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ABSTRACT
This article presents an understanding of the context, nature and significance of Mary Gurney’s educational career during the years 1863 to 1917. It is assisted in part by the conceptual lenses of feminist thinking and network theory. Despite neglect by past historians, Gurney’s work was seen by contemporaries as equal in significance to that of leading reformers who, like her, sought equality between English middle-class male and female education at secondary and tertiary levels. The article demonstrates her career’s transitional position between that of middle-class female philanthropist and professional female during the British Victorian and Edwardian periods of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It discusses the educational consequences of Gurney’s work before and after her death, including how its effects spread to other geographical and social locations, as part of the process of assessing its value.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Howarth, “Millicent Garrett Fawcett,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB).
2. Garrett Fawcett, What I Remember, 117–18.
3. Delamont, “Emily Davies”; Collini, “Henry Sidgwick”; Levine, “Maria Shirreff Grey,” ODNB.
4. Arnold, A French Eton; Taunton Report; Fletcher, Feminists and Bureaucrats.
5. Watts, Gender, Power and the Unitarians; de Haan, “Elizabeth Gurney Fry”; Curthoys, “Russell Gurney,” ODNB.
6. UK Census.
7. British Parliamentary Papers (BPP).
8. Fuchs, “Networks”; Kjaer, Governance; Davies, Challenging Governance Theory.
9. Martin, “‘Women Not Wanted’.”
10. McCulloch and Richardson, Historical Research; Watts, “Gendering the Story”; Watts, “Appendix”; Purvis, “‘A Glass Half Full?’”; Bailey and Graves, “Gendering the History of Education”; Anderson-Faithful and Goodman, “Turns and Twists”; Goodman and Anderson-Faithful, “Turning and Twisting”; “Afterword.”
11. Goodman, “Troubling Histories and Theories”; Martin, “Thinking Education Histories Differently”; Martin and Goodman, Women and Education; Caine, Biography and History.
12. Smitley, The Feminine Public Sphere.
13. Goodman and Harrop, “‘Within Marked Boundaries’”; Goodman, “Women School Board Members.”
14. Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up.
15. Gleadle, “The Imagined Communities”; Anderson-Faithful and Goodman, “Turns and Twists.”
16. Goodman, “Constructing Contradiction”; Goodman, “Women Governors”; Goodman and Harrop, “‘The Peculiar Preserve’”; Aiston, “Women, Education, and Agency.”
17. Watts, Gender, Power and the Unitarians; Pedersen, The Reform of Girls’ Secondary and Higher Education; Hilton and Hirsch, Practical Visionaries; Cunningham, “Innovators, Networks and Structures”; Read, “Froebelian Women.”
18. Massey, Space, Place and Gender; Goodman, ‘“Their Market Values’”; Goodman and Milsom, “Performing Reforming”; Whitehead, “Mary Gutteridge.”
19. Griffith, Feminism and the Self; Goodman and Martin, “Networks after Bourdieu.”
20. Raftery, “Lives, Networks and Topographies.”
21. Coutts, “Frances Mary Buss,” ODNB.
22. Gurney, “What are the Special Requirements?”; Gurney, “The Establishment”; Gurney, Are We to Have Education?; Levine, “Emily Shirreff,” ODNB.
23. Gurney, “The Establishment.”
24. Aldrich, School and Society; Selleck, “James Kay-Shuttleworth”; Aldrich, Joseph Payne; McConnell, “George Bartley”; Sutherland, “Henrietta Stanley,” ODNB.
25. Girls’ Day School (GDS) Trust Papers.
26. Froebel Society Papers; Gurney, Kindergarten Practice Part 1; Gurney, Kindergarten Practice Part 2.
27. Cheltenham Ladies’ College Papers; Cheltenham Ladies’ College Magazine, Cheltenham, 1890–1918; London Society for the Extension of University Teaching Papers; University Extension Journal, London, 1890–1904.
28. Prospectus of the Ladies’ Educational Association 1873–1874 and Ladies’ Educational Association Executive Committee Memorial, London, 1874; Journal of the Women’s Education Union, London, July 1878; The Times, May 1875 and April 1878–April 1881; Englishwoman’s Review, October 1878.
29. Girton College Papers; Girton Review, Cambridge, 1918; Perrone, “Katherine Jex-Blake,” ODNB.
30. GDS3/3/2.
31. Journal of the Women’s Education Union (JWEU), December 1876 and February 1877.
32. GDS3/2/2 – 6 Papers Relating to a Reorganisation of the Council’s Business 1896–1897.
33. Princess Helena College Papers; Englishwoman’s Review, December 1888.
34. The Times, January 1891; Englishwoman’s Review, January 1893 and October 1895; GDS3/3/23, GDS/A/2/4, Papers on the Question of a University for Women, 1897; Gurney, “The Interest of Girls,” 104–10.
35. Victoria League Papers; Lowe, “Michael Sadler,” ODNB.
36. Goodman, “Constructing Contradiction”; Goodman, “Women Governors”; Goodman and Harrop, “‘The Peculiar Preserve’”; Aiston, “Women, Education, and Agency.”
37. GDS3/3/1-46 Council Minutes 1872–1920.
38. GDS6/2/1-6/7/4 Early Committees Minutes, Education Committee Minutes, Finance Committee Minutes, Sites and Building Committee Minutes, Examinations and Studies Committee Minutes, and Teachers Committee Minutes 1872–1921.
39. GDS3/3/23–28, GDS6/3/1/3–4, GDS3/2/2–6.
40. GDS3/3/43, GDS6/6/1, GDS6/7/2–4.
41. GDS6/2/1–2, GDS6/4/1–7, GDS6/5/1/1–4; Magnus, Mary Gurney.
42. Last Will and Testament of Mary Gurney, Probate Registry, September 18, 1915; Inflation Calculator, http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/.
43. GDS3/3/1–46, GDS6/2/1–6/7/4.
44. GCGB 2/1/15–17; PHC/1–2.
45. GDS6/6/1, GDS6/3/1/1–5, GDS17/4/3 Art Teaching Committee Minutes 1911.
46. GDS6/3/1/2–5.
47. GDS6/2/2, GDS6/3/1/1–2, GDS6/7/1–4.
48. GDS6/7/1–4.
49. These figures are based on the names of the high schools’ past headmistresses listed in Kamm, Indicative Past.
50. GDS1/3/1–26/7; GPDSC/T/1–2.
51. Kamm, Indicative Past.
52. Fletcher, Feminists and Bureaucrats.
53. Fitch, “Women and the Universities,” 240–55.
54. Fitch, “Women and the Universities,” 807–18; Robertson, “Joshua Girling Fitch,” ODNB.
55. New York Times, February 1, 1896.
56. Bremner, Education of Girls and Women.
57. Kamm, Indicative Past; Sondheimer, “Florence Gadesden,” ODNB.
58. Magnus, Jubilee Book of the Girls’ Public Day School Trust.
59. GDS17/4/3.
60. Kamm, Indicative Past.
61. Malim and Escreet, The Book of the Blackheath High School.
62. Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up; Pedersen, The Reform of Girls’ Secondary and Higher Education.
63. Glenday and Price, Reluctant Revolutionaries.
64. BPP; Bryant, The London Experience.
65. GDS 6/3/1/3–5.
66. Magnus, Mary Gurney, 16.
67. BPP, 253.