Elementary Teaching as Toil: The Diary and Letters of Miss Eglantyne Jebb, a Gentlewoman Schoolmistress¹

¹ I would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and to thank Professor Vic Satzewich, McMaster University and Freya Godard for their comments on earlier drafts.

Abstract

Notwithstanding over 20 years of propaganda promoting board school teaching as an ideal career for upper‐class women, it appears that in the 1890s it was still unusual for ‘girls of good family’ to go in for it. Therefore, it was an eccentric plunge in 1898 when Eglantyne Jebb, an Oxford student from a prosperous land‐owning family, enrolled in Stockwell Teachers’ College. An understanding of recruitment and retention patterns and the hurdles faced by women teachers across the social‐class spectrum requires more studies of individual careers. Eglantyne Jebb’s short teaching career documents in detail the process of becoming a board school teacher and the deep‐rooted class boundaries that Jebb felt branded her as an ‘outsider’. Viewed from the vantage point of history, her problems were probably compounded by unsympathetic peers, a dearth of role models and enthusiastic but ill‐informed mentors. All of which may offer some insight into why so few women of her background found their way into and stayed in the profession.

¹ I would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and to thank Professor Vic Satzewich, McMaster University and Freya Godard for their comments on earlier drafts.

Notes

¹ I would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and to thank Professor Vic Satzewich, McMaster University and Freya Godard for their comments on earlier drafts.

² Cave, S. The Times (London) 6 September 1873: 7.

³ Buxton, D., and E. Fuller. The White Flame. London: Longmans, 1931; Fuller, E. The Right of the Child. London: Gollancz, 1951: 18–19; Buxton, B. “Dorothy Buxton’s long crusade for social justice.” Cambridge, the Magazine of the Cambridge Society 50 (2002): 74–77.

⁴ Mahood, L. “Feminists, politics and children’s charity: the Formation of the Save the Children Fund.” Voluntary Action 5 (2002): 71–88; Mahood L. “Eglantyne Jebb: Remembering, Representing and Writing a Rebel Daughter.” Women’s History Review (forthcoming 2007).

⁵ Tropp, A. The School Teacher. London: Heinemann, 1957: 8. ‘Supervised by its trusty teacher, surrounded by its playground wall, the school was to raise a new race of working people—respectful, cheerful, hardworking, loyal, pacific, and religious.’ See: Johnson, R. “Educating the educators: “experts” and the state, 1833–39.” In Social Control in Nineteenth Century Britain, edited by A.P. Donajgrodski. London Croom Helm: 199; Simon, B. Education and the Labour Movement, 1870–1920. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1965; Bergan, B. “Only a schoolmaster: gender, class and the effort to professionalize elementary teaching in England, 1870–1910.” History of Education Quarterly 22 (1982): 1–21; Purvis. J. A History of Women’s Education in England. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991; Hunt, F., ed. Lessons for Life. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987; Goodman, J., and S. Harrop. Women, Educational Policy‐Making and Administration in England. London: Routledge, 2000; Oram, A. Women Teachers and Feminist Politics, 1900–1939. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996.

⁶ Widdowson, F. “‘Educating Teachers’: women and elementary teaching in London, 1900–1914.” In Our Work, Our Lives: Women’s History and Women’s Work, edited by L. Davidoff and B. Westover. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986: 99; Oram, Women Teachers, 23.

⁷ Widdowson, “Educating teachers”, 107.

⁸ “Elementary Schoolmistresses”, The Times (London) 3 September 1873: 9.

⁹ Hubbard, L. “Elementary Schoolmistresses”, The Times (London) 5 September 1873: 4; Tropp, The School Teacher, 23.

¹⁰ Oram, Women Teachers, 14.

¹¹ To the Editor of the The Times, The Times (London) 5 September 1873: 4.

¹² Steedman, C. “Prisonhouses.” Feminist Review 22 (1985): 11.

¹³ Widdowson, “Educating teachers”: 100; Copelman, D, London’s Women Teachers: Gender, Class and Feminism, 1870–1930. London; Routledge, 1996: 27.

¹⁴ Jebb’s family commissioned this biography in 1965 with the royalties donated to the Save the Children Fund. Wilson, F. Rebel Daughter of a Country House. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1967: 81.

¹⁵ ‘Only when more detailed research into individual women teachers’ life stories is carefully accrued and compared can the issue of representation and common patterns be more fully engaged with’. Robinson, W. “Women and teacher training centres, 1880–1914.” In Women, Educational Policy‐Making and Administration in England, edited by J. Goodman and S. Harrop. London: Routledge, 2000: 113; Robinson, W. “Sarah Jane Bannister and teacher training in transition, 1870–1918.” In Practical Visionaries: Women, Education and Social Progress, 1790–1930, edited by M. Hilton and P. Hirsch. London: Longman, 2000: 131–48.

¹⁶ Emphasis added. Widdowson, “Educating teachers”, 100.

¹⁷ Steedman, “Prisonhouses”, 129.

¹⁸ Dorothy Gardiner nee Kempe (referred to as Kempe in this paper) was intensely interested in Eglantyne’s choice of career although she doubted her suitability for it. Gardiner assembled these letters at the request of Dorothy Jebb Buxton in 1928. The original letters were rarely dated and Gardiner numbered them. I have included dates where available (collection cited as: Jebb’s Letters to Dorothy Gardiner. Located at Save the Children Archive, London). Gardiner was the author of many books including: English Girlhood at School. London: Oxford University Press, 1929. Historian June Purvis regards this as the first ‘classic’ in the field of women’s education. See: Purvis, J., ed. Women’s History in Britain, 1850–1945. London: University London College Press, 1995: 129.

¹⁹ Emily Jebb, unpublished family history (Jebb family papers, Shropshire England, c.1930), 1–2.

²⁰ Ibid., 33.

²¹ Dorothy Frances Buxton, unpublished description of Heddie Kastler, the Alsatian Governess (Jebb family papers, no date), 1–2.

²² C. Jebb, 2001, Personal communication.

²³ Emily Jebb, unpublished family history, 2–6.

²⁵ Letter from A. Jebb to E. Jebb, 4 October 1891 (Jebb family papers); Wilson, Rebel Daughter, 54. Burstyn, J. Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood. London: Croom Helm, 1980: 74.

²⁴ Mitchell, S. The New Girl. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995: 50.

²⁶ Wilson, Rebel Daughter, 51–54.

²⁷ Brittain, V. The Women at Oxford. London: Harrap, 1960: 87–110. Victorian Education, 161–64; Dyhouse, C. No Distinction of Sex? Women in British Universities, 1870–1939. London: University College Press, 1995: 189; Eglantyne Jebb’s Letters to Dorothy Gardiner, Letter 7, Spring term, 1885; Eschbach, E. S. The Higher Education of Women in England and America, 1865–1920. London: Garland, 1993: 91.

²⁸ Mitchell, The New Girl, 50.

²⁹ Brittain, The Women at Oxford, 47.

³⁰ Jebb’s Letters to Dorothy Gardiner, Letter 160, 10, September 1900. Haslam discusses the ethos of Lady Margaret Hall and its influence on the feminism of Kathleen Courtney and Maude Royden who were a year behind Jebb. See: Haslam, B. From suffrage to Internationalism. New York: Peter Lang, 1999: 12–13.

³¹ Meacham, S. Toynbee Hall and Social Reform, 1880–1914. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987; Beauman, K. Bentley. Women and the Settlement Movement. New York: Radcliffe,1996; Koven, S. “From Rough Lads to Hooligans: Boy Life, National Culture and Social Reform.” In Nationalisms and Sexualities, edited by A. Parker. New York: Routledge, 1992: 365–94; Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex?, 221–23.

³² Wilson, Rebel Daughter, 67.

³³ K. Beauman argues that, from the start of the settlement movement, board schools were the centre and origin of many projects. ‘The schoolchildren provided, as always, the best introduction to friendship and families.’ Beauman, Women and the Settlement Movement, xxii; Wilson, Rebel Daughter, 81; D. Copelman links settlement work and professionalization of the teacher. Copelman, London’s Women Teachers, 162–75.

³⁴ Copelman, London’s Women Teachers, 10–11.

³⁵ Wilson, Rebel Daughter, 66–81.

³⁶ Letter from Eglantyne Jebb to Eglantyne Louisa Jebb, 23 July 1895 (Jebb family papers); Wilson, Rebel Daughter, 80.

³⁷ Quoted in Copelman, London’s Women Teachers, 10.

³⁸ McDonald, L. Roses Over No Man’s Land. New York: Penguin 1980: 27; Copelman, London’s Women Teachers, 12; Oram, Women Teachers, 14.

³⁹ Geraldine Jebb, Memories of Eglantyne Senior (unpublished memoir, no date, Buxton family papers, Wareham, Dorset) 1.

⁴⁰ Oram, Women Teachers, 17–19.

⁴¹ Jebb’s Letters to Dorothy Gardiner, Letter 162, October 1900.

⁴² Ibid., Letter 52, Spring 1897.

⁴³ Brittain, Women at Oxford, 97.

⁴⁴ Geraldine Jebb, Recollection of Eglantyne Senior (Jebb family papers, no date), 10.

⁴⁵ Ibid. Teachers in grammar schools possessed a degree and were not required to take a teacher‐training course. ‘Teachers divided along the lines of the type of school, nursery (working‐class children up to age 5), elementary (working‐class children aged 5 to 14) or grammar school (predominantly middle‐class children aged 11 to 16 or 18), in which they worked. There was a clear pecking order between schools, which reflected the schools’ resources, the age and social class of pupils, and the level of the teachers’ education and qualification’. Jones, H. Women in British Public Life. London: Longman, 2000: 56.

⁴⁶ Tropp, The School Teacher, 18–23, 169.

⁴⁷ Jebb’s Letters to Dorothy Gardiner, Letter 82, 25 August 1898.

⁴⁸ Oram, Women Teachers, 33; For student numbers see: Reports from Commissioners, Inspectors, and other, Report on Training Colleges, British Session Papers, xxi.1, 1900–1 [Cd.597 xxi.1), 6; ibid., xx 1899–1900–1 [Cd. 226], 2.

⁴⁹ Developed by James Kay‐Shuttleworth in 1838. ‘In the training of teachers, [he] was insistent on the need for guarding the teacher’s mind from “the evils to which it is especially prone: intellectual pride, assumption of superiority, selfish ambition”.’ Tropp, The School Teacher, 14–15.

⁵⁰ Robinson, “Sarah Jane Bannister”, 136, 147, fn. 19; Edwards, E. “Mary Miller Allan: The complexity of gender negotiation for a woman principal of a teachers training college.” In Practical Visionaries: Women, Education and Social Progress, 179 —1930, edited by M. Hilton and P. Hirsch. London: Longman, 2000: 151.

⁵¹ Report on Training Colleges, 1899–1900, 5.

⁵² Jebb’s Letters to Dorothy Gardiner, Letter 83, September 12 1898.

⁵³ Ibid., Letter 99, 1899.

⁵⁴ Ibid., Letter 83, September 12 1898.

⁵⁵ “The Late Lydia Manley.” The Times Higher Education Supplement 1 (August 1911): 112; Harrop, S. “Committee women: women on the consultative committee of the Board of Education, 1900–1944.” In Women, Educational Policy‐Making and Administration in England, edited by J. Goodman and S. Harrop. London: Routledge, 2000: 158.

⁵⁶ ‘In 1899 18 took advantage of the permission; this year (1900) about 60 have been admitted’. Report on Training Colleges, 1900–1901, 19.

⁵⁷ Jebb’s Letters to Dorothy Gardiner, Letter 83a, 12 September, 1898.

⁵⁸ Report on Training Colleges, 1898–1899, 54.

⁵⁹ ‘Middle class girls were often notoriously deficient in the 3R’s, although well educated in other matters’. Widdowson, “Educating teachers”, 100, 108.

⁶⁰ Oram, Women Teachers, 8.

⁶¹ Tropp, The School Teachers; Jebb’s Letters to Dorothy Gardiner, Letter 83a, 18 September 1898; Corke, H. In Our Infancy: An Autobiography, 1882–1912. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975: 103.

⁶² Widdowson, “Educating teachers”, 104.

⁶³ Jebb’s Letters to Dorothy Gardiner, Letter 26, 11 November 1896.

⁶⁴ Ibid., Letter 56, October 1897.

⁶⁵ The Times Higher Education Supplement 1 August 1911: 112.

⁶⁶ Report on Training Colleges, 1889–1900, 54.

⁶⁸ The Times (London) 16 September 1873: 23.

⁶⁷ Robinson, “Sarah Jane Bannister”, 134

⁷¹ Wilson, Rebel Daughter, 81–82.

⁶⁹ Ibid.

⁷⁰ Jebb’s Letters to Dorothy Gardiner, Letter 88, 1899.

⁷² Widdowson, “Educating teachers”, 119.

⁷³ Oram, Women Teachers, 15.

⁷⁴ Jebb’s Letters to Dorothy Gardiner, Letter 100, January 1899.

⁷⁵ Ibid., Letter 83a, 18 September, 1898.

⁷⁶ Ibid., Letter 83, 12 September, 1889.

⁷⁷ Tropp, The School Teachers, 126.

⁷⁸ Jebb’s Letters to Dorothy Gardiner, Letter 88; Letter 85; Letter 90, 20 November 1898.

⁷⁹ Turnbull, A. “‘Learning her womanly work: the elementary school curriculum, 1870–1914.” In Lessons for Life, edited by F. Hunt. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987: 85–86.

⁸⁰ Jebb’s Letters to Dorothy Gardiner, Letter 119, September 1899.

⁸¹ Turnbull explains the maxim: ‘love of needles encouraged love of domesticity’ reinforced thrift, neatness, cleanliness and self‐respect. In the 1900s concerns were raised about the effect of this on young scholars’ eyesight. Turnbull, “Learning her womanly work”, 88, 91.

⁸² Jebb’s Letters to Dorothy Gardiner, Letter 87; Letter 92, 11 December 1899. Turnbull points out that while patching and mending are the realities of working‐class life, throughout the 1890s Singer sewing machines were widely available and the poor were buying ready‐made clothing and cheap paper patterns. Turnbull, “Learning her womanly work”, 87–88.

⁸³ Jebb’s Letters to Dorothy Gardiner, Letter 87.

⁸⁴ Ibid., Letter 90, November 1898.

⁸⁵ Ibid.

⁸⁶ The Times (London) 5 September 1873.

⁸⁷ Ibid., 6 September 1873: 7.

⁸⁸ Report on Training Colleges, 1898–1899, 16.

⁸⁹ Ibid, 1900–1901, 10.

⁹⁰ Gordon, P. “Katharine Bathurst: A Controversial Women Inspector.” History of Education 17: 3. In the 1890s women (like Bathurst) meeting the criteria for the Inspectorate had university education, ‘teaching experience and … an enormous amount of zeal for, and the desire to promote the interests of education’. Quoted in Goodman, J., and S. Harrop. “‘The peculiar preserve of the male kind’: women and the education inspectorate, 1893 to the Second World War.” In Goodman, J. and S. Harrop (eds.) Women, Educational Policy‐Making and Administration in England. London: Routledge, 2000: 139–40.

⁹¹ Jebb’s Letters to Dorothy Gardiner, Letter 83b, 19 September 1898.

⁹² Tropp, The School Teachers, 195.

⁹³ Ibid., 119.

⁹⁴ Oram, Women Teachers, 8.

⁹⁵ Sutherland, G. Policy‐making in Elementary Education, 1870–1895. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973: 62–63; Tropp, The School Teachers, 119.

⁹⁶ Copelman, London’s Women Teachers, 50; Goodman and Harrop, “Women education inspectors”, 140–41; O’Hanlon‐Dunn, A. “Women as witness: elementary schoolmistresses and the cross commission, 1885–1888.” In Women, Educational Policy‐Making and Administration in England. London, edited by J. Goodman and S. Harrop: Routledge, 2000: 120–21; Sutherland, Policy‐making in elementary Education, 195; Gordon, P. “Edith Mary Deverell: An Early Woman Inspector.” History of Education Society Bulletin 22 (1978): 8.

⁹⁷ Jebb’s Letters to Dorothy Gardiner, Letter 83b, 19 September 1898.

¹⁰¹ Letter from Eglantyne Jebb to Dorothy Jebb Buxton quoted in Wilson, Rebel Daughter, 82–83.

⁹⁸ Ibid., Letter 88, 1898.

⁹⁹ Ibid., Letter 83b, 19 September 1898.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid., Letter 88, 1898.

¹⁰⁷ Jebb’s Letters to Dorothy Gardiner, Letter, 101, 102, April 3.

¹⁰² Ibid., 84.

¹⁰³ Jebb’s Letters to Dorothy Gardiner, Letter 101, April 1899.

¹⁰⁴ Ibid., Letter 109, 1899.

¹⁰⁵ Ibid., Letter 111, 26 May 1899.

¹⁰⁶ Wilson, Rebel Daughter, 85.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid., Letter, 167, November 1900. This aggravated her uncle who pleaded to buy her some pretty clothes. Letter 158, 20 July 1900.

¹⁰⁹ The point of this action was to press upon her pupils ‘the truest economy is to buy as good a material as you can afford’. Ibid., Letter 119, September 1899.

¹¹⁰ Ibid., Letter 139 February 1900.

¹¹¹ Ibid., Letter 119 September 1899.

¹¹² ‘but just occasionally [Pullen] fled into a temper which made me feel a little bit queer’. Eglantyne Jebb, Marlborough Diary, 1899–1900, 31 August 1899 (Jebb family papers).

¹¹³ Ibid., 20 November 1899; 2, 9–11 April 1900.

¹¹⁶ Marlborough Diary, 23 November 1900; Jebb’s Letters to Dorothy Gardiner, Letter 169, November 1900.

¹¹⁴ Ibid., Letter 122, September 1899, Letter 127 October 1899.

¹¹⁵ Steedman, “Prisonhouses”, 16.

¹¹⁷ Mahood, L. Policing Gender Class and Family, Britian, 1850–1940. London: University College London Press: 147.

¹¹⁸ Marlborough Diary, 31 August 1900.

¹²² Marlborough Diary, 2–6 April 1900.

¹¹⁹ Ibid., 30 April 1900.

¹²⁰ Jebb’s Letters to Dorothy Gardiner, Letter 123, September 1899.

¹²¹ Ibid., Letter 165, October 1900.

¹²³ Ibid, Letter 105, Spring 1899.

¹²⁶ Marlborough Diary, 21 November 1900.

¹²⁴ Wilson, Rebel Daughter, 81.

¹²⁵ Steedman, “Prisonhouses”, 16.

¹²⁷ Steedman, “Prisonhouses”, 11.

¹²⁸ Robinson, “Sarah Jane Bannister”, 132.