Elizabeth Edwards - Women in Teacher Training Colleges, 1900-1960

Women in Teacher Training Colleges, 19001960 is an intricate and fascinating investigation of the lives and experiences of women in these important educational institutions of the early twentieth century. The book provides an overview of the historical context of the development of the colleges, using detailed case studies of three colleges: Homerton, Avery Hill and Bishop Otter.

Drawing on a wealth of archival material, primary and secondary sources, and on the oral testimonies of former pupils and staff, the book examines the following key themes:

Women in Teacher Training Colleges, 19001960 is an essential contribution to womens history and gives a unique insight into this neglected aspect of womens experiences in the twentieth century.

Elizabeth Edwards is a Senior Research Associate of Homerton College, Cambridge, and is a former librarian and archivist of the college. She has been published widely on many aspects of womens lives in the teacher training colleges.

General Editor

Professor of Sociology, University of Portsmouth

Published

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First published 2001
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.

2001 Elizabeth Edwards

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Edwards, Elizabeth, 1932
Women in teacher training colleges, 19001960: a culture of femininity/Elizabeth Edwards.
p. cm. (Womens and gender history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Women teachersTraining ofGreat BritainHistory20th century. 2. Women teachersSocial conditionsGreat BritainHistory20th century. 3. Teachers collegesGreat BritainHistory20th century. I. Title. II. Series.
LB2837.E39 2001
371.10082dc21 00036627

ISBN 0-203-16502-0 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-25939-4 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-21476-9 (pbk)
ISBN 0-415-21475-0 (hbk)

In memory of Luis Edwards

Florence Johnson, Principal of Bishop Otter College, 191930

Elsie Bazeley, Principal of Bishop Otter College, 19305

Dorothy Meads, Principal of Bishop Otter College, 193647

Elisabeth Murray, Principal of Bishop Otter College, 194870

Emily Maria Julian, Principal of Avery Hill College, 190822

Freda Hawtrey, Principal of Avery Hill College, 192238

Frances Consitt, Principal of Avery Hill College, 193860

Mary Miller Allan, Principal of Homerton College, 190335

Alice Havergal Skillicorn, Principal of Homerton College, 193560

Archival source material provided the primary evidence for my book. I should therefore like to thank most warmly the librarians and staff at Avery Hill College, Bishop Otter College and Homerton College for giving me access to their archive collections and helping me to use them.

Luis Edwards supported and encouraged me throughout the long genesis of the book, and the finished product is dedicated to his memory. Professor Jean Rudduck, Director of Research at Homerton College, has been a crucial support throughout. Professor Max Hammerton has read the whole text with scrupulous care and made helpful suggestions. Mary Tasker has constantly encouraged me especially when my enthusiasm was flagging. I should also like to thank Jenny Carr, Carol Dyhouse, Dulcie Groves, Sallie Purkis, June Purvis and my editor at Routledge, Victoria Peters, for their help and advice. I am also grateful to Scott Robertson, Gwen Seabrook-Smith and David Shorney for tracking down pictorial material.

Finally, I should like to thank all the students and staff who have recorded their memories of training college life. My book would have been impossible without them.

The challenge of the new womens history, as it has been developed from the 1970s, has been to bring women back into the historical record and to present them as individuals in their own right, as active agents in the making of history.

This book is a contribution to the challenge of the new womens history. In spite of the fact that, throughout the first half of the twentieth century, three-quarters of the teachers in elementary schools in England and Wales were women,, nevertheless does not receive the extended coverage which would be warranted in a comprehensive history.

Martha Vicinus pioneer study of residential communities for middle-class women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has provided valuable insights. Writing from a feminist perspective Vicinus described an independent intellectual life only mentions teacher training in passing.

The raison dtre of training colleges was to train women for the teaching profession, and more particularly and up to the Second World War, for them to teach in state elementary schools. Training took place in residential colleges whose organization and social customs were informed with what I have termed a culture of femininity. This culture translated the social practices of the middle-class home, and importantly its family organization, into a new institutional setting. Trainee teachers, most of whom came from lower middle-class backgrounds were socialized into the customs and practice of the middle class proper. It was the training colleges achievement not only to provide this culture of middle-class femininity as the context for students vocational training and the academic studies associated with it, but to enhance the culture with the intellectual, cultural, aesthetic and spiritual opportunities which formed an essential part of the colleges corporate life. It was the close interaction between staff and students living together in one community which made this enhancement possible.