that

...au milieu de propositions justes et de plaintes légitimes, il s’y trouvait [dans les 92 Résolutions] des principes faux, des idées très aventureuses, des réclamations excessives... [4]

He relied on the evidence of Chauveau who regretted the substance of these proposed reformed ‘au nom des idées démocratiques et républicaines’ and that they had distinguished between the two main political positions. Chauveau thought that certain resolutions, especially 37 were poor because they suggested revolutionary tendencies and a liking for the neighbouring republic, a position likely to offend more conservative elements in society.[5] In May 1834, the Gazette de Québec of John Neilson, was not afraid to maintain that it is ‘une révolution dans toute la force du terme que les auteurs des 92 Résolutions demandent et fomentent’[6]. More recently, Fernand Ouellet judged that ‘les menaces de sécession sont moins significatives que l’extraordinaire concentration de la critique politique sur le Conseil législatif’. To him, there is no doubt that this nationalist manifesto was able to be perceived by radicals, Catholics and liberal Anglophones as a democratic manifesto.[7] Be that as it may, in addition to confirming the split between the Québec and Montréal wings of the Parti Patriote, the 92 Resolutions represented a major shift in its political agenda: the document established an ‘electoral programme’ in the great public assemblies that began in May and led to the elections in November 1834 when the party took 78 of the possible 84 deputies. The revelation of the secret orders to Gosford in 1836 and the publication of Russell’s response, the 10 Resolutions in March 1837 contributed to a process of radicalisation that ended with the decent into open rebellion.

The Canadians were excluded from the spheres of political influence and wished to change the situation. First of all, they used the democratic and peaceful means at their disposal such as the 92 Resolutions.[8] It was the recognition of its impotence that the Patriote movement was radicalised. It was only after the rejection of the 92 Resolutions by the British government that there was an upsurge of violence between the partisans of the Patriotes and the loyalist organisations. The Patriote party did not preach a priori the independence of Lower Canada.[9] The idea of secession did not take a concrete form until after the first insurrection of November 1837.

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[1] Augustin Norbert Morin (1803-1865) founded La Minerve in 1828 (with Benjamin Viger) and was elected deputy for the comté de Bellechasse in 1830. After the rebellion of 1837, where he proved ineffective in his role as commander of the patriotes of Quebec, he became minister for Crown Lands in the cabinet of Baldwin-Lafontaine (1842) and a judge in the Supreme Court in 1855.

[2] Chapais, Thomas, Cours d’histoire du Canada, Vol. IV, (J.-P. Garneau), 1923, p. 17.

[3] Lamonde, Yvan, Histoire sociale des idées au Québec (1760-1896), Vol. 1, (Les Éditions Fides), 2000, p. 123.

[4] Chapais, Thomas, Cours d’histoire du Canada, Vol. VII, (J.-P. Garneau), 1933, p. 25.

[5] Chapais, Thomas, Cours d’histoire du Canada, Vol. VII, (J/-P. Garneau), 1933, p. 26

[6] Ibid, Lamonde, Yvan, Histoire sociale des idées au Québec (1760-1896), p. 125.

[7] Ibid, Ouellet, Fernand, Histoire économique et sociale du Québec, 1760-1850: structures et conjuncture, p. 357.

[8] Filteau, Gérard, Histoire des Patriotes, new edition, (Septentrion), 2003, chapter 2

[9] Canet, Raphaël, Nationalisme et société au Québec, (Athéna), 2003, p. 141.

Educating girls 1870-1914: revised version

The effect of the 1870 Education Act was to widen the gap between the educations of different classes. It marked the increasing involvement of the state in the financing and control of elementary education.[1] The age of compulsory schooling was raised from ten, to eleven and then fourteen in 1800, 1893 and 1899 respectively. However, exceptions were made for part-time working under local byelaws.[2] From 1870 to 1914 the state also increased the number of grants for certain subjects taught in elementary schools and supported scholarship schemes for entry to secondary education. Both these measures sharpened further existing sexual divisions between working-class boys and girls. The Education Department influenced the elementary curriculum through the provision of grants and for working-class girls the influence was in the expansion of domestic subjects. [3] The Education Department Code of 1878 provided for compulsory domestic education for girls in the state sector. In 1882, grants were made for the teaching of cookery and in 1890 for laundry work.[4] The textbooks used in schools made it quite clear that the ‘new’ subjects should involve the learning of useful, practical skills and character building. Such habits were, of course, to prepare working-class schoolgirls to become good women, capable of being efficient wives and mothers.[5]

Writers such as Anna Davin and Carol Dyhouse link the expansion of domestic subjects with fears about the future of the British race and the decline of the British Empire. The Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration (1904) contained many statements by the middle-class about the low standards of living among the poor in congested urban areas and particularly the inadequacies of the working-class wife. Since children were seen as a national asset, it was believed critical to educate working-class elementary schoolgirls for wifehood and motherhood. The results were, however, not always as anticipated by government officials. Working-class women interviewed by Elizabeth Roberts about their lives in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century stated that school domestic science was ‘never any help’. It would appear that for many working-class girls, it was their mothers’ training at home that was valued more than the unreal situations created in schools.

The increased emphasis on the sexual division between boys and girls between 1870 and 1914 was evident also in the scholarship system whereby poor elementary pupils could be offered a free place in a fee-paying secondary school. The number of scholarships was severely limited. More were, however, offered to boys than girls and this was especially so after the Technical Instruction Act 1889 enabled counties and county boroughs to make grants to secondary schools for scholarship purposes. In addition to this handicap, working-class girls might also find themselves discriminated against both by their parents and teachers when they had scholastic ambitions for secondary schooling. In essence, working-class girls were being trained in domestic skills while a proportion of middle-class girls were offered at least a route out of that sphere.

Feminist philosophies were applied in the many new fee-paying schools rather than in the new state schools. How can we explain the development of mass education and how does it provide insights into girls’ education? First, Britain needed an educated electorate after the extension of the vote to working men in 1867. Secondly, Britain needed an educated workforce that would be able to produce goods in the competitive international market as well as for home consumption A third explanation, grounded in a Marxist analysis, argues that education was seen by the middle-classes as a means of reforming, civilising and controlling a decadent working-class. None of these explanations take into account gender divisions. While the first two explanations may be relevant to the schooling of working-class boys, they hold no relevance for working-class girls, since women did not have the right to vote and neither could they enter the range of skilled jobs which, it was believed, would bring economic prosperity. A fourth explanation does, however, consider gender differences. Feminist historians, such as Anna Davin and Carol Dyhouse, argue that mass schooling was an attempt to impose upon the working-class children a middle-class family form of a male breadwinner and an economically dependent wife and mother. Such family forms would benefit all family members and the wider society. Such a stable unit would provide a secure environment for the rearing of healthy children, the future workforce and for the care and comfort of the male wage earner.

Feminist philosophies were applied in the many new fee-paying schools rather than in the new state schools. There was some minor activity in feminist educational provision for working-class women and girls. A Working Women’s College was established in London in 1864. The only means by which women were able to influence government and working-class schooling was through membership of School Boards. In the 1870s, many women took local government office, a new avenue of political participation opened to them in 1869. Women became eligible for election to Poor Law Guardianship positions and in 1870 to School Boards.[6] Between 1892 and 1895, 128 women were elected on to English and Welsh School Boards. However, they were not dealing primarily with girls’ schooling but with the schooling of all working-class children and were often allotted to suitably ‘feminine’ committees such as the Needlework Sub-Committee.

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[1] 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. Ibid, Roach, John, Secondary education in England, 1870-1902: public activity and private enterprise, pp. 201-242 examines middle-class girls’ education in secondary schools.

[2] This half-time system was ended in the 1918 Education Act and fourteen became the national compulsory school leaving age.

[3] Williams, Susan, ‘Domestic science: the education of girls at home’, in Aldrich, Richard, (ed.), Public or private education?: lessons from history (Woburn), 2004, pp. 116-126, Manthorpe, Catherine, ‘Science or domestic science?: The struggle to define an appropriate science education for girls in early twentieth century England’, History of Education, Vol. 15, (1986), pp. 195-213.

[4] Turnball, A., ‘An isolated missionary: the domestic subjects teacher in England, 1870-1914’, Women’s History Review, Vol. 3, (1), (1994), pp. 81-100.

[5] For a detailed case studies, see, McDermid, Jane, The schooling of working class girls in Victorian Scotland: gender, education and identity, (Routledge), 2005, Allsopp, Anne, The education and employment of girls in Luton, 1874-1924: widening opportunities and lost freedoms, (Bedfordshire Historical Record Society), 2005. See also, Turnbull, Annmarie, ‘An isolated missionary: the domestic subjects teacher in England, 1870-1914’, Women’s History Review, Vol. 3, (1994), 81-100.

[6] Martin, Jane, ‘Entering the public arena: the female members of the London School Board, 1870-1914’, History of Education, Vol. 22, (3), (1993), pp. 225-240.

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.