Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
1900–1920
“By focussing on pioneering women’s work to improve childhood and the social
status of children, Mayall re-writes the history of the early women’s movement in
England, showing how women pioneers in the early 20C fought for justice for
both women and children. Childhood emerges as a social status in society, and
children as the new generation on which the nation’s prosperity depended.
Alongside their suffrage work, women were at the forefront of work to ensure that
children acquired rights and status as deserving of national and international inter-
vention. Through analysis of memoirs, Mayall casts new light on elementary school
children’s status as contributors to the economic survival of their families.”
—Virginia Morrow, University of Oxford, UK
Berry Mayall
v
Contents
Appendix A193
References209
Index221
vii
A Note on Currency
For those familiar only with decimal currency, that is UK money since
1972, I give some notes on the currency in the earlier part of the twentieth
century. During the course of the book, I include some details about
incomes and expenditure.
One farthing—¼d; one quarter of one penny, 1d. (the d. is short for
denarius, Latin for a Roman penny…)
One half penny, or ha’penny—½d; one half of 1d.
One penny: 12 pennies—one shilling 1s., 144 pennies—one pound: £1
Farthings, ha’pennies and pennies were coppers.
Money above this level was in silver.
Sixpenny bit—6d. or half a shilling
One shilling—12d., or 24 ha’pennies
Five bob—5 shillings, 20 shillings—£1
Half a crown—two shillings and six pence or 2/6. eight half crowns—£1
One pound: £1
One guinea: £1.1s.0d.
We also have to note that weights for food were in pounds and ounces.
A pound is about half a kilo and 16 ounces make one pound.
ix
x A Note on Currency
fathers were paid by the day (Pember Reeves chapter 8). Some women
shopped late at night, because then the perishable food was reduced in
price (Rolph 1980, p. 75).
A good source is Pember Reeves, who collected detailed accounts of
weekly income spent by Lambeth housewives (chapter 10) (See my
Chapter Three). They had to budget in fuel for heating and to cook by;
often funeral insurance (since a child might die); money for boots and
clothing.
On food, Pember Reeves notes, the main expense was for bread, which
cost about 2½d. a loaf (this was the main food eaten for breakfast and the
evening meal). Sugar was 2d. a pound (used for sweetening tea) and fami-
lies might use 3 or 4 pounds a week. Potatoes were cheap at about ½d. a
pound. Meat, mostly for the father, was a once-in-the-week buy (for the
Sunday main meal) and might cost 2s.6d. a week (2/6). Mid-week, a fish
or a rasher of bacon or an egg might be bought for the father’s evening
meal. Bennett records that a haddock or bloater was 1½d. or 2d. (Bennett,
p. 22). Pember Reeves records the average spent on food per person per
day; in most of her 31 families it is about 2½d. each per day.
Children could earn money. But just as women were paid half of male
wages, so children were paid even less. Girls might ‘mind’ a neighbour’s
child for a penny or two (1d. or 2d.) a session. Jan Jasper was paid 6d. for
a long day helping with an expedition of people out to Epping Forest (but
his mother forced the employer to stump up 2/6) (Jasper 1974, p. 68).
Clifford Hills was in more regular employment from the age of 9: he
worked in the big house from 7 a.m. till 10 a.m., then went to school,
then worked from 4 p.m. till 6 p.m. and on Saturday from 7 a.m. till 1
p.m. For this he was paid 2s. a week (Thompson T. 1981, pp. 57–63).
Pember Reeves details the wages earned, by children, in families where the
father was out of work or had only intermittent earnings. For instance the
eldest girl in one family was earning 6s.per week working full-time in a
factory and her brother earned 2s.6d. as a milk delivery boy, working two
hours before and again after school plus ‘several hours’ on Saturday and
Sunday (Pember Reeves, p. 181.)
Rolph (pp. 64–65) gives some detail on what children could buy with
the amounts of money they might personally have. In his relatively
well-off family, he had weekly pocket money of 1d. With a quarter of that,
a farthing, you could buy a toffee apple, or a foot-long strip of toffee or a
sherbet dab (a hollow stick of liquorice poking out of a screw of sherbet).
With a penny, you could frequent the Marks and Spencer’s penny bazaar,
xii A Note on Currency
which sold toys (such as dolls and tin model vehicles), painting books,
pencils and crayons. Bennett (p. 21) also notes the cost of sweets: four
ounces of toffee for 1d. or a farthing’s-worth of sweets.
List of Abbreviations
xiii
xiv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Introduction
or with schooling.7 Both these sets of studies are concerned with what
women thought and did. And both sets of studies—by sociologists and
historians—have, as ever, not been much concerned with attempting to
consider childhood experience, though they have been concerned with
children’s status in society.
In this book, I shall build on this large body of work and shall supple-
ment it with explorations of women’s written work at the time. I shall
move on to consider how social life, including school—and more broadly
education—was experienced and valued by children. This means using the
available data—memoirs, interviews—to explore these experiences. I
append a note in this Introduction on ‘using’ these data.
Many women who worked in the early twentieth century women’s
movement were fighting not just for themselves, but for a better society
for all social groups. Socialist women campaigned most deliberately, not
for women-and-children as an indissolubly linked grouping; and not, cen-
trally, for children as a childcare issue. Instead they worked for children
regarded as a constituency in society—what nowadays we call a social
group. Children, they proposed, had rights to education, health and wel-
fare services, tailored to the specific character of childhood within the
socio-economic order. Children journeyed through a specific develop-
mental process, which had implications for both health and education ser-
vices. By virtue of their subordinate position, vis-à-vis adults, children, as
women increasingly argued, had rights to both protection and
enablement.
So my aim in this book is to study the interlocked lives and fortunes of
women and children in the early twentieth century. To do this, I have
adopted a two-pronged approach. Firstly, I consider the work women did
about and for children in the contexts of their explorations of how society
might be better organised. My aim is to investigate the proposition that
one important strand in the work women carried out in the women’s
movement in the early twentieth century was a mission to conceptualise a
better society for both women and children—and even, in some cases, for
men (though men constituted a more formidable problem). Sylvia
Pankhurst, for instance, worked on all three fronts (see Chapter Five).
However, feminist women had to work, to some extent, within the param-
eters that were laid out in men’s assumptions about women. For at the
time a common view among men was that women had a distinctive orien-
tation to the social world, in contrast to men: because it was women who
bore children, they had a natural instinct to care for children, and to
4 1 INTRODUCTION
empathise with children. Whether or not women agreed with this mater-
nalism thesis, they could use it as justification for their suggestions for
better childhoods. Judging from the available data, we can see that some
women were envisaging a new society that would work better than the
existing one, in the interests of all social groups, including children.
Secondly, since the existing work on family, neighbourhood and school
in the period 1870–1920 has focused mainly on adult–child relations,
with the emphasis on adult activity and experience8 (although studies of
working class motherhood give tantalising insights into what childhood
meant to children9), I try here to contribute a child standpoint to this
work about childhood. This means investigating what were children’s
‘takes’ on childhood—on their social positioning in the family, in the
neighbourhood, on child–adult relations, on women’s lives, on schooling.
For if women can be understood as working for better childhoods, it is
important also to explore and maybe arrive at some, however tentative,
understandings of what those childhoods were like. At root, this investiga-
tion turns out to be about how children understood gendered intergen-
erational relations in the context of their material, economic lives. Thus,
whilst throughout the book I present women’s work for children, in two
chapters (Three and Four) I concentrate mainly on what we can glean
from memoirs about how English children experienced childhood. I have
chosen to limit this exploration to children who attended elementary
schools, for one main reason: they constituted the biggest group of chil-
dren. It was these children who, newly visible en masse to the adult eye,
aroused concern about their schooling and about their health and wel-
fare—and in so doing caused adult commentators to reconsider the divi-
sion of responsibility, as between parents and the state, for child welfare
and for the quality of childhood more generally.
The long sustained campaigns women embarked on from (at least) the
mid-nineteenth century towards legal recognition for themselves as peo-
ple with rights in the public arena found women forming societies to dis-
cuss women’s issues, such as the Langham Place group in the 1860s;10
engaging in programmes of research, for instance as pioneered by the
Fabian Women’s Group; speaking at public meetings, writing books and
journal papers arguing the case for equal rights for women. As Rhoda
Garrett (1841–82) noted in 1872, it was ‘the very unreasonableness of
men’s prejudices’ that made it so hard for women to argue against them;11
but this ‘unreasonableness’ demanded of women that they produce solid
arguments to support their cause. And these arguments led them to full-
THIS BOOK—ITS PURPOSES 5
scale analysis of what was wrong with the social order and how it might be
improved. It was not just the gender order that needed consideration, it
was also the generational order—how the older generation had, or had
not, enabled childhoods to flourish, in the interests not only of childhood
experience but of the future health and prosperity of society.
Given the huge disparities in wealth and influence between the upper
and lower classes, it is no accident that during this period people, includ-
ing women, joined socialist organisations. It was also an age when people
wrote utopias. Clear-sighted people could see that capitalism had pro-
duced massive poverty; and nothing less than full-scale change was
required. In such a climate, utopias provide visions of what, ideally, one
might aim for, even though in practice the ideal is not achievable. That is
why, in this book, I have devoted a section (in Chapter Two) to what the
utopians envisaged; and in particular to the work of Charlotte Perkins
Gilman, sociologist and feminist, who worked on the reform of society for
many years.
Most people who live in the minority world and read this book will
have little difficulty in agreeing that women should have equal rights to
men: economic independence, the right to vote, to do paid work, to
express their own views—these then-controversial topics are relatively
uncontroversial in the UK nowadays. More difficult is to gain agreement
with the proposition that children are not deficient or incomplete adults,
not developmental projects, not just objects of concern. Even after some
35 years in which people have argued for sociological approaches to child-
hood, it is common (even at academic conferences) to meet people who
continue to think predominantly in terms of child development towards
the gold standard of adulthood. So I have thought it relevant to set out
here some key sociological ideas about childhood and its relations with
adulthood.
Finally, in this introductory section, I re-emphasise that this book
focuses on women’s work for children who attended elementary schools.
Of course there are other strands of research that investigate middle- and
upper-class childhoods: the children protected (and confined?) in
well-to-do households and educated at home or in private schools.12 Such
research includes reconsideration of the stories written for children at the
time and what they tell us of conceptualisations of children and of child-
hood. Well-to-do childhoods emerge as a special time, to be protected and
celebrated, but also controlled; and studies also suggest that childhoods
were understood, in part, in relation with empire and patriotism.13 The
6 1 INTRODUCTION
pioneering women discussed in this book may well have been influenced
in their conceptualisations of childhood by such ideas current at the time,
but they also had much larger understandings of childhood’s positioning
in society. For, through their theoretical work and their hands-on work,
they gained a wide appreciation of the social and economic status of the
majority of childhoods.
the vast majority of children, those who attended the new elementary
schools, tells a somewhat different story.21
Structure of the Book
The book has five longish chapters. Each of the chapters is fronted by a
brief note on one of the pioneering women who helped to change the
status of women, and, I argue, that of children. The women have been
chosen partly because there is a solid body of writing about them and
partly because their work seems to fit well with the main topics of the
chapter. But throughout the chapters I have also thought it important to
give space to the many women, both well-known and known very little,
who spoke up not only for women but for children.
Chapter Two starts with a note on one of the well-known pioneers for
children: Margaret McMillan. She worked for measures to improve chil-
dren’s health and pioneered nursery education. I consider what the term
‘the women’s movement’ comprised; and the implications of the fact that
children, since the 1870 Education Act, were now in the public arena. I
introduce more fully some of the topics outlined here in the Introduction
and consider some aspects of McMillan’s work. I argue that socialist femi-
nist women saw children as a social group and I discuss four arenas in
which they worked to improve childhoods: insurance, health services,
education and Socialist Sunday schools. I then discuss some of the more
general ideas current at the time, through description of some utopias,
including the one by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Finally I take up one of
the themes in writing at the time and more recently: how far it is appropri-
ate to understand children as children of the state.
Chapter Three is fronted by Maud Pember Reeves, whose research
study with colleagues for the Fabian Women’s Group (1913) showed
clearly that families could not be adequately fed, clothes and housed at
current wage levels. This serves as the preface to detailing, through mem-
oirs (autobiographies and interviews), what life was like for elementary
school children and mothers under these circumstances. (Fathers are less
visible in the accounts, as they were in the lives of their children.) I show
that children were regarded as subordinates to parents and had a duty to
help through hands-on work around the home and through paid work, if
possible. The accounts show that children’s lives were very busy; and that
family—and to a lesser extent neighbourhood—were the centres of their
lives.
STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK 11
Chapter Four starts with Mary Bridges Adams. She is one of many
women whose work in education has been written out of standard histo-
ries; however, her work has been painstakingly explored by Jane Martin.
Mary argued for a common school for all, free at the point of use, with a
clear ladder of progression from the youngest up to university. The short
biographical note provides the frame for the school system experienced by
children, who varied widely in their appreciation—positive and negative—
of what was on offer. This chapter exposes the complex lives of children
who combined school attendance with domestic work and with paid work
when they could get it. I explore the point that children acquire education
in a variety of settings, and that some children thought school offered lit-
tle education.
Chapter Five focuses on a particularly dramatic period in the lives of
children, the Great War (1914–18). The chapter starts with Sylvia
Pankhurst, who worked in the East End of London during the war years
and fought for socialism, for a better life for women, children and men.
But she also found herself offering a welfare service, since recruitment to
the armed forces left many women and children without adequate finan-
cial resources—not only initially but over the duration. This chapter
shows that the war brought children increased responsibilities at home:
many were drafted into paid work and some, as schoolchildren, also
responded to the government rhetoric about contributing to the war
effort. Sylvia’s work deliberately focused on encouraging working-class
people, including children, to participate in the great task of developing
a socialist society.
Chapter Six moves on chronologically to the end of the war and to
some changes in understandings of women and children. Some women
got the vote and children were accorded rights to protection. So the chap-
ter focuses initially on Eglantyne and Dorothy Jebb, who founded Save
the Children, and on Eglantyne who wrote the first Declaration of the
Rights of the Child (1924) in Western Europe. I consider how far this
declaration was about protection and how far about rights. This chapter
explores the question of whether ideas about childhood change in the
early years of the twentieth century, and if so how. It revisits the notion of
children as children of the state, and the often-stated contention that chil-
dren were a new generation in whose hands lay the future of the society.
Finally, I summarise women’s work through socialism towards a better
society for all, including children.
12 1 INTRODUCTION
the population, from rural to town and city areas.24 But I have been able
to include both urban and rural childhoods and in particular I spent some
time investigating childhoods in north-east Suffolk; and a colleague
pointed me in the direction of interviews carried out in the Ambleside area
of the Lake District. So I have been able to make some (tentative) com-
parisons between urban and rural childhoods, including local socio-
economic working and living conditions and the character of schooling
offered.
The autobiographies include 14 full-scale published books, of 100 or
more pages. Other memoirs are shorter written accounts; thus John
Burnett in a radio programme asked people to send in their memoirs; of
these, five ten-page memoirs fit my criteria. A further source is accounts
given to Thea Thompson, who interviewed people and presented the
resulting data as autobiography; I include four of these. Finally, I read two
unpublished, typed, autobiographies, on childhoods in inner London.
Details on all these sources of information are given in Appendix A. In all
I draw on 25 accounts.
Other sources of information include logbooks of elementary schools.
These are the records kept by headteachers, recording special events, dif-
ficulties, inspections, visitors and children’s achievements. In order to help
with the comparison between rural and urban childhoods, I limited this
investigation to London and north-east Suffolk logbooks. I also studied
school histories in these two areas and elsewhere; these are especially use-
ful on children’s activities and often include accounts written at the time
by children in school magazines, recounting, for instance, agricultural
work during the war, the physical character of the school, particular teach-
ers and their idiosyncrasies. Again, lists of these schools are given in
Appendix A.
providing a narrow kind of rote-learning suitable for the lives the children
would lead as adults.
Our village school was poor and crowded, but in the end I relished it. It had
a lively reek of steaming life: boys’ boots, girls’ hair, stoves and sweat, blue
ink, white chalk and shavings. We learnt nothing abstract or tenuous there—
just simple patterns of facts and letters, portable tricks of calculation, no
more than was needed to measure a shed, write out a bill, read a swine-
disease warning. Through the dead hours of the morning, through the long
afternoons, we chanted away at our tables. Passers-by could hear our rising
voices in our bottled-up room on the bank: ‘Twelve-inches – one-foot.
Three-feet-make-a-yard. Fourteen-pounds-make-a-stone. Eight-stone-a-
hundred-weight.’ We absorbed these figures as primal truths declared by
some ultimate power.30
On the day that the North Street infants’ school was hit, Mother had given
me some red gooseberries and I was standing at the top of the Grove, enjoy-
ing a feast. I was biting into each gooseberry saying ‘Here’s the church,
here’s the steeple … ’ when I noticed some aeroplanes overhead puffing
little clouds of smoke. Then big Bertha started firing. In spite of the bangs,
I went on eating my lovely gooseberries and I was just thinking what a lot
of hairs there were on them, when suddenly policemen came running along
blowing whistles, stopping trams and carts and turning them all round
again. I was just looking to see how many gooseberries I had left when
across the road came a galloping coal-cart. The driver had on his back-to-
front shovel hat and in the crook of one arm he was carrying a little boy who
seemed asleep, but the little boy’s face was covered with something scarlet
and so was his shirt. Running behind the cart was a woman in a pinafore and
behind her another little fair boy in a white shirt, but it was the fair boy’s
face that kept my gaze. He looked so frightened that I thought someone
STUDYING CHILDHOODS: METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES 17
must be after him. I went home to tell Mother and she cried and I wondered
if she knew the frightened little boy…36
She later learned about the deaths, and then realised that:
the Germans did not stay at the front with my father. It was different at the
top of the Grove when we saw a Zeppelin shot down in flames. Everybody
danced and cheered.37
brothers were away in France fighting the Germans, this bomb, so close to
home, gave her another perception about what war meant. When bombs
fell near a school, girls were required by custom to take charge of the
younger children and no doubt were instructed by their teachers to try to
calm them; singing hymns, probably also suggested by teachers, was one
way to get through the time and to help everyone to face the bombing
together. Similarly, the instructions from on high about involving school-
children in war work were, presumably, in part a means of maintaining
morale.
In the course of this book, I shall quote substantially from what the
memoirs say. In some cases I shall provide commentary, which may help to
tie together episodes in the accounts; or may point to children’s or adults’
understandings of events. But in some cases, I shall let the accounts speak
for themselves, or rather speak as they may to the reader.
In this book, I am taking on a difficult enterprise, for it involves set-
ting quotations like the ones just given alongside large-scale official poli-
cies and also alongside the work carried out by women to improve not
only their own lives, but the character of society more generally. So it
may be that the resulting blend is less a blend than a somewhat uneasy
juxtaposition. However, I think that, whatever its faults, this book does
provide a new kind of exploration of the existing literature, reconsider-
ing interrelations between women’s work and the status and character
of childhood. Thus I think it adds to our understandings of what the
women’s movement was fighting for.
Notes
1. This poem is quoted in Liddington and Norris 1985, p. 237. It is taken
from Gilman’s 1911 Suffrage Songs and Verses, New York: Charlton. The
middle two stanzas are omitted in Liddington and Norris 1985 (and here).
2. As will become clearer later on, suffragists generally pursued parliamentary
and gradualist approaches to gaining the vote, and a group of their organ-
isations was the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies (NUWSS).
Some suffragettes came to despair of this route, and became more militant,
in the organisation called the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU).
3. Lane 1979.
4. For example, Hollis 1994, Vicinus 1994, Rowbotham 2011.
5. For example, Hilton and Hirsch 2000, Martin 2010.
6. For example, Maclure 1970, Hurt 1979 and Harris B 1995.
7. See for instance, Hendrick 2003 on child welfare and Hilton and Hirsch
on education.
20 1 INTRODUCTION
8. But see Hurt 1979 and Humphries 1981 for children’s views of schooling.
9. For instance, Ross 1986 and E. Roberts 1984.
10. Dyhouse 1989, chapter 2.
11. Rhoda Garrett was a cousin of Millicent Fawcett, leader of the NUWSS
(Crawford, p. 247).
12. For instance, Dyhouse 1981.
13. See for instance Richards 1989; Montgomery and Watson 2009; Rudd
2010.
14. See Chodorow and Contratto 1982.
15. Qvortrup 1985.
16. Overviews of these arguments are presented by Alanen 2009 and Mayall
2009.
17. Shamgar-Handelman 1994.
18. Smith D 1987.
19. Mayall 2002, chapter 6.
20. For examples of such photos, see Jackson and Taylor 2014, Liddington
and Norris 1985, and H.J. Bennett 1980, p. 27.
21. For full discussion of this topic see Cunningham 1991, especially chapters
6, 7 and 8.
22. Maclure 1970, pp. 22–23.
23. For instance, Davin 1996, Hurt and Humphries 1981.
24. J. Harris 1994, p. 45, notes that of children born in 1901–1911, 80 per
cent were born in towns and cities; and in 1911, out of a national popula-
tion of 45 million, 7 million lived in Greater London.
25. Paul Thompson’s exhaustive study (1978) of oral history is especially
daunting.
26. Burnett 1994.
27. Hendrick 2008.
28. Jameson 1984, p. 16.
29. Lee 1976. This Longman edition includes Lee’s valuable three-page essay
on writing autobiography.
30. Lee 1976, pp. 40–41.
31. Steedman 1986, Part One: Stories.
32. Steedman 1986, Part One: Stories, p. 6.
33. Lee, p. 220.
34. Kennedy 2014, chapter 2.
35. Maclure 1970, p. 108.
36. Scannell 1974, p. 57.
37. Scannell 1974, p. 57.
38. This school is now called Gainsborough Primary School, and it still oper-
ates in the three-decker building, dated 1899, on Berkshire Road, Hackney.
39. Fisher, presenting his education bill in 1917. See Van der Eyken 1973,
p. 222.
40. Maclure 1970, pp. 95 and 109.
REFERENCES 21
References
Alanen, L. (2009). Generational order. In J. Qvortrup, W. A. Corsaro, & M.-S. Honig
(Eds.), Palgrave handbook of childhood studies. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bennett, H. J. (1980). I was a Walworth Boy. London: The Peckham Publishing
Project.
Burnett, J. (1994). Destiny obscure: Autobiographies of childhood, education and
family from the 1820s to the 1920s. London: Routledge.
Chodorow, N., & Contratto, S. (1982). The fantasy of the perfect mother. In
B. Thorne with M. Yalom (Eds.), Rethinking the family: Some feminist ques-
tions. New York and London: Longman.
Cunningham, H. (1991). The children of the poor: Representations of childhood since
the seventeenth century. Oxford: Blackwell.
Davin, A. (1996). Growing up poor: Home, school and street in London 1870–1914.
London: Rivers Oram Press.
Dyhouse, C. (1981). Girls growing up in late Victorian and Edwardian England.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Dyhouse, C. (1989). Feminism and the family in England 1880–1939. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Harris, B. (1995). The health of the schoolchild: A history of the school medical service
in England and Wales. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Harris, J. (1994). Private lives, public spirit: Britain 1870–1914. Harmondsworth:
Penguin.
Hendrick, H. (2003). Child welfare: Historical dimensions, contemporary debate.
Bristol: Policy Press.
Hendrick, H. (2008). The child as a social actor in historical sources: Problems of
identification and interpretation. In P. Christensen & A. James (Eds.), Research
with children: Perspectives and practices (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
Hilton, M. & Hirsch, P. (Eds.). (2000). Practical visionaries: Women, education
and social progress 1790–1930. Harlow: Longman.
Hollis, P. (1994). Ladies elect: Women in English local government 1965–1914.
Oxford: Clarendon.
Humphries, S. (1981). Hooligans or rebels; An oral history of working class childhood
and youth 1889–1939. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hurt, J. S. (1979). Elementary schooling and the working classes 1860–1918.
London: Routledge.
Jackson, S. & Taylor, R. (2014). East London suffragettes. Stroud, Gloucestershire:
The History Press.
Jameson, S. (1984). Autobiography of Storm Jameson: Journey from the north, vol-
ume one. London: Virago.
Kennedy, R. (2014). The children’s war: Britain 1914–1918. London: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Lane, A. J. (1979). Introduction. In C. P. Gilman (Ed.), Herland. London:
Women’s Press.
22 1 INTRODUCTION
fight for socialism. Gilman’s verses were known to some of them, such as
Ada Nield Chew (1870–1945), a mill worker from age 11, who met
Gilman when she toured the north of England in the Clarion van (this van
was converted to provide sleeping accommodation and was used by
women to carry socialist and feminist messages to outlying villages).16 Ada
was one of many women who, as workers in the cotton mills, experienced
directly how women were conceptualised as dependants of men and rou-
tinely paid less than men; and who also fought for collective opposition to
capitalist oppression. She argued that wakening women to their degrading
position of economic dependency was a precondition to mobilising them
on the industrial front:
Unless you can get a woman to see the utter degradation of her industrial
and political position as a dependent and belonging of man, there is little
hope of industrial organisation for her as for political power.17
who took up public duties in health, welfare and education, pressed for
child welfare legislation and, on their own behalf, demanded the vote.24
In economic terms, England was facing the fact that Germany was
overtaking it in prosperity. It was very late in the day, comparatively, that
England provided all children with state-funded schooling. From 1870
children were to attend school (from 9 to 4 with a two-hour break mid-
day); and in the early years, parents had to pay 1d or 2d per week for this
schooling. Children left school at 11, 12, 13 or 14 according to the gradu-
ally changing demands of the state (see Appendix B) and of local industry.
It was not until 1891 that schooling became free to parents.25 These
changes meant that parents could not so easily rely on their children’s
earnings to eke out household finances. However, in practice, many chil-
dren worked in the early morning before school and/or in the evening
after school; and, especially in the industrial areas, a half-time system was
in place: children worked half-time and attended school half-time. It was
not until the 1918 Education Act that all children were required to attend
school full-time until the age of 14 (and until the 1944 Education Act,
local practices varied, with exemptions at 12 or 13).26
There are at least two interlocked features of this new situation that
require consideration here—the economic and the more thoroughly politi-
cal. When the state required children to attend school, their presence in
the public arena revealed the extent of shocking poverty in this wealthy
country; children, poorly clothed and starving, suffering from many dis-
eases, some fatal, were a disgrace to the middle-class eye and to the nation
as a whole. At a purely practical level, children could not learn if they were
ill or hungry; so state expenditure on schooling would be wasted. By the
early 1900s, it was clear that there were also political implications: if the
state insisted on school attendance, then if parents failed in their childcare
responsibilities, the state would have to feed the children and provide
medical inspection and treatment. So this new set of obligations was alter-
ing the economic and political relation between the state and parents, as
regards the health and welfare of children. It also meant that the state
would have to accept that it had a direct relationship of responsibility for
children’s welfare. (Acts of parliament from 1906 partially recognised this
state responsibility, through permissive legislation allowing local authori-
ties to act).
But what was also changing was national politics. Workers were striking
for better conditions of work and better pay; and the trade union move-
ment was gaining in strength. The Fabian Society was started in 1884; and
WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN PUBLIC ARENAS 29
the national Independent Labour Party (ILP) was started in 1893. Keir
Hardie and two others—John Burns for Battersea and Havelock Wilson
for Middlesbrough—were the first Labour MPs. Both groupings had
women’s sections; the Fabian Women’s Group was active in researching
the status of women. Socialism was seen by many as key to reform. Some
of the earliest revolts against exploitation—shocking working conditions
and poor pay—were led by women, notably, the East End ‘matchgirls’
strike of 1888; Clementina Black of the Fabian Women’s Group and Annie
Besant lent support by publishing details of this exploitation and the ‘girls’
were successful in forcing improvements. In 1911, 15,000 Bermondsey
women came out in protest about working conditions in factories, and
again, forced the hand of their employers. However, men were wary of
collaborating with women workers, mainly since women were paid less
than men, and so women formed their own trade unions, and the Women’s
Trade Union League (WTUL) co-ordinated this work.27
The political and economic rivalry between Britain and other industri-
alised countries, brought into the forefront the necessity to breed a nation
of healthy men (and healthy women to bear more men). Famously, recruit-
ment for the Boer War in 1899 found high proportions of candidates unfit
to serve. People in England were pushed towards recognising that the
industrial might of the country had been raised on the backs of the poor.
Capitalism had allowed not only for massive economic inequalities but for
their accompaniment: starvation wages and the proliferation of slum
dwellings, rural and urban, and these were revealed to ladies who went to
offer comfort, soup and instruction to the poor; for the Charity
Organisation Society (COS) which flourished in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century, encouraged not only better household manage-
ment, but also acted with benevolence and individual acts of kindness and
help. Women, especially those from well-to-do families and including
graduates of the women’s colleges, flocked to settlements, to work in the
slums of London, Manchester and Bradford (including Sylvia Pankhurst,
to whom I return in Chapter Five).28 But socialist movements challenged
the idea that charitable work was adequate; indeed they pointed to state
responsibility for the health and welfare of its citizens. And some of the
settlement workers sadly noted that the work they did was not enough to
deal with the problems: state action was required to deal with poverty.29
What must be highlighted here is that women’s work for children was
rooted in concepts of a good society. Some branches of the women’s
movement from the 1890s were closely allied to socialism. And socialism
30 2 THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT AND CHILDHOOD, 1900–1920
insisted on consideration of how to make a better life for all social groups.
Thus McMillan thought that the impacts on children of poverty were spe-
cific to childhood; for if children did not have a health-promoting envi-
ronment, then they would be blighted for the rest of their lives.30 As early
as 1908, it was alleged that, through her journalism and speeches, she had
made fundamental changes in how educationalists should think about
their work, for she drew on a large body of theoretical work to argue that
the child was a neurological and physiological entity that developed by its
own internal laws.31
All the six women reformers chosen to head up the chapters in this
book were socialist and carried their beliefs into practice, attempting to
improve the conditions of children’s childhoods as well as fighting for
women’s proper positioning in society. In their thinking, the two advances,
for children and for women, were inter-connected, and had to be seen in
the context of what a good society would be like. That means considering
utopian ideas at the time. (I return to this theme later in the chapter.)
Here I take up four key examples of women’s work for and with chil-
dren, in order to show how these propositions worked out in the context
of policies for children. The examples also show how ideas about children
and childhood were changing.
Insurance
The interests of women and children are never so closely bound together
as in the months leading up to childbirth and the months that follow.
Their health, well-being and survival are interlocked. And in the 1900s,
children were starting to be thought of as a valuable social resource. Yet
families were expected to face the economic and social difficulties atten-
dant on childbirth solely out of their own resources. The natural depen-
dencies of woman on her husband provided an adequate justification for
no state intervention. At the time, the services of a doctor would cost
about £1 and of a midwife 10 shillings;42 that is, the whole of a man’s
week’s wages would pay for a doctor’s help. Many women faced childbirth
with only the help of relatives or neighbours, and in the days following
were under pressure to resume the heavy tasks of housewifery and child-
care, unless, again, those kindly women could help out.
One of the many measures introduced by the Liberal Government of
1906 to provide a basic underpinning of state assistance to the population,
was the National Insurance Act of 1911. The bill proposed insurance for
male workers, in cases of ill-health and unemployment. The 1911 Act
incorporated a voluntary health scheme, including maternity benefit, for
non-wage-earning women; this had been proposed by the Women’s
Co-operative Guild, on the basis of their research on the topic, but this
payment would be made to the husband.
During the period when debates towards the Act took place, Mrs.
Layton, a midwife and a Women’s Co-operative Guild member, was one
of a deputation to Sir Rufus Isaacs (in place of Lloyd George). She
explained to him the financial pressure on poor working families at the
time of childbirth.
If a woman had a good husband, he gave her all he could from his wages, and
the woman had to do the rest, going short herself, as the man had to be kept
going for the work’s sake, and it would break her heart to starve her children.
Sir Rufus asked me how much I though a fair sum would be on which the
woman could get through her confinement. I told him that nothing less than
WOMEN’S WORK FOR CHILDREN 33
£5 would see her through comfortably. He said such an amount was impos-
sible, and suggested the 30/- which was what the Hearts of Oak gave.43
By her work as mother and housewife, the woman contributes equally with
the man to the upkeep of the home and the family income in reality is as
much hers as the man’s.44
After 1911, women continued to argue that mothers should have con-
trol of the maternity benefit. A number of prominent women in the Guild,
including Margaret Llewelyn Davies and Margaret Bondfield, presented
their case to government members.45 Guild members also got up a peti-
tion to support their argument. In 1913 they succeeded: an amendment
to the Act stated that the 30/- benefit could be paid to the husband only
if the wife had authorised this arrangement.46
The extent to which the work of the Guild was influential can of course
be debated, but it certainly played a part in securing the 1913 amend-
ment. Through its campaigns and its own research into the causes of pov-
erty, it contributed to a climate of opinion in favour of recognising mothers
and babies as appropriate receivers of state aid. The work of the Guild
towards the 1911 Act and its amendment was recognised when the Guild
was invited to provide representation on the committees established to
advise on the scheme’s day-to-day administration.47 The scheme was one
small step along the route the government was slowly taking, towards
assuming some state responsibility for ensuring the health of its people, in
this case children and their mothers.
Health Services
Women, both as individuals and through women’s organisations, were
among those arguing that children needed, first of all, before teaching,
food. By the early 1900s, there were many charitable efforts to feed
34 2 THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT AND CHILDHOOD, 1900–1920
children, both in school and outside. The campaigns to feed hungry chil-
dren were supported by the women’s movement, by Sir John Gorst
(President of the Board of Education), the National Union of Teachers
(NUT) and the Labour movement. The permissive legislation was passed
in 1906: the Education (Provision of Meals) Act. Notably, the clinching—
economic—argument set out in the Act was that food should be provided
for children who otherwise could not take advantage of the education
offered to them.
Feeding such children was made compulsory on local authorities in
1914. But before that, campaigners met local authority resistance. For
instance, in Jarrow, the local branch of the Women’s Labour League, who
were campaigning for local authority enactment of the 1906 permissive
legislation, crowded the visitors’ gallery to hear their petition discussed.
But it was sidelined, since council officials, having adjourned the meeting
for a good lunch, returned and said there were no hungry children in
Jarrow.48 In London Miss Nettie Adler, whose mother had inaugurated
meals for Jewish children in schools, urged the LCC in 1912 to feed the
children during the holidays, but her suggestion was defeated. However,
during debates towards legislation on feeding hungry children, whilst
parental responsibility and lack of it was seen in government to be a critical
issue, the notion of children as children of the state, the future of the
nation, also figured.49
Margaret McMillan, along with others, both men and women, argued
that children could not benefit from the schooling now provided for them,
and to which they were entitled, unless they were healthy. By 1893, she
had already been instrumental in establishing a school medical inspection
service in Bradford, as noted above. Documenting the level of ill-health
was important politically. But once the scale of the problem was being
documented, getting a school medical service onto the national agenda
required more persuasion. In her 1907 book, Labour and Childhood she
outlines the points she made over many years in fighting for state provision
of food for hungry children and medical services. She insists on the argu-
ment that children’s manual work outside school makes children ‘stupid
and indifferent’.50 Good healthy development, she argues, is a process and
if that development is cut short by the demand that children do hard
manual labour, then children will not be able to develop as human beings;
they will not be able to benefit from school and will live their lives as
stunted adults. She reports on her visits to Germany and Holland with Dr
WOMEN’S WORK FOR CHILDREN 35
Kerr, where they saw school medical services in action, and to Holland
where school baths had been installed. Margaret McMillan supplemented
this written work, with advocacy work with the Labour Party, for instance
speaking at the 1911 party conference on the necessity for school clinics.51
Another commentator, Mrs Townsend of the Fabian Women’s Group,
noted that France was providing nursery care for children, where they
were given training in good health-promoting habits.52 These countries,
women argued, were cultivating a healthier and therefore more productive
generation than England.
These arguments are based on a range of premises or assumptions. One
is to do with efficiency: it is not cost-effective to provide a service (in this
case education) from which people cannot benefit. Then if this country is
to compete in industrial strength with others, it must implement measures
to ensure it has a healthy population. And thirdly, since children are the
next generation of adults, who must take the country’s fortunes forward,
they must have priority, as a social group. The chance to rear them health-
ily once lost cannot be regained.
The 1907 Education (Administrative Provisions) Act required LEAs to
carry out medical inspection of schoolchildren and also empowered them
to provide treatment. It seems that its time was coming. For, though the
usual arguments about parental responsibility and the cost to local author-
ities were presented, alongside complaints that doctors would lose
patients—and therefore income, and though change was gradual, by 1913
(according to George Newman, Chief Medical Officer of the Board of
Education) all local authorities were providing inspection, between one-
third and a half were providing school-based clinics and almost all were
providing treatment.53
It is notable that the first LEA to establish a school-based clinic was
Bradford in June 1908, presumably building on its earlier experience of
provision in 1893; and on the work of Dr James Kerr and Margaret
McMillan, who had pioneered medical inspection there.54 Dr Kerr had left
Bradford to become the Medical Officer to the Education Committee of
the LCC after the abolition of school boards led to the closure of his
Bradford clinic under the 1902 Education Act. Kerr believed medical
treatment of schoolchildren pauperised parents; he understood the work
of the Medical Officer as a public health task—of documenting the health
status of the children.55 However, he oversaw the development of the
LCC school medical service as a hands-on inspection and curative service.
36 2 THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT AND CHILDHOOD, 1900–1920
Education
Therefore the present time makes upon the educators an inescapable
demand: they must grasp children’s earliest activities and understand their
impulse to make things and to be freely and personally active; they must
encourage their desire to instruct themselves as they create, observe and
experiment. (Froebel)57
premises; then they sang the good morning song, welcoming everyone.
Then followed prayers:
Our prayers are of necessity of the very simplest. Their aim is to develop
reverence and to spiritualise everyday life. The little interests and experi-
ences of each day are given their significance as expressions of divine
immanence, and the children early see that religion is related to all life and
all life to religion.60
Developing and tending the kindergarten’s garden and its small ani-
mals was a central daily activity. And singing and physical exercises were
also important. Eileen Hardy’s is a very affecting account of how women
sought to civilise children: to teach them good housewifery, duty, delight
in natural growth in the garden—all tending to reverence for the God
who made this world. Central to the work was enlisting the mothers,
both to help and to learn; Miss Hardy ran groups for the mothers, and
included them in trips to the seaside and countryside. She says she was
rewarded by their willingness to co-operate and by their appreciation of
their children’s development. This enterprise was, in line with McMillan’s
vision, an attempt to create a new generation of adults, healthy and
capable, who would encourage their own parents to demand a fairer
society.
It seems that the appeal of Froebel was felt even in government, for by
1892 the Board of Education had adopted the idea, in principle, that
activities for the youngest children in elementary schools should be on
Froebelian lines.61 By 1912, there were perhaps 12 ‘free kindergartens’ in
Britain (that is, privately funded).62 At least two of these were in deprived
areas of London: Notting Hill and St Pancras. In addition, most of the
Girls’ Public Day School Trust schools (there were 37 by 1905) provided
a kindergarten for their youngest children—of a higher social class than
those attending the free kindergartens.63
In line with current thinking, the education or schooling of the young-
est children, as well as that of girls, fell to women—some of whom had
received Froebel training. As Katherine Bathurst notes, she wanted to
enlist the natural motherliness of women, in the interests of providing
more appropriately for young children:
and most of the evils I describe are produced by the absence of the quality
known as ‘motherliness’.64
clinic. For once inside the child comes under the influence of the great heal-
ers – earth, sun, air, sleep and joy – and it is admitted that these work con-
tinual wonders. The day will come we hope when disease and the need for
doctoring at clinic or hospital will be regarded as the shadow of failure by
mother and teacher alike.68
Her view was backed by the School Medical Officer for London, who
reported year after year on the poor state of elementary school children’s
health and, for 1927, described the school medical service as ‘a receiver of
damaged goods and spends most of its time in patching them up.’69 Whilst
he may have had a stake in emphasising the negative in order to drum up
support, his reports are valuable pointers to the state of play.
The problems hindering educational change on progressive lines were
indeed huge. Not only was there a curriculum dominated by annual
inspections, which emphasised children’s learning of ‘facts’. But state pol-
icy allowed class sizes of 60, which made any progressive suggestions
almost impracticable. The memoirs referred to in this study regularly
quote such figures, and in some schools, more than one class group (stan-
dard) took place in the same room. So opportunities for reforming chil-
dren’s days were limited.70 However, progressive ideas were promoted and
in a few cases implemented; Attention to the nature and abilities of child-
hood as a starting point for education policy and practice was established
as a key principle; and the movement was to have further encouragement
after the Great War, through the New Education Fellowship and through
teacher training (as briefly discussed in Chapter Six).
By 1901 the movement had its own journal: The Young Socialist. Margaret
McMillan contributed pieces to it (1903–1912) including both essays and
fiction for children. She saw the SSS movement as in the vanguard of edu-
cational practice, since the relation between teacher and taught was more
equal than in elementary schools, and emphasised children’s own contri-
butions, through discussion, songs and art work.73 Some teachers in ele-
mentary schools were also drawn to the SSS movement, since they were
frustrated by the régime of top-down teaching required of them in the
state schools. It has been argued that the movement, though small in
comparison to Christian Sunday schools, is important in demonstrating
that socialists thought children deserved better understanding of how
society works than the state education system gave them.74 The SSS pro-
posed that children should be seen as in the vanguard of the socialist
movement.75
Children have hitherto little attention paid to them, they have been made
little of … They now ask to be regarded as a definite part of the movement
and to receive a definite standing in it…76
songs. It was ‘a Communist Sunday School, where religion was not taught,
and for the short while I stayed at the house I was not allowed to go
again.’79 The story raises several issues—not least about whether these
wealthy people really did behave in this high-handed way; but also about
their motives; and about what the impacts were on Grace and her par-
ents—she does not say.
The economic status of the human race in any nation, at any time, is gov-
erned by the activities of the male: the female obtains her share in the racial
advance only through him.98
Gilman puts children at the centre of her thinking. She argues that chil-
dren cared for solely at home with their mother get an inflated idea of their
own importance and a distorted evaluation of child–adult relations. They
should spend their days with other children, where they will learn fairness,
comradeship and justice.99 She goes on to say (as Clementina Black, too,
argued) that a mother, or any woman, is not necessarily good at educating
children; instead children from babyhood should be cared for and educated
by women who show special talents for this and are trained to do it.100
46 2 THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT AND CHILDHOOD, 1900–1920
More than all should women discourage the fostering of the ideal of the
domestic tabby-cat-woman as that to which all womanhood should aspire
… The children must be cared for and women must care for them. But not
by paying poor women to be mothers. Women must be financially indepen-
dent of men. But not by paying poor women to be wives. Marriage and
motherhood should not be for sale. They should be dissociated from what
is for sale – domestic drudgery.103
theoretical approach her work differs from, for instance, that of Morris
and Wells, whose analysis is less fundamental, for they do not indicate why
and how human consciousness could alter so that people would support
the socialist societies proposed. Hers is indeed maternalism with a (benev-
olent) vengeance. Men have spectacularly shown unwillingness or inability
to construct and conduct societies in which all social groups flourish. Now
they will be shown (in the persons of the three male visitors, who exhibit
and are forced to reconsider their varying attributes of misogyny) how it
can be done.
On this topic, an interesting (though more limited) proposal is made by
Edmund Holmes, whose What Is and What Might Be came out in 1912,
when he retired from his post as Chief Inspector of Schools. He provides
a tirade, based on his experience of elementary schools, against the teach-
ing of facts, the testing of facts and the activity of teachers contrasted with
the passivity of the children. He writes that he has, by contrast, visited a
school in a village called Utopia, where children follow the path of
self-realisation.
The Utopian child is alive, alert, active, full of latent energy, ready to act, to
do things, to turn his mind to things, to turn his hand to things, to turn his
desire to things, to turn his whole being to things. There is no trace in this
school of the mental lethargy which, in spite of the ceaseless activity of the
teachers, pervades the atmosphere of so many elementary schools; no trace
of the fatal inertness on the part of the child, which is the outcome of five or
six years of systematic repression and compulsory inaction.105
where human physical and emotional contact has been almost eliminated.
Each person lives alone, underground, in a room to which all services
(food, light) are brought through the workings of a vast machine. Contact
with other people is via what reads eerily like Skype. But the system grinds
to a halt, the machine collapses, light and air deteriorate and the people
emerge slowly but die in the ensuing chaos.108 This is an early exposition
of Forster’s message: ‘only connect’.
Children of the State?
A theme in much writing during and since the early years of the twentieth
century is that children were being reconceptualised as children of the
state. The future of society lay in the hands of the next generation. It was
the duty of the state to ensure a healthy population. Girls had a particular
responsibility as future mothers of yet another generation. Some of these
points relate to a general view that Western societies were at a high point
of civilisation, as propounded by the sociologist Herbert Spencer. The
further advancement of civilisation depended on the character and health
of the next generation. Some of it related more specifically to the existence
of the British Empire, seen as a virtuous enterprise, bringing enlighten-
ment to dark places.
There is no difficulty in locating contemporary statements linking chil-
dren and the state. John Gorst’s book Children of the Nation (1906)
argued that serious deterioration in the social conditions of children
should make us realise that children’s health and training were central to
the national interest.109 Margaret McMillan in her book The Child and the
State (1907) drew on examples from Europe to argue for a free education
service for all, from nursery through university. She detailed the Danish
policy (spearheaded by Grundtvik) of encouraging young workers to
return to education in community colleges. The Fabian Women’s Group
(Pember Reeves 1988) argued on the basis of their study of infant mortal-
ity, that it was a state duty to ensure the healthy lives of the children (see
the opening section of Chapter Three). However, all these commentators
thought the state had some way to go.
Modern historians have argued that there was a change in the status
and characterisation of childhood. Anna Davin (1996), for instance, in her
analysis of children growing up in poverty (focusing mainly on the late
nineteenth century), argues that a central effect of the education acts was
to define children as dependants, since they lost (much of) their ability to
CHILDREN OF THE STATE? 49
all children are the natural care of the State, and … where parental respon-
sibility is not understood and not acted upon, we must for the very sake of
the preservation of the State, step in … we are bound at all costs to see that
the children grow up in such a fashion that they may become useful, service-
able and profitable citizens of this great Empire.110
Notes
1. McMillan, The Child and the State, 1911.
2. Steedman 1990, p. 93.
3. Rowbotham 2011, chapter 10, describes an early New Statesman special
issue in 1913, which they entitled ‘The Awakening of Women’. It included
a paper by Beatrice Webb who argued that the women’s movement was
much wider than just the struggle for the vote; it encompassed battles to
end other relations of subordination.
4. See Taylor 1983 for discussion of early nineteenth century feminist move-
ments. See also Ray Strachey’s history of the women’s movement.
5. Maggie Tulliver’s childhood battles against conformity to feminine models
is explored in The Mill on the Floss (1860). Dorothea, Mary and Rosamond
present three contrasting ways of coping with being female in Middlemarch.
NOTES 51
(1871–1872). See also Anne Brontë ’s Agnes Grey (1847) on the hard life
of the governess.
6. For discussion of these two pioneers see Koven’s paper (1993b) on women
working in the ‘borderlines’ between the private and the public.
7. Jane Martin explores the work of four late Victorian/early Edwardian
women in voluntary work, settlements and other women’s organisations.
In Koven’s terms they were working in the ‘borderlines’; and redefining
what we mean by political action.
8. For a detailed account of the work towards founding Newnham College,
Cambridge, see Sutherland 2006.
9. Adie, p. 114.
10. Crawford 2002.
11. Rowbotham 2011, pp. 188–192; Alexander 1995.
12. Rowbotham 2011, pp. 173–176. Clementina Black was a member of the
Fabian Women’s Group and carried out research studies on women’s
working conditions.
13. See Clementina Black’s Introduction to Married Women’s Work (1983,
first published 1915). The empirical studies across England were carried
out between 1908 and 1912 (Mappen 1983).
14. Ibid., p. 214. This challenge is also discussed by Hannam and Hunt.
15. Liddington and Norris, chapter 2.
16. For photographs of a caravan used to take the feminist message to Yorkshire
towns and villages, see Liddington 2006, pp. 206–210. Hannah Mitchell
describes some of these journeys, notably in her chapter 10.
17. Alexander 1995, p. 72.
18. Liddington and Norris, pp. 21 and 289.
19. Liddington and Norris, chapter 7. For a full exploratory study of the intel-
lectual life of British working class people, see Rose 2002.
20. Connelly, pp. 22–23. See also Winslow, chapter 1.
21. The girls are pictured awaiting the result. See Liddington 2006, p. 156.
22. Liddington 2006, chapter 5, which includes a transcript from the court
hearing in respect of Dora Thewlis. For the prevalent middle-class insis-
tence that girls be chaperoned, see exhaustive and furious discussions in
Vera Brittain’s autobiography, notably chapter 2.
23. For discussion, see, for example, Lewis 1986a, 1986b; Hendrick 2003,
pp. 19–23.
24. Hollis 1994.
25. Hurt 1979, chapter 5.
26. Morrow 1992.
27. Jackson and Taylor, chapter 2; de la Mare 2008; Dyhouse 1989, p. 82.
28. Vicinus 1994.
29. Vicinus, chapter 6.
52 2 THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT AND CHILDHOOD, 1900–1920
References
Alexander, S. (1995). ‘Bringing women into line with men’: The Women’s Trade
Union League 1874–1921. In S. Alexander (Ed.), Becoming a woman.
New York: New York University Press.
Black, C. (Ed.). (1983). Married women’s work. London: Virago. First published
1915.
Brehony, K. J. (2000). English revisionist Froebelians and the schooling of the
urban poor. In M. Hilton & P. Hirsch (Eds.), Practical visionaries: Women,
education and social progress 1790–1930. Harlow: Longman.
Crawford, E. (2002). Enterprising women: The Garretts and their circle. London:
Francis Boutle Publishers.
Cunningham, H. (1991). The children of the poor: Representations of childhood since
the seventeenth century. Oxford: Blackwell.
REFERENCES 55
warm, light, insure and feed a family of four or five persons on 20s.
a week in London.5 (And, as we shall see, many households were of
six or more persons).
Perhaps even more telling is that after paying the rent, the next
item in many budgets was funeral insurance. And this is because
women had to factor in the possible death of a child.6 In particular,
when a new baby was born, the next one up (‘the ex-baby’) became
at risk. No longer breast-fed, active and in danger of accident, they
led restricted lives, sometimes tied to chairs to keep them safe,
indoors in cramped, poorly ventilated housing, fed inadequate diets
and liable to infections. It was those children who partly accounted
for the high infant mortality rates. In the study as a whole, one-fifth
of the children studied, though healthy at birth, died in early
childhood.7
It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the
contrary, their social being determines their consciousness. (Karl Marx)9
THE ECONOMICS OF HOME LIFE IN CITIES 59
All the memoirs chosen for this book are written by people who attended
elementary school. The material we have is about people’s lives and
times—as children, some accounts being plain, unvarnished chronological
stories and others more deliberately and skilfully exploring topics and
themes. These memoirs include book-length accounts, spread out over
100 pages or more; and then there are the interviews, covering 20 or 30
pages, where people in old age describe and reflect on their childhood.
Children who attended elementary school varied in social class and eco-
nomic circumstances. The poorest were the workhouse children, who are
described with pity and horror in many of the memoirs. Thomas Morgan,
whose parents were violent drunkards, was taken in early childhood to the
workhouse by his mother. Later, he became, he says, a ‘street arab’, scav-
enging, stealing, earning and playing on the streets. Whilst some families
were very poor indeed others were less so, and the children therein had
boots on their feet, enough—though plain—food, toys and even pocket
money. Thus when C. H. Rolph (known as Cecil at home) was born in
1901, his father had 28 shillings a week as a sergeant in the police force. If
the parents did not smoke or drink alcohol, he writes, it was possible to
manage.10 However, here I shall start with some of the poorest, for whom
the exigencies of managing echo Pember Reeves’ accounts. I am aiming to
give some indications and examples of how people wrote or talked about
their childhood. By describing and quoting their words, I try to assemble
what were the components of their past lives and what understandings
they ascribed to the children they once were. This means being alert to the
purposes and methods used in the accounts. From these, a number of top-
ics emerge: making money and children’s part in this; children’s unpaid
work; child–parent relations, including children’s status and duties in the
family; amusements and pleasures. More broadly, we learn about the com-
plexities of social class perceptions and ways of life, gendered learning,
welfare interventions in people’s lives and how these were perceived, and
similarities and differences between urban and rural lives.
Thus Jan Jasper (born about 1905) writes a straightforward, chrono-
logical account of his Hoxton childhood in a home where the mother kept
the family financially afloat, since her husband, a drunken, casual labourer,
gave her only six or seven shillings a week (sometimes), drank the rest and
upset the children by his drunken behaviour.11 Two older boys were away
in work and the army. Two older girls were in paid work, which helped
family finances, and Jan attended school; he was assigned childcare duties
60 3 THE ECONOMICS OF CHILDHOOD: HOME AND NEIGHBOURHOOD
for his youngest sister. Central to his account is how he helped out too,
with casual work, sometimes taking a day off school to do this. He gives
most detail about how he helped his mother with the making and selling
of clothes, for her life was very hard.
One job Jan did, on a Saturday, was to walk with a barrow he had made
to Islington, collect offcuts of dress material from an uncle and walk back
with them, a three-hour trip. ‘Many’s the time I got soaked to the skin.
But Mum did appreciate the help I was giving her.’13 As part of the same
enterprise, he found a spare patch of ground in Hoxton market and they
pitched a stall there. He hired a barrow and they laid boards across it to
make a surface:
Mum unpacked the clothes and we were away. By nine-thirty people were
beginning to flock into the market and we soon had some customers. The
frocks and pinafores went like wildfire. ‘Fifteen pence the frocks,’ Mum
would say, ‘and ninepence the pinafores.’ About midday we were half sold
out. I asked Mum if she would like some tea. “Ere y’are, son,’ she said and
took the money out of the takings. I got a jug of tea and some sandwiches
and we ate them ravenously. We’d had no breakfast owing to our having had
to start out early. Three o’clock came and we had sold out. Mum told me to
stay with the barrow while she went shopping and came back loaded. She
treated me to the pictures and gave me money to buy sweets. I had never
known such times.14
She worked for everybody and anybody. Besides nursing me grandma and
attending to fleeting lodgers she went out and did days washing or cleaning,
paper-hanging and painting, ceilings and staircases, she even replaced win-
dow sashes and whole window frames and for never more than three shil-
lings a day.16
Her daughter too had many tasks, alongside school. Cleaning the
rooms they lived in was a weekly chore. From the age of about 8, it was
her job to take clothes ‘to the pawn’, a job she hated, since it exposed
their poverty. She took a morning off school for that. She had to take a
jug each evening and ‘go for the beer’. She collected the baskets of wash-
ing from neighbours and returned them, cleaned. She did the evening
shopping for food, and most days she gathered wood to heat the oven for
cooking.
Catherine recounts how she learned to mould her own actions and feel-
ings in response to her mother’s moods. She describes unexpectedly being
awarded a prize at school: ‘a little negro’s head made of china and full of
chocolates. It’s the only prize I ever received.’ She walked home to show
Kate:
It was one of those dull, cold days that you get in the North when the sky
seems to be lying on top of the ships’ masts and the whole world is grey.
The long wall from the blacksmith’s shop up to the Saw Mill Bridge was
grey. The water lapping against the slack bank just a few feet from the
foot path was grey. The houses of the New Buildings in the distance were
grey. The people walking between East Jarrow and the Docks, they were
very grey. But I was carrying a negro’s head full of chocolates. I was in a
palpitating daze; my world had suddenly become an amazing place where
you got surprises, nice surprises. Everything was bright, dazzling, until I
reached the kitchen, for there the greyness from outside had seeped in
and engulfed our Kate. She was busying between the stove and the table
but her movements were slow; she looked depressed and sounded in a
bad temper. I can’t remember what she said when I showed her the won-
derful prize, but her reaction brought a funny heavy feeling into my
chest.17
This young man came in, and it was the first time I had seen him. He wore
a red coat and looked very lively. Mother got up and kissed him but Father
just sat and said, ‘How are you?’ Then we had tea, all of us staring at my
brother. It was dark, it was the winter-time. A few days later he walked away
and my mother stood right out in the middle of the road, watching. He was
going to fight in South Africa. He walked smartly down the lane until his
red coat was no bigger than a poppy. Then the tree hid him. We never saw
him again. He went all through the war but caught enteric fever afterwards
and died. He was twenty-one.24
Very soon after this it was very hard living indeed for the family. There were
seven children at home and father’s wages had been reduced to 10s. a week
(from 13s.). Our cottage was nearly empty—except for people. There was a
scrubbed brick floor and just one rag rug made of scraps of old clothes
pegged into a sack. The cottage had a living-room, a larder and two bed-
rooms. Six of us boys and girls slept in one bedroom and our parents and the
baby slept in the other. There was no newspaper and nothing to read except
the Bible. All the village houses were like this.
He goes on to detail the very poor diet and the perpetual hunger. And
he notes that all the cottage people were very religious and very patriotic.
‘People believed in religion then, which I think was a good thing, because
if they hadn’t got religion there would have been a revolution.’25
Len’s account is informed by his socialist views, but it also indicates
how a small child learned. Seeing his mother standing out in the road was
a memory that remained with him, and while he may not have known at
THE ECONOMICS OF HOME LIFE IN RURAL AREAS 65
the time why she did so, that she did so was memorable; and as he grew
older the episode would tell him about her sorrow and her worry for her
eldest son. And Len’s account quickly moves on to detail the understand-
ing that came early to these rural children: that the countryside meant, not
a rural idyll, but the necessity for children and women to earn a few shil-
lings on the farms, gleaning, weeding, harvesting. His mother eked out
the family income by stone-picking.26
We helped her when we got back from school at five o’clock (having walked
two miles home). She had to pick up twenty-four bushels of stones a day to
get two shillings. Each parish had to mend its own lanes then and the stones
were used for this. A tumbril was put in the field and a line was chalked
round it. When you had filled it up to the line you got the two shillings. It
would take a whole day. We did it every minute we weren’t at school and all
through the holidays. It was all I can remember.27
For Len, aged 71 when he talked about his life to the interviewer, rural
life in East Suffolk before the Great War was characterised by oppression:
of exploitation by the farmers, and there was little other choice of job for
men; women also worked for the farmers, or went ‘into service’ until mar-
riage.28 Later he explains that when he returned from fighting in the war,
he had learned that unionisation was the way forward, and he became a
union organiser in the 1920s and 30s, but, as he says, the economic slump
and the government’s refusal to act forced men to walk from village to
village in search of work. Thus he developed a more theoretical socialist
understanding from conversations in the trenches and tried to apply it in
practice.
However, Len Thompson’s understanding of how farmers controlled
the standard of living, by bargaining down rates of pay came early to him,
in his childhood, for he describes occasions when he, or his father or
mother and he were engaged in these bargaining sessions. Farmers could
and did make their own rules and people had little power to influence their
decisions. Compared to the harsh working world, for him—as for some
other rural children, as we shall see—school was an irrelevance.
The school was useless. The farmers came and took boys away from it when
they felt like it, the parson raided it for servants. The teacher was a respect-
able woman who did her best. Sometimes she would bring the Daily Graphic
down and show us the news. I looked forward to leaving school so that I
could get educated. I knew that education was in books, not in school: there
66 3 THE ECONOMICS OF CHILDHOOD: HOME AND NEIGHBOURHOOD
were no books there. I was a child when I left but I already knew that our
‘learning’ was rubbish, that our food was rubbish and that I should end up
as rubbish if I didn’t look out.29
One thing I didn’t like and it sticks in my mind today. I came to the conclu-
sion that church-goers were something like railway carriages were at one
time—first, second and third. You see my mother was a person of the lower
class, she was a poor woman, and she and her friends were all poor, but they
were great church-goers, kindly, gentle people … They had to sit in the back
pews. In the middle were the local shop-keepers and people who were con-
sidered to be a little bit superior to the others, better educated perhaps. And
right at the top of the church, behind where the choir used to sit, were the
local farmers, the local bigwigs, you see, posh people. And when people left
the church, although as I said he was a nice, kindly vicar, he didn’t seem to
have any time for the lower classes. Mother and her friends would pass out
of the church door, the vicar would stand near the church door, and he
would just nod and smile, perhaps not that even. But when the higher class
people came out, he would shake hands and beam to everyone of them as if
they were somebody far superior to my mother and her friends, the poor,
the very poor. And I didn’t like that.31
THE ECONOMICS OF HOME LIFE IN RURAL AREAS 67
These distinctions also held good in the world of work, where farmers
and tradespeople asserted their superiority over labourers. Before school
each day, he worked as a kitchen boy at a big farmhouse, and there too he
was made to accept his inferiority; for he recalls that a servant there was
told she must not give him a cup of tea. The class-based relations between
people were highly visible, clearly practised, and forcibly experienced, in
this village. Thus Cliff explains that he learned through experience how
the worlds of work and the worlds of religion intersected, to reinforce
inequalities of income by defining people’s social status. However, in the
midst of this busy life, earning money, and analysing the social scene, Cliff
tells us about a more traditional and enjoyable part of his childhood: he
and his friends made use of the countryside, not only by catapulting small
birds and rabbits, but by the time-honoured damming of streams to make
a pool for swimming.
Both Len and Cliff discuss social control within the family, but they
both also have clear memories of a wider world dominated by hierarchies,
of both religion and class. These accounts of hierarchies are echoed in
memoirs from, for instance Cornwall and Dorset, where two who later
became writers record the minutiae of social differentiation: A. L Rowse
and Ralph Wightman.32 These memories differ from those presented in
the interviews from the Ambleside archive, where there is much less politi-
cal commentary on the tyrannies of religion and class and no reports of the
abject poverty endured by some Suffolk and urban families. Some of the
Ambleside interviewees grew up on farms, and had their own produce and
good diets; these farms were remote from other dwellings and children
made their own amusements with siblings. Others lived in village cottages
like the Suffolk ones, and fathers’ work was as farm labourers, in the quar-
ries or in an engineering works locally. Outside toilets and wash-houses
were shared among the rows of cottages. Interviewees talk about their
participation as children in baking days, in working on the farms, but also
on playtimes out in the fields and roads. Here is Gwen Hall, born 1905,
talking about Troutbeck Bridge, where she lived:
There was just that little group of cottages, and the school, the chapel and
the Sun Hotel. And then fields all round.
I: Was there a shop at all in Troutbeck Bridge?
Just the Post Office, where you could buy sweets and there was a tiny little
shop. A Mrs. Denny. She lived in the row of houses up above, and then there
were four others, tiny little cottages.
68 3 THE ECONOMICS OF CHILDHOOD: HOME AND NEIGHBOURHOOD
Well, we were busy with the sheep, turning the sheep and all little jobs.
Perhaps picking up wool and things like that. But we didn’t do a lot outside
when we were small.
I: When you were older you helped with that did you?
Well, we did more when we got bigger. We used to help with the sheep and
things like that and help to work hay. Quite hard work that.34
economic prosperity. Jasper, who was invited to tea with his schoolfriend
David, writes that he was initially unwilling to accept, since he knew the
family ‘was a bit out of my class’; he knew this because David’s family lived
in a better type of housing and his father ‘worked in the City’. However,
David persuaded him. At the tea-table, he was offered ‘the choice of white
or brown bread, real butter, cakes and everything’ and the social differ-
ence was hammered home when David’s father took the boys out into the
garden and played games with them. ‘I didn’t know fathers played with
their children.’42
At almost the poorest end of the class system were the families sup-
ported by outdoor relief. Each had to fill in a form for the annual distribu-
tion of boots and clothes.43 Local authorities supplemented charitable
organisations by offering free meals after the passage of the Education
(Provision of Meals) Act 1906. Thus the children in Kathleen Dayus’
family were recipients of Birmingham’s breakfast at school: a mug of
cocoa and two thick slices of bread and jam (known as the ‘parish break-
fast’); some years the family was eligible for the annual distribution of
clothes.44 This family also sometimes received ‘parish relief’ under the
Poor Law: families would line up to be issued with cards entitling them to
coal, bread, margarine, a tin of condensed milk, tea and sugar, the amount
allowed dependent on the size of the family.45 For some families, though
it might be commonplace locally to take clothes to the pawn shop on a
Tuesday (to be redeemed at the weekend after payday), it was neverthe-
less shaming. However, in Kathleen’s account, these aids to survival were
acceptable, not stigmatising, because most of the families in the surround-
ing courtyards and most of the children at her school also received these
aids.
But the weekly task that gets most attention in these accounts is wash-
day, for the narrators have clear memories of the processes involved and
the huge physical effort entailed. Girls would be enlisted to help. Thus
Marjorie Cook’s family, living on the top floor of a terraced house in
Kentish Town, had access to the copper in the ground floor scullery one
day a week, on a rota with the other two families in the house. Her mother
lit the copper fire and did the washing and Marjorie’s job, during her din-
ner hour from school, was to work the mangle, which lived in the garden.
Grace Foakes, living in Wapping, East London, devotes two and a half
pages to a detailed account, indicating the time it all took and how heavy
the task was. First the copper had to be lit to heat the water. The water was
72 3 THE ECONOMICS OF CHILDHOOD: HOME AND NEIGHBOURHOOD
transferred to a zinc bowl, and the clothes sorted into kinds according to
how dirty they were:
My mother, a coarse apron made from a sack around her and a square of
mackintosh pinned over her chest rubbed each piece with ‘Sunlight’ soap,
giving an extra rub to the very dirty parts. Not being very tall, she had to
stand on a wooden box so that she could reach the rubbing board. After the
whites were washed they were put into the copper to boil together with
more soda. They were continually stirred with the copper-stick and kept
boiling for half an hour. The whole place smelt of boiling washing and
steam. After this, they were lifted out on to the wrong side of the copper’s
wooden lid and left to drain, for the water had to be saved ready for the next
boil. The washing was then put through the wringer to extract the rest of
the water … Mother struggled to the sink with the bath of dirty washing
water and emptied it. Then it was filled with cold water and placed under the
wringer. The washing was rinsed once and put through the wooden rollers.
If the weather was fine, it would be hung out to dry … On each packet of
‘Sunlight’ soap there were the words ‘Why does a woman look older sooner
than a man?’ It went on to explain the merits of the soap, but it was small
wonder that women did look old at forty. This one day alone was truly an
exhausting one, for not only was the washing done but the children had to
be cared for, the meals prepared and a thousand and one other things done
before the day was over.46
Grace Foakes reflects on the absence of political feeling among the peo-
ple she lived among, but she notes that the hymn she and they carelessly
sang was misguided in ascribing social class status and distinction to God’s
will (All Things Bright and Beautiful). Women, she says, were worn out by
age 40, men lived only to ‘eat, drink, sleep and work’, as her father said.
‘Poor education, bad conditions, want and poverty’ were the ills these
people bore.47
In some city areas there were public wash-houses (and baths). Dorothy
Scannell, who lived in Poplar, describes how the women looked, doing
this work:
Inside the wash-house they looked like Amazons with their sleeves rolled up
above their soapy elbows, but when they came out and packed their prams
with sacking-covered washing they looked old. With rusty black hats, or a
man’s cap fixed flat with a large bead-ended hat-pin on top of their scragged
hair, they seemed very small and bent. They would have to hold the large
bundle of washing with one hand and push the go-cart with the other. Their
CHILDREN’S TAKE ON MOTHERS’ WORK 73
ankles seemed to be bent over and their shoes never looked as though they
belonged to them.48
Her account vividly shows how she reacted to these sights; the detailed
description shows first her admiration for these apparently strong women
and then pity for the burdens and the deformities inflicted on them. We
may add that it is small wonder that washing clothes was a chore that some
women could avoid, by paying a shilling or two to another woman to do
it. And this meant that for some women (such as Our Kate) wash-day was
every day or most days. The impact on women’s health of hard physical
work, long hours standing, together with frequent pregnancies, led to
varicose veins, as is detailed in the letters from working women sent in to
Margaret Llewellyn Davies in 1915.49
So, the third major task for the mothers was bearing and trying to rear
many babies and young children. The ways in which people write about
this are revealing. Thus in Silvertown we read this description of a family:
‘the Smiley’s – Jack, Violet and their nine or so children, the number vary-
ing according to whether there is a new arrival that year to balance the one
or two carried off by the whooping cough or TB.’50 This description, with
its careful ironic distancing, its pretence of simply describing, points
instead to anger at the conditions in which people lived and died. Kathleen
Dayus writes that she found out by chance that her mother had had seven
babies who had died before she was born; these babies were not men-
tioned in her family. She says that she then reflected on whether these
children were happier in the other world and on how her parents could
have fed so many children had they lived51 As an adult writer she is saying,
perhaps, that children had no recourse other than to accept the incompre-
hensibility of many events, including the deaths of children and the silence
surrounding their short lives.
In passing we may note that while many families were large by today’s
standards, it seems that contraceptive methods (including ones that could
be made cheaply at home) were widely known about by the beginning of
the twentieth century.52 Some mothers pleaded with men to stop having
sex with them, or resorted to drugs in attempts to abort unwanted chil-
dren.53 No doubt some mothers—and fathers—thought it unrespectable
or even immoral to limit the numbers of children; and since some children
would die, it was important to replace them with other children who
would contribute financially from the age of eight or so. However, it is
hard to know how to think about the ways in which these writers deal with
74 3 THE ECONOMICS OF CHILDHOOD: HOME AND NEIGHBOURHOOD
the frequent child births and with infant mortality. Several writers point to
the ignorance of girls and boys about sex, even though everyone lived and
slept in close proximity. But they also write of how girls particularly were
closely monitored; allowed out with friends for only limited and infre-
quent expeditions. It seems unlikely that they did not know why they were
so closely monitored.
An interesting example here is given in Grace Foakes’ 107-page account
of her childhood in Wapping. She notes at the start that she had three
brothers and a sister, all past babyhood. Yet early on she mentions that her
mother rarely went out without a baby attached to her.54 But then chap-
ters go by with no mention of these children until page 92, when she
reveals that her mother gave birth to a baby annually, and that she, Grace
‘cannot remember ever going out to play, without having a baby or
younger brother or sister to mind.’ But these babies died; they were ‘poor
delicate creatures who should never have been born’.
One way of looking at this is to do with how she organises the material
in her book. She has 42 chapters in her 107-page book, each one centring
on a topic and most only one or two pages long. Babies are the topic of
chapter 34. So the book is not a straightforward chronological account of
her childhood but includes a series of snapshots. Her aim may be to pro-
vide a panorama, wide-ranging rather than detailed, and less of a study of
her emotional life, more an account of childhoods and family life more
generally in the physical, social and economic context of that area, at that
time.
The death of children imposed grief and also cost on the family. Pember
Reeves details the cost of a child’s funeral: £2. 1s. 9d. The family in ques-
tion had insured the child’s life for 2d. a week and they received £2 towards
the cost of the funeral.55 Elizabeth Roberts gives another kind of com-
mentary on the death of children, when she quotes the memories of a
woman who, when aged twelve, was told by her mother to take charge of
a still-born baby lying in a cardboard box next to her mother. She was to
take it to the graveyard and hand it over to the sexton, who would ensure,
when he next buried someone, that the baby was put in with the deceased
adult. This saved the cost of a child funeral.56
In her thirty-page interview, Annie Wilson, on the other hand, recounts
the birth of babies to her mother when she was small herself; and the sub-
sequent funerals. We may wonder why she chose to recount this episode;
perhaps partly to excuse a young child’s comment, but perhaps partly to
acknowledge how commonplace the deaths of babies were.
CHILDREN’S TAKE ON MOTHERS’ WORK 75
I remember the funerals of the last two babies. One was eighteen months—
that was Ruth—she was next to John. And the other little one (that is, John)
died when he was very small. But I was pleased about it because the lady
next door gave me a piece of cake. I said to mother once—I was only very
young myself, ‘Do you think we could have another funeral and the lady
would give me some cake?’ She was furious.57
About this time we had a visit from Gerry who came in one night frantic
with worry. He told Mum little Jo’ had got pneumonia and was in a bad
way. Could she go back with him at once … When we got to Mary’s, Gerry
had to go back to work. The fish shop was open to midnight and he had to
be there to clean up. Poor little Jo’ was in a bad way and the doctors didn’t
hold out much hope. Mary, Mum and Jo’ were crying and Mary begged us
not to leave her. Arrangements were made to stop the night. My sister and
I were put to bed while all the others slept in chairs. But there was no sleep
for anyone. Little Jo’ died during the night. Their eyes were red with crying
and loss of sleep. Mum pulled everyone together and we all went back to
our place. Gerry was left to make arrangements with the local undertaker …
After the funeral Mary and Gerry moved to a flat in Hackney Road. The
place they had gave too many memories of the baby.58
The varying accounts are unanimous in making the mother the centre
of the home, keeping the family afloat through the never-ending daily
tasks. Undoubtedly, girls and boys learned that that was the way things
were. It is also clear that fathers were to be accorded respect, as the
76 3 THE ECONOMICS OF CHILDHOOD: HOME AND NEIGHBOURHOOD
breadwinners; they got the best food and if the family had a garden it was
father’s job to grow vegetables. If, like Jasper’s father, they failed in their
breadwinning role, they were still to be respected as head of the house-
hold. Thus Annie Wilson’s father had only intermittent paid work, but his
wife made sure of this. The children must not commandeer his newspaper:
‘Put that down, your father’s not seen it!’ and he got the best cuts of
meat.59 We read of father having his special chair, which no-one else should
sit in. Daughters take their father’s boots off when he comes home weary
after the day’s work. Fathers have no jobs to do at home, and may even
have the time and energy to talk with the children, play with them, and
bring them home a little treat, some toffee, some fruit.
Thus, undoubtedly, children learned how life was gendered and this
gendering began early on. It was girls who were expected to mind the
babies and help with the wash-day. Girls had to have long hair, even
though this increased the risk of nits. Boys learned that they would be
responsible for the economic welfare of their future family; and many
learned what kinds of jobs they might later do through the casual work
they carried out.
As already indicated, many mothers earned money to help with family
finances, in some cases when work for fathers was in short supply.60 Jan
Jasper’s mother made clothes for sale. Annie Wilson’s mother was the
steady earner in her Nottingham family, working at home for the hosiery
trade, whereas her husband found it hard to find permanent work. And
Florence Atherton’s mother was also the main earner, again in an area—
Lancashire—where traditionally women returned to work after marriage;
she worked at dressmaking. Taking in other families’ laundry was another,
arduous, kind of work and cleaning other people’s houses also featured.
Catherine Cookson’s mother Kate worked for many hours at a huge range
of jobs and always had swollen ankles, and later on burst varicose veins.
Mothers in rural families often worked in agriculture, as indicated in the
account given by Len Thompson. Picking stones was common; also weed-
ing, pulling thistles and docks, harvesting potatoes and the main wheat
harvest, gleaning after the harvest.
Children’s Jobs
As already indicated above, children were expected to help out at home,
and this included both unpaid and paid work. Children in cities and coun-
tryside would collect wood, in London from wood yards and from the
CHILDREN’S JOBS 77
shores of the Thames. Scavenging for coal near coal yards was another job.
Girls were expected to take a major part in cleaning the home; and, as
exemplified by Grace Foakes, were assigned considerable responsibility for
childcare. Where mothers ‘took in’ other families’ laundry, it was often
children who fetched and returned it. We have seen how Jan Jasper helped
bring in money to the household. Work in the countryside and on farms
included harvesting, pulling weeds, animal care; also picking stones, and
acting as scarecrow. Edna Bold, born in Beswick, Manchester, in 1904,
gives an account61 of the shopping street and children’s work running
errands. Children knew the shops and shopkeepers because they went
shopping every day and, in some cases, twice.
The road was a social centre where everyone met, shopped, talked, walked.
The butcher, the baker, the grocer, the milliner, the draper, the barber, the
greengrocer, the pawnbroker, the undertaker were friends, confidants and
mines of information. All needs from birth to death could be supplied from
these little shops. As soon as arms and legs were strong enough, every child
joined the ‘club’ that supported these small businesses, for every child was
obliged to run errands for mothers, relations, neighbours.
Of all the many resentments that every child harboured in its exuberant
heart, this running of errands was the chief. It interfered with and sub-
tracted from the play-way of the beautiful, long intoxicating excitement of
the day.
I was glad and proud that I was to be given the opportunity of starting my
work-a-day life in one of their mills. And, with father bringing home less
than 30-bob a week, it gave me satisfaction to know that I would soon
become a breadwinner to help the family budget. Mother arranged every-
thing. I was to be paid 3s.6d. per week for a morning shift of twenty-six
hours, and 2s.6d. a week for the afternoon shift of twenty hours. The early
morning period meant getting up at 5 a.m. to be at the mill, three miles
away, before the buzzer finished wailing at six. We half-timers knocked off
at half-past twelve; then it was a race home for a quick meal, change from
corduroys and scarf into knicker-bockers and collar and button-on bow,
then a final dash to Spotland School at two o-clock. The afternoon shift
worked in reverse; school in the morning and work in the afternoon until
5.30 p.m. Life was worth living!65
Some town children delighted in the variety of the urban setting, as exem-
plified by Edna Bold above and by Dorothy Scannell in Poplar, East
London. She gives a detailed description of the shops on Chrisp Street
near her home—the shopkeepers, the huge range of goods on sale, the
colours, smells and sounds of the street. She loved ‘the people, its places,
its atmosphere’ and sums it up thus:
…Poplar, to my mind, was a lovely district, for it contained all that anyone
could need. Beautiful churches, schools, parks, a library, hospital, docks, a
pier, public baths and even a swimming bath. We had a nautical college and
a bookshop famous all over London.67
High Street Poplar on a Saturday morning was a human ant colony, a never-
ending stream of children hurrying along, or having a rest, with clinking
bottles. Well, we hurried one way when the bottles were empty, on the way
back we carried the bags in different positions to relieve the strain on our
arms.68
Discussion
Interlinked Fortunes of Women and Children
The memoirs make clear how closely linked were the fortunes of children
and their mothers in the daily struggles to survive. And these memoirs can
be seen as providing everyday, local examples of the exploitation of women
and children; these women were not unionised, but they were victims of a
capitalist system that disregarded their interests, for poor pay, poor hous-
ing and utterly inadequate healthcare systems defined their daily lives.
Their children had to help as best they could. The struggles outlined in
Chapter Two—where working women fought capitalist exploitation,
80 3 THE ECONOMICS OF CHILDHOOD: HOME AND NEIGHBOURHOOD
To study the economic position of women and press their claim to equality
with men in the personal economic independence to be secured by
socialism.
Notes
1. See for discussion, Hendrick 2003, chapter 2.
2. Pember Reeves 1913, republished 1988 by Virago.
3. Pember Reeves 1913, p. 176.
4. Pember Reeves 1913, p. 221.
5. Pember Reeves 1913, p. 222.
6. According to Rolph 1980, p. 67, the cost of the simplest funeral for a child
was from £6 to £10, but Pember Reeves, on the basis of her research, gives
a lower figure: about £2.
7. Pember Reeves 1913, p. 194.
84 3 THE ECONOMICS OF CHILDHOOD: HOME AND NEIGHBOURHOOD
72. Sally Alexander gives a clear analysis of this topic in her Introduction to
Pember Reeves Round about a Pound a Week, 1988, pp. xv–xvi.
73. These arguments are set out in Mabel Atkinson’s Fabian Tract of 1914:
The Economic Foundation of the Women’s Movement. For detailed analysis
and discussion see Dyhouse 1989, chapter 2.
74. Pember Reeves, pp. 226–227. See also for discussion of the merits and
demerits of financial endowment of motherhood, Dyhouse 1989,
pp. 88–98.
References
Black, C. (Ed.). (1983). Married women’s work. London: Virago. First published
1915.
Blythe, R. (1972). Akenfield: Portrait of an English village. London: Book Club
Associates Log Book.
Bottomore, T. B. & Rubel, M. (1978). Karl Marx: Selected writings in sociology
and social philosophy. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Burnett, J. (1994). Destiny obscure: Autobiographies of childhood, education and
family from the 1820s to the 1920s. London: Routledge.
Cookson, C. (1977). Our Kate: An autobiography. London: Corgi Books.
Dallas, G. (1984). Introduction. In M. Llewelyn Davies (Ed.), Maternity: Letters
from working women: Collected by the Women’s Co-operative Guild. London:
Virago.
Davies, M. L. (1984). Maternity: Letters from working women: Collected by the
Women’s Co-operative Guild. London: Virago. First published 1915.
Davin, A. (1996). Growing up poor: Home, school and street in London 1870–1914.
London: Rivers Oram Press.
Dayus, K. (1982). Her people. London: Virago.
Dyhouse, C. (1981). Girls growing up in late Victorian and Edwardian England.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Dyhouse, C. (1989). Feminism and the family in England 1880–1939. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Foakes, G. (1974). My part of the river. London: Shepheard-Walwyn.
Gilman, C. P. (2015). Herland. London: Vintage. First published in Great Britain
1915.
Hendrick, H. (2003). Child welfare: Historical dimensions, contemporary debate.
Bristol: Policy Press.
Jackson, S. & Taylor, R. (2014). East London suffragettes. Stroud, Gloucestershire:
The History Press.
Jasper, A. J. (1974). A Hoxton childhood. Hackney, London: Centreprise
Publications.
Lawrence, D. H. (1954). Selected essays. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
REFERENCES 87
technical and area schools. Some struggling elementary schools were also
closed and the children moved to larger, better-equipped and staffed
schools. This centralisation could be difficult in rural areas, where, in the
absence of any rural transport services, the LEA might find it necessary to
lay on school buses and to give bicycles to the older children, as for
instance in north-east Suffolk.9
The Code of 1904 contained a general statement of aims for the ele-
mentary system, written by Robert Morant, Permanent Secretary of the
Board of Education from 1904. It is widely quoted as a humane and noble
statement; thus it is included in the Handbook of Suggestions (first published
in 1905), as late as the 1937 edition (reprinted in 1944).10 The character
of the stated aims indicates considerable change from the restricted and
restricting vision that informed the 1870 Act.
“The purpose of the elementary school is to form and strengthen the charac-
ter and to develop the intelligence of the children … and to fit (the children)
practically as well as intellectually for the work of life.’ So it should ‘train the
children carefully in habits of observation and clear reasoning … and arouse
in them a living interest in the ideals and achievements of mankind … give
them power over language as an instrument of thought and expression.’ …
‘It should encourage to the utmost the children’s natural activities of hand
and eye by suitable forms of practical work and manual instruction, and afford
them every opportunity for the healthy development of their bodies11.”
as Mary Bridges Adams, these most glaring immediate gaps between rhet-
oric about state purposes and reality, reflecting as they do the class-based
vision determining state funding for state schools.14
The wider social movements discussed in Chapter Two, and the devel-
opments set in place in the education system noted here, had implications
at day-to-day levels for children’s experience. But other factors prevailed.
First and perhaps foremost, school attendance was compulsory for those
who could not pay for education. With large classes in inadequate
buildings, teachers were ill-prepared for coping; and children were obliged
to sit still, to obey and listen rather than participate actively in learning.
Though the curriculum had been widened (as compared to 1870), teach-
ing of facts still dominated—as Edmund Holmes (1912) notes in his dia-
tribe written at the end of his career as school inspector (see page 47).
Christianity continued to inform not only the first lesson of the day, but
the ethos of the school, and was linked, via history (‘our island story’) and
geography to support for the British Empire, celebrated compulsorily each
May 24th. Gendered assumptions continued to dominate the
curriculum.15
Meanwhile, progressive ideas were making some headway both in train-
ing colleges and in some elementary schools; women played the maternal-
ism card to achieve their aims.16 For instance, Jane Roadknight in
Nottingham launched a programme of reform in the 1890s that funda-
mentally changed the early years of the education system there. She started
a kindergarten on Froebelian lines, organised teaching courses in the new
ideas, ran an evening group with songs, games and stories for local chil-
dren and, through her work as an inspector, established Froebel in the
infants sections of the city’s schools (children aged 5–7).17 Some women
headteachers inaugurated open air classrooms; Alexandrina McGillivray,
headteacher of Emmanuel School, West Hampstead got the LCC to agree
to a garden room for outdoor classes. Girls helped to prepare the site, and
portable desks and chairs were provided. She also encouraged her teachers
to visit other schools to see new methods of teaching.18
the authors of memoirs are exceptional among the millions who went
through the elementary school system: these authors set out to convey to
later generations what it was like, and their accounts may be influenced by
their later lives. Perhaps they are more likely than most adults to have had
some measure of success (in their own eyes at least), and this may affect
their story-telling about their past. By comparison, interviewees may be
more faithful, more naïve, and, depending on the interviewer, may give an
account that is less focused on life as a journey. And finally, on this, if my
own memories are anything to go by, the early years of schooldays often
leave few traces; it is secondary education that people remember in more
detail—this was true of several of our informants (for instance, Liz Flint
and John Bennett).
As I emphasise throughout this book, how people talk about their
schooling has to be considered in the context of their understandings of
their lives at the time and later. Thus for many children, the duty to help
support their family took priority. For some this duty conflicted with the
project of their own life: delight in learning and a vision that they might,
through education, arrive at a better life. So some children were faced with
conflict between duty and self-fulfilment.
These individual accounts may be set against the evidence from surveys
and wider studies. A retrospective study, where people were asked to eval-
uate their schooling, found that two-thirds of working-class people (clas-
sified according to their father’s occupation), liked their elementary school
days; but one-third would like to have stayed on beyond the then school-
leaving age. However, this study referred to schooling over a 50-year span
(1875–1924), during which many changes took place in the education
system.19 Humphries’ 1981 study, using a wide range of evidence, focuses
on people who were disaffected with school, and so gives a biased account.
Wheelwright and blacksmith (born 1907): I went to the village school but
left when I was 13 because I wasn’t learning anything. I did my learning in
EXPERIENCING ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 95
this shop. Two women taught us; one had been a missionary abroad. All
they did was keep us silent and caned. Boys and girls were caned every day
… These two teachers taught us nothing, only to sit still. I was glad to leave
school and begin learning in the shop.20
Gravedigger (born 1906): I started digging graves when I was 12 years
old and before I left school. I began by helping an old man and by the time
I was 13 I could do the job as well as I can now … I’ve been at the church,
official-like, since 1918. I was the legal sexton when I was 13 and I’ve buried
damn-near the whole of the village, every one of them.21
Saddler (born 1906): I lost my father when I was 9 so I had to think
about work. In those days families didn’t have money and boys hurried to
work as early as they could, to earn something … [He says he was always
fascinated by saddler’s shop and so…] When I was 12 and a half I forced
myself to go inside and talk to the owner, Mr Peterson … and I told him
how I had watched him at work and how I would like to be like him. He
listened and then said, ‘Very well, I’ll take you on. I will give you sixpence a
week.’ I wasn’t a bound apprentice. I worked a four-year apprenticeship and
then one year as an improver. I worked from 7 to 7 each day and after I
became 14 I got 1s a week. The war had just started and there was a lot to
do, and soon the old gentleman was giving me 18 pence a week. Two sad-
dlers were called up and that left only the foreman and myself, which meant
I had to do a man’s work. So my wages rose to 5s a week, which wasn’t a
man’s money.22
For these boys, learning a craft was what counted as an education. For
girls in these rural areas, there were no such craft-learning opportunities;
for them, agricultural labour or work ‘in service’, followed by marriage,
housework, many children and poverty, beckoned. How girls were taught
the value of schooling and their station in life was illustrated by Len
Thompson speaking about the control exercised by the church and its
representative, the parson.
The parson was very respected. He could do what he liked with us when he
felt like it. One day he came to our house and told my eldest sister, who was
eleven, to leave school. ‘I think you needn’t finish,’ he said. ‘You can go and
be maid to old Mrs. Barney Wickes, now she has lost her husband.’ Mrs.
Barney Wickes was blind and my sister was paid a penny a day out of Parish
Relief to look after her.23
had to earn money as soon as they could, and some worked during their
school-days, as the example of James Brady, the half-timer, illustrates.
Some of the informants listed in Appendix A were glad to leave as soon as
possible, others enjoyed elementary school, and some wanted to go on to
secondary school. Examples of each follow.
So she remembers the practical learning school offered, and her irrita-
tion at being required to stay, marking time until her fourteenth birthday.
EXPERIENCING ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 97
She then gives a detailed description of the work she learned to do at the
factory and the social life there, with the girls helping each other at the
work and chatting together over their midday meal. She joined a trade
union and recounts how it stood up for the employees. The cotton mill
factory was the only local employer, she says and that is why her name was
down in advance, to secure a job there. The interviewer asks if she liked it.
She said, ‘Well, there was nothing else.’
Her account shows that she did not value what school offered and
she contrasts that experience with the complexity and interest of her
working life with the other girls, where she learned skills, valued by
employers. Several of our informants tell a parallel story, of knowing all
the school offered, and filling in time, sometimes as unpaid helper to
the teachers, before leaving for the real world of earning and learning.
School was a thin experience for some. For them, family and neigh-
bourhood life and working life were much more absorbing than school.
Edna Bold (born 1904) details with delight the games they played, the
pantomimes, as well as the variety and liveliness of the shopping street
(see above, page 77). After leaving elementary school, she went on to
secondary school, and later trained and then worked as a teacher. She
says she barely remembers elementary school, but what she does
remember is the oppressive atmosphere of the classroom and the dicta-
torial teaching.
I remember little of the school room, with its high bare walls, its high small
windows and grey light. The sun never shone on the greens, greys and
browns of that featureless, colourless room in which we were ‘incarcerated’
morning and afternoon.
The backless rows of benches ran the length of the room. Little boys and
girls sat close together, side by side with their arms folded across their chests
or clasped behind their backs. They never moved or turned their heads or
spoke except to chant in unison or write on squares of slate with thin slate
pencils.
The teacher in a black, shiny apron, yellowing, celluloid cuffs, a high-
necked blouse and long sweeping skirt, stood beside a large blackboard, a
stick in one hand, a piece of chalk in the other. Both these instruments of
her trade were used to such good effect that by the time I left this room I
could read, write and spell. Everyone could read, write and spell.
How this miracle came about, or where I had been during those lesson
times, I have no idea. No sound echoes, not an image flashes on that ‘inward
eye’…25
98 4 EXPERIENCING ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
still gripped the young mind through the variety and intensity of experience
to be gained there. Within it we received the first intelligence about the
planet beyond the railway lines, where, we understood, there were ‘five
oceans and five continents’, most of which seemed to belong to us …
History lessons ran, all kings and queens, right to the awesome Victoria.29
EXPERIENCING ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 99
Aged eight, they had a teacher who was a ‘gay, flossy-haired young
woman, who filled out a sateen blouse and smelled delightfully of scented
soap’, thus stirring their romantic interest in her life, notably the flirtations
going on with a young male teacher, behind the blackboard.
With her we grew forests from carrot tops in saucers of water on the class-
room window ledge and one hyacinth in a puce glass vase. She brought
twigs from home too—‘off the tree in my garden’—(this made a profound
impression) and we put them in water and saw the miracle of the bursting
bud.30
in droves at the very first hour the law would allow and sought any job at all
in factory, mill and shop. But strangely, I myself wanted to go on learning,
and with a passion that puzzled me: an essay prize or two, won in competi-
tion against the town’s schools, had perhaps pricked ambition.31
For some informants, the regret they felt about the impossibility of going
on to secondary education remained with them over their lifetime. Florence
Atherton was born in 1898 in a Lancashire mill town. Her father worked
for an insurance firm, and spent some time at home, looking after the chil-
dren. Her mother was the main earner, doing dressmaking at home.
Florence stresses that they were respectable working class, not among the
poorest and roughest. Florence explains how she learned early on about
how poverty controlled the character of childhoods. Like others of our
informants, she observed gradations in poverty and status among her
schoolmates, and in particular the sad spectacle of the workhouse children.
Now these children were pathetic. All their hair was cropped and they had
thick clogs, thick caps and all their hair was almost shaved off. Now they
were something apart. We could tell they were something different. Well, I
think myself they felt it. They felt it. But the teachers didn’t punish them.
But they were always at one side. We knew they were workhouse children
but we didn’t bother with them because we didn’t understand what those
children were feeling. We didn’t know, we had a good mother and father,
see. They had what they call a mother, bringing them and taking them back,
you see, and I was always in the concerts and used to sing and go on the
stage. But the poor workhouse children had to go home.33
In her own family, she knew, poverty levels were going to limit her
schooldays, whereas children from wealthier families could go on.
I liked going to school very much but I didn’t learn enough. I always wanted
to learn more. But we were too poor to be sent anywhere else. I was always
quick at a lot of things, I never missed a class. But I always remember
those—their parents were teachers and they had a good job. Now those
were the children that always won the scholarship. If they got a scholarship
they went to Mount St. Joseph’s. They had to pay so much, because my
niece won and her father had to pay for her. Well I longed to go, but my
mother and father was too poor, they couldn’t have us going there. I have
known a lot of people get to the top if they’ve been educated. Always
through education.34
Florence left school at 14 (in 1912) and went to work learning weaving
at the mill, a skilled and valued trade. She stayed in mill work for 36 years.
She joined the union and was a shop steward in the 1930s. But her account
of schooldays shows that she flourished at school, appreciated the kindly,
102 4 EXPERIENCING ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
helpful teachers, and enjoyed participating in shows and social events put
on at the school.
By contrast, Dorothy Scannell (born 1909 in Poplar) came from a large
family, of ten children. The family was poor enough for Dorothy to qualify
for a week’s holiday with the Children’s Fresh Air Fund (a disaster, since
her mercenary hostess lived in a small terraced house, where Dorothy was
kept all the week, made to share a bed with two other girls, acquired nits
and was offered poor, monotonous food). Her parents managed to let
several of their children go on to secondary school. But she writes that
they thought of her as delicate, she was often ill and they were protective.
Her teachers must have thought her capable, since they put her in for a
scholarship exam—which she failed (she writes that she was so nervous she
could not concentrate). When she then won a London County Council
essay competition, her headteacher, Miss Wilkie, recommended her for a
central school place and she was accepted.
I was so excited I fell over twice on the way home and arrived with my knees
bleeding and stockings torn which made Mother tut. While she was bathing
my knees I stammered out my marvellous news. Mother said quite calmly,
‘Thank Miss Wilkie for her kindness, but we don’t think a mixed school is
suitable for you.’ My father had seen the boys and girls larking about on the
way home and had conveyed his views to Mother35.
Dorothy Scannell notes that when she told Miss Wilkie of her parents’
decision, the teacher said, ‘Such a pity! Such a pity!’ She goes on to
describe how she envied her older sisters and other girls who had great
times in the Girl Guides. Yet again, however, her mother told her that the
Guides would not be suitable for her. So school ended and she sought
work, doing a succession of office jobs, and through training at an evening
secretarial college, she advanced through the ranks in clerical work.
Dorothy Scannell’s 180-page account is a mixture of chronological sto-
ries and topic-led chapters. She is determined, it seems, to present a cheer-
ful account of her childhood, and also to recount some dramatic events,
such as the bombing of a nearby school (see Chapter One, p. 16). We do
not hear until much later (60 pages later), and only briefly, that she was
very saddened by her parents’ decision to refuse her secondary schooling;
and that she felt throughout her childhood that somehow they did not
include her in the family, in the sense that they had not allowed her to feel
valued for who she was.36
EXPERIENCING ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 103
central schools. Ted lived with his mother and elder sister on the top floor
of a house looking over Battersea Park in south London and by compari-
son with families living in grinding and relentless poverty were relatively
well off. His father died young, and his widowed mother worked as a (day-
time) housekeeper in the West End; one year they had a month’s holiday
at the holiday home of her employer. There was always enough to eat,
with special treats for special days, and outings on the trams, over the
bridge, to see how the other half lived in the West End.
Ted writes in detail about his teacher at the elementary school, who
taught them across his school years there, and inspired the boys to do well
and aspire to better things. ‘He made us feel that all things were open to
us, given the will and the effort.’43 Ted does not comment on the fact that
only four of the 52 boys in the class were singled out for special help. On
his central school experiences, he writes with even more detail about the
subject teachers, and the facilities for woodworking, metal work, science
and art. Again, the teachers coached them towards an entrance exam for
the civil service. This was a boy who bought into the educational system
on offer, was helped along by teachers, and did well. He also belonged to
a family that could afford to let him take educational opportunities.
Coming from a much poorer family in Walworth, with a father who did
paid work only intermittently, and where the children were eligible for free
meals—and ‘felt the hurt of feeling really poor’44—John Bennett (born
1902) also managed to get into secondary school and later had a career in
the civil service. But he explains that when he was coming up to 14 his
father wanted him to leave and get a job, in order help family finances. The
compromise reached was that he worked before and after school and on
Saturdays at a local grocery shop.
I would open up the shop on my way to school, put up the shutters, hang
out the baths and pails at the front of the shop and then run to school. I
usually just got into assembly by the grace of the monitor before the open-
ing hymn. We had two hours for lunch and I would call in at the shop on
the way home and bring up any supplies from the cellar, like boxes of soap
or condensed milk. Then home to lunch and return to school. In the eve-
ning I would serve in the shop from five o’clock until I pulled down the
shutters at eight, nine on Fridays, and, until Lloyd George’s Shop Hours
Act, midnight on Saturdays. I would work on Saturdays eight in the m
orning
until midnight and arrive home so tired that I sometimes fell asleep on the
bed without undressing…45
EXPERIENCING ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 105
There was a pitfall to tell her about, though. Better to say it now, while her
mood was good.
‘If I go in for it, Mum, and if I pass, I’ll have to stay at school a long time.
Right till I’m fifteen, I will.’
Mum sat up with a jerk. ‘Fifteen?’ as though she could not believe her ears.
‘Never heard of such a thing, I haven’t, not in all my born days, I haven’t.
Doll and Mabel left at thirteen and that was two years too many. Besides’
and curiosity got the better of her, ‘whatever will they find to teach you for
all them years?’46
Having gained her point and her place at the grammar school, Liz Flint
gives a clear account of how delight in learning was fostered there.
The lessons were given in a more interesting way. At the old school most of
the lessons had been drilled into us, as it were, but here we were allowed to
106 4 EXPERIENCING ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
think for ourselves and to discuss things. Great long discussions we had
about practically every topic under the sun. Each day the world opened out
a little, and again a little more.47
‘I didn’t go in, Liz,’ she answered me. ‘I meant to, honest I did. I meant to
go in all right, I did, but it was all too grand for me, it was.’
I looked at her aghast. That someone had the chance to enter the heaven of
my new school, and turned the chance away was a thing I was not yet capa-
ble of understanding
‘Why not, Mum, why ever not?’
‘It was them other mothers, Liz, that’s what. Why some of them came in
cabs, they did, right up to the door. I couldn’t go in with them, I couldn’t.
That was Mum’s first and last attempt to come into my school life. I knew
after that, with only a dim understanding at first, that there was a gap
between us.48
This theme, the social class divide which permeated the education sys-
tem, does not seem to have bothered Liz at her school, though others of
our informants did relate how, at secondary school, they faced snobbery
and discrimination from wealthier schoolmates (Bim Andrews; Annie
Wilson). Liz explains that she had a very supportive and encouraging
neighbour, who had interested herself in the child, taught her to read
before she started school and was keen to hear about her experiences at
the grammar school. Liz describes how she would go next door to talk
about her school day and to do her homework, for it was quiet there and
there was a table to work at.
Her book ends with a cliffhanger; and Liz calls this last short chapter
“The End of Childhood”. Ted had been killed in the war; Doll, pregnant,
CHILDREN’S EVALUATIONS OF SCHOOL 107
had stormed out to live with her boyfriend; Mabel was preparing for mar-
riage; and Liz felt that her days at school were numbered.
Dad was kind still. He had never been anything but kind, but he had begun
to look old and tired. He was thinner than ever.
Sometimes Mum would say, ‘Poor old Dad, everything’s a top of him.
Doll and everything and the bad trade to cap it all.’
At that an icy hand would grip my stomach because any day now I felt
Mum would say, ‘You better leave that old school of yours, Liz, and get a
proper job.’49
them valued skills. This high evaluation of skills can be seen as paradoxical,
since the elementary school curriculum focused, not just the basics of lit-
eracy and numeracy, but on gendered skills for their future lives, such as
carpentry, gardening and housewifery. But what we learn from the mem-
oirs was the value young people assigned to specific knowledge for specific
jobs, such as saddlery or weaving, skills that carried economic value. Some
of them valued sociological and political learning about how society
worked and what would make it work better.
As regards their remembered experience of school as a site of learning,
some topics emerge from many of the accounts. Clearly, the memoirs tell
us that people remembered the rote learning, the never-afterwards-
forgotten multiplication tables and the accompanying boredom of reciting
them time and again.50
More generally, the material experience of elementary schooling
allowed children to firm up their understandings of social class. Those
who regarded themselves as respectable working class, found themselves
in school alongside children who had to line up for tickets for free meals;
though they themselves may have found solidarity in numbers (as
Kathleen Dayus reports). Children could see that it was the wealthier
children who got the scholarships. At the bottom of the social heap were
the sad workhouse children, described by several informants. Some chil-
dren (such as Jasper) made friends with people of a higher social class and
had to negotiate those friendships in the context of home lives different
from their own.
A central topic is gender. Girls were required to accept the gendered
curriculum. Yet there was considerable debate both nationally and locally
about what exactly the elementary schools should be doing, and in par-
ticular how far schooling should be gendered. Some commentators noted
that the efforts to teach, for instance, gardening and housewifery were
superficial, and were more to do with ideology than with practice.51 At
York Road School, north of King’s Cross Station, Theodora Bonwick, the
headteacher, rejected the gendered curriculum, arguing that girls should
not be trained in domestic work, since this implied that they were inferior
to boys.52 She also introduced education based on the concept of the child
as self-activated learner—a version of Montessori’s principles—in her
school.
The absurdity of teaching children artificially what they learned hands-
on at home was demonstrated, for instance, by Grace Foakes, debunking
the housewifery course:
CHILDREN’S EVALUATIONS OF SCHOOL 109
…we were taught to sweep, dust, polish, make beds and bath a life-size doll.
We had great fun on this course, for it was held in a house set aside for the
purpose, and with only one teacher in charge, we were quick to take advan-
tage when she went to inspect some other part of the house. We jumped on
the bed, threw pillows, drowned the doll and swept dirt under the mats. This
was the highlight of the week, the one lesson we never minded going to.53
Teachers
Perhaps central to children’s experience was the quality of the teachers. At
one extreme, were the teachers who treated the children as objects, to be
instructed and forced to learn whatever the formal curriculum demanded.
It has been argued that there was fierce resistance from children to harsh
punishment and in particular to caning. Thus Humphries makes the case
that the resistance was class-based. He chose his sample of resisters from a
large database.55 In my small (unrepresentative) sample I did not find mas-
sive resistance, only some fear and disrespect for caning. Elizabeth Roberts
argues that where parents complained to the school about caning their
complaint was not so much class-based as a response to the difference
between punishment practices at home and school; for at home physical
punishment might be light, rare or nonexistent.56
110 4 EXPERIENCING ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
But some children encountered teachers who were kindly and took an
interest in the children, helping out with extreme poverty, providing
boots, food and even small amounts of cash. The memoir of a woman who
lived in a Devon village emphasises that her teachers were ‘so friendly and
even motherly’; they lived in the village community, alongside the chil-
dren’s homes and took part in local events, on sports committees, running
fairs and money-raising efforts.60 These teachers made sure the school day
included stories, songs and poems. Some teachers worked with the chil-
dren out of school hours, training them for singing competitions and fes-
tivals. Teachers could manipulate the curriculum to make it interesting to
children; to widen their horizons and to encourage children to participate
in learning and in creating knowledge themselves. Earlier we read in
Robert Roberts’ account about the value to him of stories he was told in
geography and history lessons (page 98). A graphic account of the emo-
tional value of story-telling is given in an edition of The School Child, by an
onlooker at an evening play-centre:
It was the story-telling room. Only one gas jet was burning and in the circle of
light sat a man, leaning forward with his hands in his pockets. Surrounding him
were some 30 small boys in rapt attention. Round-eyed and open-mouthed,
they were drinking in his every syllable. For them the familiar classroom had
vanished, and they were away over magic seas ‘in faery lands forlorn’.61
We’d go and recite to them or sing to them. They trained us to do this kind
of thing. But we had to go. The only way you got out of it you’d got to be
ill and she knew whether you were shamming or not. You couldn’t get away
with it.70
It seems that one upside of Sunday was music; indeed delight in music
emerges as a key theme in the accounts. The Ambleside interviews empha-
sise the homemade character of music-making.
And then you see we always used to have concerts and that, didn’t we, and
all, in’t school in them days—some great dos, we had you know, two or
three in’t winter. They would be all school kids and lots of grown-ups, oh,
full houses and all. All that’s gone now. Locals, school kids or anyone that
could play a fiddle or tell a joke—we used to have two or three a winter.72
I: And what about your early school days. Were they happy days, was disci-
pline very strict?
Oh, it was quite a happy time, yes. In those days we had the Band of
Hope and the Boys’ Brigade in those days, now there’s nothing of that now.
All gone, you see there were two bands in Ambleside, the town band and
there was the Volunteer band, the Volunteers. We’d a lovely band in
Ambleside once over, two bands, good bands too. Then the war came.73
His daughter played the harmonium, the hymn was announced, books were
given out and we all sang Onward Christian Soldiers. Windows were flung
open, and people leaned out, listening to the singing … When the prayer
finished we sang Fight the Good Fight.
CHILDREN’S EVALUATIONS OF SCHOOL 115
Grace comments,
I wish you could have been there, for this was a sight so moving to see, the
deserted road, the closed wharves and warehouses, the people standing or
watching from their homes, none of whom had two half-pennies for a
penny; some who would tomorrow have to pawn their belongings before
they could get a meal; some with no work to go to. And yet they could all
sing, and listen while the old man gave his sermon.75
The linkages between music, the words of hymns and what was hap-
pening in the battlefields was made clear to children through the martial
tone and content of many hymns. Ralph Wightman, who was then away
from home, boarding at a grammar school in Dorset, describes the power
of these linkages:
I think the first time that words moved me in that strange way which brings
smarting uncomfortable tears to your eyes, was at Morning Assembly when
we had the hymn for ‘those in peril on the sea’. The words which mattered
were ‘our brethren’, possibly because at that time the war had come much
closer. So many men I had known as warm human beings were dead in
Flanders dirt. My brother was over there.76
enjoyed people dying in those days. They used to know lots of songs in
those days, and I’ve heard my father sing perhaps a dozen or fifteen
verses.80
It seems very likely that many if not most children responded with
acquiescence and even enthusiasm to the patriotic and religious messages
purveyed to them, especially as heightened by powerful music. It would
have been a strong-minded child who stood out against these frequent
messages and exhortations. One of the Londoners, Evelyn Shelley, did
so, recording that she resented the punitive character of religious teach-
ing; and the kindly but patronising behaviour of Sunday school
teachers:
Our religious instruction was of the sin and punishment order (in fact one
realised it was a sin to enjoy anything) and I could never grasp why we had
to be ‘saved’, nor why boys and girls had to be kept strictly apart on Sunday
school outings. I must have been an odd child and a trial to grown-ups. I
hated the condescension of Sunday school treats, the bun and the orange
and pat on the head handed out on leaving.81
Daily exposure for nine years to Christian teaching left me with an active
distaste for the Lord … For many among us, the son of God had long
become the epitome of misery and boredom.82
John Bennett, who had spent his early years as a chorister and
attended both Sunday school and church, writes that he experienced a
set of stages in his disenchantment with Christianity—the most power-
ful, perhaps, being when a choirmaster refused to pardon a boy who
was late for practice and when a clergyman preached that God was obvi-
ously on the side of Britain and that our duty, therefore, was to kill
Germans.83
DISCUSSION 117
Discussion
Women’s Work for Children
Children’s experiences of school can be usefully set in the context of those
pioneers, exemplified here by Mary Bridges Adams, who challenged the
assumptions of male politicians. Thus it was obvious to many people, and
not just women, that feeding children had to be a pre-condition of educat-
ing them; and women added their voice, on committees, on school boards
and through trade unions to those of, notably, male doctors who agreed.84
More fundamentally, women such as Mary challenged the social class basis
on which schooling was organised. The setbacks experienced by some of
the children in this chapter stem largely from the fact that the government
was not willing to fund a free service for all children, encompassing the
teenage years. And the quality of the service was severely jeopardised by
large class sizes.85
Further challenges were posed to the education system, throughout the
early years of the twentieth century, by women theorists, and notably by
‘revisionary Froebelians’. With solid training to back up their ideas for
reforming the curriculum and indeed the ethos of elementary schools,
they proposed loosening up Froebel and promoting children’s active
exploration as a basis for learning. They had most influence with the
under-fives and the infants (age 5–7). We have to add that the memoirs
give little indication of their influence, which, given these women’s socio-
political position, is not surprising. A few women could not make much
headway against the large classes and the rigorous fact-promoting and
testing regime. However, these women continued to lay the basis for the
changes that began to take off after the Great War.86
As later commentators have noted, the idea that elementary schooling
for girls should teach them to be good mothers and housewives was per-
vasive and difficult to counter.87 When the Girl Guides were established in
1910–1911, their leader, Agnes Baden-Powell, endorsed this aim for the
movement too.88 Feminist critiques include that by a Mrs Marvin, who
gave evidence to a Board of Education Consultative Committee in 1909;
she said it was better to provide girls with a liberal education ‘to raise the
woman’s status, to elevate her character and to widen her intellectual out-
look’. In 1918 Rebecca West argued that emphasis on domestic subjects
reduced girls’ chances of education.89 However, there is a story still to be
118 4 EXPERIENCING ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
Experiencing Schooling
As discussed in Chapter Three, city and rural environments differed in the
ways they affected children’s lives at home and in the neighbourhood. As
regards schooling, what seems most apparent is that rural children were
more heavily, or more directly, under the power of church and gentry; that
opportunities for schooling beyond the elementary level were few and the
demands of paid or domestic work were paramount for children. George
Ewart Evans reports (referring mainly to the first 30 years of the education
DISCUSSION 119
system) that school had little impact on rural children; literacy was not
encouraged at home, where there were no books. He argues that the gen-
try and the clergy opposed any liberalising of the school experience, since
it might disrupt the acquiescence of the labouring poor to their lot in the
divinely ordered social system.93 However, judging by the memoirs and
interviews, it seems that some rural children could gain an education else-
where—through engagement with political and social movements in the
workplace.
City children were also subjected to indoctrination into Christianity
and the British Empire, through the school curriculum; but they perhaps
had easier access to other sources of information—newspapers and comics,
films and music hall—and these provided social and political commentar-
ies on societal movements. There were somewhat wider employment
opportunities awaiting city children—in industries, offices and factories.
For a few young people, training was available towards these better-paid
jobs, at commercial and technical institutes, some offering evening courses.
However, both city and rural children had only a slim chance of secondary
education. By the early 1920s, only 9.5 per cent of elementary school
children went on to secondary education, and of these one-third had free
places and two-thirds paid fees.94
Children’s experiences of school are contextualised in their experiences
of family and social life. As children, their social status at both home and
school was as subordinates to adults. Both sets of adults demanded obedi-
ence and work, whether domestic and/or paid work, or school-related
work. Thus the two halves of children’s lives had continuity. They expected
to do as they were told. Being a good enough person required listening to
and obeying adults. These points help us to understand children’s nego-
tiations with their parents and schools for the opportunity to proceed on
to secondary schooling. If the price was to bring money into the household
by doing a part-time job alongside school and homework, then that was
what they did and in some cases were glad to do.
But doing a part-time job was easier for parents to contemplate in the
case of boys than of girls; and secondary education in itself posed prob-
lems for parents of girls, as offering them more freedom from the mores
of the home.95 Secondary schooling also offered a vision of a future work-
ing life for girls in office work or teaching, distinctive from the normal life
of wifedom, motherhood and domesticity. Perhaps Dorothy Scannell’s
parents worried about her future, as a too independent person? Our
women informants give some suggestions about their pity for their
120 4 EXPERIENCING ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
My aim in writing this book, is to show that the externalism of the West, the
prevalent tendency to pay undue regard to outward and visible ‘results’ and
to neglect what is inward and vital, is the source of most of the defects that
vitiate Education in this country, and therefore that the only remedy for
those defects is the drastic one of changing our standard of reality and our
conception of the meaning and value of life.
His book is a tirade against the regime of testing for facts, still prevalent
in elementary schools in 1912, even though the payment by results system
had been formally abandoned in 1895. As log books show, annual testing
of children in religious ‘knowledge’ and testing in the three Rs as a basis
for moving up the Standards was routine. In his opening chapter Holmes
sets out his vision: that the child must do the growing, must take in the
nourishment and exercise his organs and faculties. By contrast, the current
system put all the activity into the hands of the teacher, and reduced the
children to ‘mental lethargy’ and ‘fatal inertness’, ‘which was the outcome
of five or six years of systematic repression and compulsory inaction’.97
As I have very briefly suggested in this chapter, our informants’ accounts
suggest that most children survived schooling with their spirits more or
less intact, and many then took advantage of educational opportunities
offered through evening classes, their work and social contacts. Children
may have been subjugated at school, but their social lives outside school
provided a supportive framework within which they could endure school
and even profit from it.
NOTES 121
In the next chapter, I concentrate on the years of the Great War, the
socialist feminist work carried out and the work of both children and
women.
Notes
1. Jane Martin Making Socialists, 2010. See especially chapters 5 and 6.
2. Martin 2010, chapter 6.
3. See Appendix B.
4. Martin 2010, p. 149.
5. Hollis 1994, pp. 185–190.
6. The ‘provided’ schools were those supplied by school boards from 1870 to
fill the gaps left by the ‘non-provided’ schools already in existence in
England in 1870. Non-provided schools were mainly under the wing of
religious organisations (notably the Church of England).
7. See Maclure 1970, chapter 6 for this movement in London; and Gowen
(no date) on the history of education in Lowestoft.
8. Maclure 1970, pp. 91–93 details these developments in London.
9. A description of the closing of a struggling elementary school after the
Great War is given by the Rector of the parish of Uggeshall in North East
Suffolk. Uggeshall is about 8 miles north-east of Southwold. (Ashton
1996)
10. This is the short title of Handbook of Suggestions: For the consideration of
teachers and others concerned in the work of public elementary schools. (Board
of Education 1937)
11. Suggestions: For the consideration of teachers … 1905, p. 9.
12. Suggestions: For the consideration of teachers … 1905, p. 14, quoted in
Cunningham, P. 2002.
13. Cunningham, P. 2002, pp. 14–15.
14. For instance, Robert Roberts, in The Classic Slum 1977, describes the
scene at his school in Salford, in the ironically titled chapter ‘Alma Mater’.
15. Dorothy Barrow (in Ambleside) remembers taking the exam for the gram-
mar school, and tells of her indignation when, after the boys and girls had
written the English and Arithmetic papers, the boys were sent home and
the girls had a needlework exam, ‘which I thought was highly unfair’.
16. For the growing influence of Froebel in training and in schools, see
Liebschner 1991.
17. Bloomfield 2000. For careers of other Froebelians in schools’ policy and
practice, see also Brehony 2000.
18. Trevor Jones wrote a school history of Emmanuel School and gives this
information. No publication date. Available to read at the Camden Local
Studies and Archives Centre.
122 4 EXPERIENCING ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
19. Rose 2002, chapter 5. Rose gives a full discussion of the merits and demer-
its of the study, alongside quotations from many autobiographies.
20. Blythe 1972, p. 128.
21. Blythe 1972, pp. 281–282.
22. Blythe 1972, p. 136.
23. Blythe 1972, p. 33.
24. The Labour Exam allowed a child to leave school, provided that the child
had reached a certain standard in the three Rs; one source says a child had
to have reached aged 12 and to have reached Standard 5 (Evans 1977,
p. 206). A child must also have had to put in a certain number of atten-
dances at school. These requirements varied across LEAs.
25. Burnett 1994, p. 111.
26. Burnett 1994, p. 94.
27. The quotes below are from Robert Roberts’ The Classic Slum, chapter 7,
titled ‘Alma Mater’, pp. 129–145.
28. Roberts, R. 1977, p. 138.
29. Roberts, R. 1977, p. 140.
30. Roberts, R. 1977, p. 141.
31. Roberts, R. 1977, p. 141.
32. This play sounds like the mummers’ play, described in Thomas Hardy’s
novel, The Return of the Native, though that takes place at Christmastime.
33. Atherton in T. Thompson 1981, p. 116. Elizabeth Atkinson 1987 sets out
memories of children’s lives in institutions and workhouses.
34. Atherton in T. Thompson 1981, p. 117.
35. Scannell 1974, p. 84.
36. Scannell 1974, p. 143.
37. Lowndes 1969, pp. 89–91.
38. Gowen (no date), p. 6. Typed manuscript held in Lowestoft Record Office.
39. Marsden 1991, chapters 4 and 10.
40. Maclure 1970, p. 88.
41. Maclure 1970, p. 121.
42. By way of examples, I note that of the 28 people whose childhood memo-
ries are discussed in Chapter Three, 21 left at the school leaving age for a
working life, including at least three who wanted to stay on but did not
(Roberts, Scannell, Atherton) and seven went on to secondary schooling
(Andrews, Bennett, Bold, Ezard, Flint, Foakes, Wightman).
43. Ezard 1979, p. 102.
44. Bennett, H. J. 1980, p. 4.
45. Bennett, H. J. 1980, p. 37.
46. Flint 1963, p. 99.
47. Flint 1963, p. 108.
48. Flint 1963, p. 110.
NOTES 123
77. The hymn ‘Eternal Father, strong to save’ was used to great effect by
Benjamin Britten in his Noyes Fludde, performed by children. His orches-
tration adds to the hymn’s rolling majesty and brings the opera to a close.
78. In his history of Fleet Road Elementary School (London), Marsden docu-
ments the success of the school in these LCC-sponsored competitions; as
well as the many shows with singing and recitations put on by the
children.
79. Cookson 1977, pp. 36–37.
80. Thompson, T. 1981, p. 50.
81. Shelley, p. 3.
82. Roberts, R. 1987, p. 144.
83. Bennett, H. J., p. 39.
84. For instance, Dr James Kerr worked alongside Margaret McMillan in
Bradford and then in London on the London School Board with her and
others to promote measures to improve child health.
85. For discussion of class sizes, see, for example, Cunningham and Gardner
2004, p. 114.
86. See Brehony 2000, for discussion of some of the Froebelian pioneers.
87. Dyhouse 1981, Davin 1996, Roberts 1984 and Turnbull 1987, for
instance, give detailed analysis of the gendered assumptions prevalent in
the education system and of how these were played out in practice.
88. Dyhouse 1981, pp. 110–111.
89. Dyhouse 1981, p. 170.
90. In terms of numbers who attended, these girls’ clubs can be deemed suc-
cessful. For discussion of measuring success, see Vicinus 1994, pp. 231–234.
91. Mappen 1983, pp. ii–iii. See Jeffs and Spence 2011 for a history of girls’
clubs.
92. Vicinus 1994, p. 233. See also Turnbull 2001. Note, however, that some
commentators see girls’ club work as essentially neither feminist not social-
ist, but rather maternalist, with the aim of training girls for traditional roles
(e.g. Spence 2006).
93. Evans 1977, p. 21.
94. These figures come from a survey conducted by Kenneth Lindsay, under
the guidance of R.H. Tawney. See Maclure 1970, p. 120.
95. See Anna Davin 1996, Carol Dyhouse 1981 and Elizabeth Roberts for
analysis of mothers’ work at home.
96. Holmes’ book What Is and What Might Be was published after he retired,
in 1912. I discussed his utopian ideas, in Chapter One.
97. Holmes 1912, p. 155.
REFERENCES 125
References
Ashton, A. (1996). Fifty years’ work in a Suffolk Parish. Suffolk: Sole Bay Printing.
Atkinson, E. (1987). Strict but not cruel: Living in a children’s home 1903–43.
Oral History, 15(2), 38–45.
Bennett, H. J. (1980). I was a Walworth boy. London: The Peckham Publishing
Project.
Bloomfield, A. (2000). ‘Mrs Roadknight reports…’ Jane Roadknight’s visionary
role in transforming elementary education. In M. Hilton & P. Hirsch (Eds.),
Practical visionaries: Women, education and social progress 1790–1930. Harlow:
Longman.
Blythe, R. (1972). Akenfield: Portrait of an English village. London: Book Club
Associates Log Book.
Board of Education. (1937). Handbook of suggestions for the consideration of teach-
ers and others concerned in the work of the public elementary schools. London:
HMSO.
Brehony, K. J. (2000). English revisionist Froebelians and the schooling of the
urban poor. In M. Hilton & P. Hirsch (Eds.), Practical visionaries: Women,
education and social progress 1790–1930. Harlow: Longman.
Burnett, J. (1994). Destiny obscure: Autobiographies of childhood, education and
family from the 1820s to the 1920s. London: Routledge.
Cliff, P. (1981). Myths—Utilities and a meaningful existence 1900–1980. In
J. Ferguson (Ed.), Christianity, society and education. London: SPCK.
Cookson, C. (1977). Our Kate: An autobiography. London: Corgi Books.
Cunningham, P. (2002). Primary education. In R. Aldrich (Ed.), A century of
education. London: Routledge.
Cunningham, P., & Gardner, P. (2004). Becoming teachers: Texts and testimonies
1907–1950. London: Woburn Press.
Davin, A. (1996). Growing up poor: Home, school and street in London 1870–1914.
London: Rivers Oram Press.
Dyhouse, C. (1981). Girls growing up in late Victorian and Edwardian England.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Evans, G. E. (1977). Where beards wag all: The relevance of the oral tradition.
London: Faber and Faber.
Ezard, E. (1979). Battersea boy. London: William Kimber.
Flint, E. (1963). Hot bread and chips. London: Museum Press.
Foakes, G. (1974). My part of the river. London: Shepheard-Walwyn.
Hollis, P. (1994). Ladies elect: Women in English local government 1965–1914.
Oxford: Clarendon.
Holmes, E. (1912). What is and what might be. London: Constable and Co. Ltd.
Horn, P. (1978). Education in rural England 1800–1914. Dublin: Gill and
Macmillan.
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Swinburne, A. J. (no date, perhaps 1911). Memories of a school inspector. Published
by the author, Snape Priory, Saxmundham.
Thompson, T. (1981). Edwardian childhoods. London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul.
Thomson, D. (1985). England in the twentieth century. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Turnbull, A. (1987). Learning her womanly work: The elementary school curricu-
lum 1870–1914. In F. Hunt (Ed.), Lessons for life: The schooling of women and
girls 1850–1950. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Turnbull, A. (2001). Gendering young people—Work, leisure and girls’ clubs:
The work of the National Organisation of Girls’ clubs and its successors
1911–1961. In R. Gilchrist, T. Jeffs, & J. Spence (Eds.), Essays in the history of
community and youth work. Leicester: National Youth Agency.
Vicinus, M. (1994). Independent women: Work and community for single women
1850–1920. London: Virago.
Wightman, R. (1968). Take life easy. London: Pelham Books.
CHAPTER FIVE
enemy blockades. Food prices rose, food shortages increased and since
one-third of families in some cities had an income of 24s. or less per week,
many families were in severe financial difficulties.6 Some were helped out
by relatives who lived in rather better circumstances in rural areas. The
ELFS workers found that they had an immediate task: feeding mothers
and children.
During the war, increasing numbers of women began to take on paid
work traditionally done by men in factories, in transport, in offices and
shops; also in women’s traditional work in the clothing industry, whether
at home or in dressmaking establishments. Factories recruited women for
war work, in munitions, supplies and clothing. Many women left domestic
service for these jobs. Overall, numbers of women in paid work rose from
just over 3 million to just under 5 million by early 1918.7 Married women,
who traditionally worked only in the home, were now welcome in indus-
trial jobs, and during the war years, they made up 40 per cent of all women
in paid work.8 But women were paid half or one-third of a man’s wages,
not enough to live on9 Thus it was common for women to be paid 10s. or
less for a long week’s work.10
Alongside the poverty and its consequent endless worry, women and
children might suffer the loss of fathers and brothers. Thus Liz Flint (born
1906), who, like Bennett and Ezard, was focused wholeheartedly on
learning and enjoyment of experiences at her secondary school, records
the main event of the war years, from her family’s point of view. This was
the day when they received news that Ted, the eldest son, newly married,
and with a baby son, had been killed.
It was Dad who took it the worst. He sat at the table and great sobs shook his
body. His arms were folded on the table before him and his head was cradled
on his arms. His breath came in great gulps and the whole of him shook.11
With the father distraught, the mother tried to help by revealing a long-
held secret: Ted was her son, not her husband’s. The whole family sat in
tears, and Liz thought about Ted’s son who would never see his Dad. Liz
later explains that this was the great event of the war for her family:
The war went on through all this, and I only heeded bits of it as they might
come directly into my life. I heard bits from talk at school, and most clear
days Mum swore she heard ‘them guns’ banging away in France. Most of all
I remember an explosion. It was in Silvertown, they said. Aunt Rogue was
killed there. No one cried for her, that I remember, not in our house at any
132 5 WOMEN AND CHILDREN AND THE GREAT WAR YEARS
rate. It was just one of those things, that was all. The war for us had begun
and ended with Ted. Other than Ted the war meant very little.12
This is one of the many dramatic stories of war deaths. For the people
looking back at their childhoods, these deaths overshadowed every other
event of the war. Families also endured years of worry about fathers and
brothers in enemy prisoner-of-war camps. Letters were exchanged between
soldiers and those left at home13 Families sent Red Cross parcels to men at
the front and in prisoner-of-war camps and these parcels cost a hard-
earned 2s. a month, as James Brady reports—for he had joined the army
in 1915 and was taken prisoner.
But there are many accounts of neighbourly help. May Bowness in
Ambleside remembers that her mother used to act as midwife locally, for
no financial reward, though farmers might offer her a dozen eggs or other
food in thanks. ‘You just did it because it was friendship,’ she said.14
Pember Reeves notes that people in the Lambeth area of London where
her research was carried out felt deep attachment to the local community
and helped out families when they faced crises.15 In cities, rural areas and
small villages, we read of the kindly work of women, based in response to
need. Thus Mrs Savoy was described by George Lansbury (Labour MP for
Bow and Bromley from 1910) as the best woman in Old Ford: ‘she was
bringing up two orphan boys, and was ever ready to share her last crust,
or perform any service for a neighbour, from bringing her baby into the
world to scrubbing out her room. Or minding her children at need.’16 Mrs
Savoy was one of six women who went on a deputation to the Prime
Minister in June 1914 (organised by Sylvia) to press for women’s suffrage.
She explained in her speech that she worked as a brush-maker, and was
paid 2d. for each, though they sold at 10s. 6d.
Miss Wilkinson (now M.P.) was one of the first to open a workroom in
Stockport, to find work for girls in making old clothes for new for the poor
children. We went round begging old cast-offs, and good work was done.
Miss Wilkinson helped towards getting the Maternity Centre formed in
Stockport. When investigating cases for relief we came across many pitiful
homes where father had gone to the war, and four or five children had to be
fed. I don’t think we should have had war if the women could have had the
vote before, and a voice in it. There’s no mother or wife in England nor
Germany that would give their loved one to be killed. Now we are working
for peace.32
The reports WCG women give about their meetings with policymakers
indicate how little many of the men knew or understood about the lives of
ordinary people. However, they also indicate that men were sometimes
willing to listen and to accede to what the women proposed. One example
from the war years is a visit by Mrs. Layton and Margaret Bondfield to
discuss with the Executive of the Prince of Wales’ Fund, its proposal not
to give financial help to unmarried mothers (on the argument that married
women would object to sin being rewarded). The WCG women explained
that ordinary working women would not wish for such discrimination and
Mrs. Layton, as a midwife, emphasised that the important issue at stake
had to be not marital status but the health of mother and child. After fur-
ther discussion, the men agreed to treat all women equally.33
136 5 WOMEN AND CHILDREN AND THE GREAT WAR YEARS
I was only eight years old when the War broke out but the feeling of change
that came over the country was felt in the kitchen, as it was in every house,
and I can recall the atmosphere that pervaded the world—my particular
world at that time. It was full of bustle and urgency. I seemed to spend my
day standing in queues. Sometimes at Allen’s, the butchers, I would stand
for hours, because meat was scarce. And then again in the evening, hours
and hours in the beer queue. I have only isolated pictures of the War, such
as returning from The Crown and meeting me Uncle Jack on the road. He
was solid and sober and it was a Saturday afternoon. I recollect the happy
feeling of this day; he was in his khaki uniform and he gave me a penny …
When he went to France I wrote to him every week … In return he sent me
cards with silk patterns woven on them. I have one still. It has a mandolin
on it … (They heard that Jack had got promotion, then that he had been
wounded and was due home on leave; and Kate went out to buy new things
to welcome home the wounded hero.) And before she came home a tele-
gram arrived. I took it into the kitchen where me granda was feeding the
canary. He had a way with canaries. I read out the wire to him and he sat
down. It was one of the three times in my life that I saw him cry.35
Catherine’s jobs at home also took up even more time than before. On
a Friday night after school, her new job was cleaning ginger beer bottles—
her mother’s latest commercial venture (‘we did a roaring trade during the
War’). On Saturday morning she had to buy a stone of wheat and carry it
home, for the hens. Then she still had routine weekly cleaning tasks at
home—scrubbing floors, polishing the steel fender and the brasses, clean-
ing the windows.
An important feature of the early war-time years was the conscription of
boys to work on the land. We recognise here the power of the farmers to
intervene in children’s schooling; and these events also suggest difficulties
KEEPING THE COUNTRY GOING—CHILDREN’S CONTRIBUTIONS 137
called for the Board of Education to take a lead in providing schooling for
those who had missed out during the war years.
Two examples from the memoirs about children’s conscription into
agriculture will suffice. Clifford Hills, whom we met in Chapter Three (p.
66), worked as a kitchen boy at the local farm in Essex, before school each
day and also after school. In 1916, when many men had left the country-
side to go to war, Cliff was 12:
The farmer came to the school one morning and said he wanted me to work
regular every day, all day, could I leave school because his gardeners had
gone to the war. And I left school and I went to work for him every day from
six in the morning until half past five at night and then till five o’clock on
Saturdays for five shillings a week, all those hours for five bob, and I was still
doing the paper round every night, because when the war broke out there
was a big camp at the bottom of the hill, hundreds of soldiers there and I
had to take newspapers to this camp, and I sold many more papers, of
course, and I got one and three a week then because I was selling so many
papers, but I had to work about three hours for it, plus a black eye some-
times, the troops used to put us in boxing gloves to fight the band boys
down there.42
I was one of a number of boys excused from attending school on some days
to assist the farmer, Mr Jack Daking of Ponds Farm, Polstead, in harvesting
the potato crop. The cloakroom and resting place was a shepherd’s hut in
the field. I used to think what a joy it would be to sleep in it. There was a
shortage of farmworkers because most young men were called up for
service.
To conserve cereal crops and corn a special effort was made by the gov-
ernment to reduce the vermin and sparrow population. One penny was paid
CHILDREN AND SCHOOLING 139
for a rat’s tail and a halfpenny for a sparrow’s head. The collecting centre
was at Ponds Farm. All this enthused the boys to make themselves catapults.
I can recall becoming proficient in the use of the catapult and earning myself
pocket money. Often when I left home for school in the morning I would
have in my pocket two rat’s tails and a few sparrow head to be delivered to
the collecting centre during school lunch break. As children we never had
regular pocket money so you can guess how much we appreciated those
pennies. One penny would buy six aniseed balls or six caramels.43
Children and Schooling
The first point that has to be made here concerns children living in some
of the poorest families, where continuous effort was required by everyone
just to survive the war years. In these circumstances, both school atten-
dance and rhetoric urging children to engage with the war effort may have
felt inappropriate. The start of the war put additional pressures on these
families, since food supplies became scarcer and more expensive. In addi-
tion, the war caused death and injury. Thus in Jan Jasper’s family, two
elder brothers were away in the war, and this reduced the family’s income.
Living in the East End of London, the family was faced with bombing
raids every night, and the family, along with others, sheltered where they
could. The husband of his elder sister, Jo, was killed in the war, leaving her
with a small child. Jo herself had been working in a munitions factory,
painting ammunition boxes with a poisonous substance, from which she
contracted a disease, was hospitalised and was ill for several months. His
eldest sister, Mary, also fell ill and was in hospital. The care of both these
sisters’ young children fell to Mum. An elder brother came home from
war service in the Far East, having caught ‘some sort of tropical disease’
for which he had to attend hospital.46 Another came home suffering from
140 5 WOMEN AND CHILDREN AND THE GREAT WAR YEARS
‘shell shock’ for which he was kept in hospital for a time. The roll call of
disasters in this family increased both stress and workload for everyone left
standing. For Jan, who at the time was working for his mother on her
dressmaking venture47 (see Chapter Three, p. 59), war meant that he also
had to increase his domestic work, queuing for food and caring for a
younger sibling; it was his responsibility to get her (and himself) to school
each morning. Jasper interweaves his chronological account of the events
of the war with their impacts on his family. For him, the war brought many
disasters and challenges to the family; and school did not provide any sus-
tenance. This is all he says about it:
I was still at the same school and the masters and teachers were tyrants in my
eyes. Looking back, they had something to put up with. They had to be
tough to survive. I am sure the discipline they dished out did us the world
of good in later years.48
It seems that school was important to some children for other reasons,
for instance, to A.L. Rowse in his Cornish village. He says he found much
to enjoy at school—for there was so much to learn.53 He records that one of
his exercise books survived, kept by a teacher. Given that he must have been
an exceptionally clever child (and perhaps was given extra, more demanding
work than his peers?), it is still interesting to see the range of war-related
topics some children at elementary school were asked to consider. His exer-
cise book reveals that children learned a lot of ‘facts’ and wrote essays about
such topics as: the War, St. George’s Day and Empire Day; there is a letter
to a British prisoner of war and a letter to the Kaiser. There are records of
the dimensions of the Lusitania (a British ship torpedoed and sunk in the
North Atlantic) and an essay on the US War of Independence.
School attendance reinforced children’s exposure to patriotism and
Christianity, in line with the basic aims of the state education system: to
rear new generations of children who conformed to state agendas. No
doubt, too, politicians and educationalists thought in terms of morale-
boosting; it was important for everyone to maintain a united, cheerful
front. Clearly, pro-war rhetoric was on display everywhere, from recruiting
posters, to newspapers, films, children’s comics and story-books. The
school day began at 9 with a prayer and a hymn, followed by a session until
10 of instruction on Christianity. Ministers of the churches were frequent
visitors to the school, and some taught the religious session. Annual
inspections aimed to ensure that this work was satisfactorily carried out.
Thus, for instance, at Wrentham elementary school, north-east Suffolk, in
July 1914, the headteacher copied into the school logbook the inspector’s
report on religious instruction. It was based on three questions:
Was it apparent that the Syllabus has been conscientiously taught? Yes. Did
it appear that the instruction had been given in a reverent manner? Yes. Was
it apparent that the lessons had been made to illustrate their practical bear-
ing on the life and character of the scholars? Yes. Verdict: all infants and
Standards 1–7 very good on all counts.
School, London E 3 was sited five minutes’ walk from Victoria Park in
North Bow.65 The school had about 300 girls on the roll.66
range of activities, both in and out of school premises. They visited muse-
ums, theatres, exhibitions; they went to swimming lessons in the munici-
pal baths and competed against other schools. Nature study, in the local
park and Epping Forest was given high priority by this headteacher (who
was pioneering a nature study course), and further widened the girls’
experience. Though the ladder to secondary school was shaky, girls could
see that some made it and it was a possibility. The girls were living very
close to the war: with bombing raids during the school day as well as by
night; former students at the boys’ department of the school, on leave
from the army, visited the school and reminded children of life at the
front; and some girls visited a local exhibition of war pictures. Girls were
encouraged to take part in the war effort, via cookery classes, dressmaking
and through promoting patriotism.
School histories and logbooks tell us that during the war years schools
in both rural and city areas were sometimes struggling to keep going, to
teach and to satisfy the inspectors. In rural areas, where some children had
no or inadequate footwear, bad weather could lead to dramatic falls in
attendance. Snow, rain and floods seem to have been frequent in the war
years. Schools were breeding grounds for illness; it is common to read of
a school closed for weeks at a time because of cases of ringworm, scabies,
diphtheria, measles or mumps. Rural schools had seen some falls in the
numbers of children attending, in the wake of a general decline in village
populations in the 30 years from 1890,68 but some schools also saw
increases in school numbers, as city children whose parents could manage
it came to rural areas to escape the bombing. Thus, Busbridge School,
Surrey, saw a doubling of the school roll from 90 to 180 in 1917.69
Disruption to staffing at this school in 1916, as men were called up to the
war, left three women teachers faced with 172 children; and when one of
the women took leave because of her father’s death, the school had to be
closed until she returned.
Here are some points from the logbook of a rural school, which may
help us understand children’s experiences. Uggeshall and Sotherton
School was situated in north-east Suffolk, 4 miles north-east of the nearest
town, Halesworth.70 Sotherton is a hamlet about a mile from Uggeshall
village. The school had about 60 children on the roll.
with infestations. The school was closed for a day in August 1914 for
an outing to Dunwich. Wet weather sometimes meant closing the
school; and in December 1914 wet weather reduced attendance to
one-third.
1915–1916: during the 1915–1916 winter, bad weather and children’s
illnesses reduced school attendance by up to a half. Each December the
school was closed for a day and the children attended a Christmas ser-
vice at the church. Each summer, the school was closed for several
Sunday school treats (Church of England, Methodist). Many children
took the day off in 1915 to go to Trinity Fair in Southwold. The atten-
dance officer and the school nurse visited the school regularly and often,
the doctor less often; the Rector took some of the religious instruction
sessions. The children were tested annually on their religious knowledge
and on the secular subjects: Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, History,
Geography, Conversation, Singing, Drawing, Needlework and
Observation. Their performance in ‘drill’—physical exercises—was also
inspected annually.
In December 1916, the local gentry—Lord and Lady Stradbroke—vis-
ited the school and distributed buns.
In 1917, eight children took Labour Certificate exams and five passed.71
The logbook records some war efforts: the school started a war savings
scheme; the school held a concert in aid of soldiers’ comforts; and the
children picked 55½ pints of blackberries in September 1918. In
November 1918, as in other schools, the influenza epidemic closed the
school.
two-hour break in the middle of the day allowed for children to walk
home for a meal; though for the Sotherton hamlet children it must have
been a run, to cover the mile there and back. School was for a limited
period of time, until at age 12 you could leave for paid work, in agriculture
or ‘service’. There were very few opportunities for further schooling
beyond the age of 12 or 14.73 The school encouraged the children to take
part in the war effort, through savings schemes and a money-raising con-
cert, and a half-day blackberry-picking expedition. Out-of-school activi-
ties were provided through church and chapel treats, and outings to the
seaside.
Children learned at this school that both the church and the gentry
oversaw their schooldays and their lives outside school. A graphic example
of noblesse oblige is explored by George Ewart Evans, in his account of the
elementary school in Helmingham—a ‘closed village’, where the villagers
were in economic subjection to the lord of the manor, as the sole local
employer.74 This was offset by the patronage, or charitable work, of the
Hall—no-one starved. Mrs. Manning (born 1900) recalls:
During the worst part of the winter—that would be just before Christmas or
just after—Lady Tollemache used to provide soup for the poorest families …
The bigger boys and girls, if the mothers couldn’t go, used to bring their
cans to school and then they’d be let out at half-past eleven to go up to the
Hall and fetch it—which they could do and leave it until they went home
from school.75
The club came in very handy. It was just what she wanted. Later we had a
Christmas celebration at the school. Lady Tollemache used to come down
and certain boys and girls used to have a nice present for attendance and also
for being the best boy or girl in the class.76
with clothes and blankets. But these charitable acts were directed only ‘at
those who behaved themselves’.77
It was this same gentry that recruited village children to work on their
lands. Children would sit for the labour certificate and if they passed could
leave school at 12. The headteacher of Helmingham School from 1915
recorded that in his first year there, none of the children passed this test
and the school inspector agreed with him that this result was ‘a jolly good
job’ because the exemption system meant schools tended to lose their
brightest children.78 Clearly, compared to urban children, rural children
had fewer educational opportunities. However, by this time, with so many
men away in the armed forces, the government had had to force up agri-
cultural wages and had also begun to import tractors (from the USA). For
a brief period, until the slump after the war years, agricultural work became
a slightly more attractive job.
A sidelight on children’s experiences of war, and in particular of
bombing raids, is given in an account of 945 essays written (10–14 days
after two raids) by boys and girls aged 8–13, who attended five London
schools nearby. In his lecture on the essays, Dr Kimmins (Chief Inspector
of Schools for the LCC) reported that 96 per cent of the children had
experienced one or both raids. He said that 8-year-olds emphasised the
noise of the firing, but did not express personal feelings ‘and there was
no evidence of fear’. The boys at all ages showed no fear but said they
found the raids exciting. Girls wrote that they looked after the younger
children and girls of 12 were notable: they said they were ‘really fright-
ened but would not show it’. Few children (only 5 per cent) mentioned
their fathers.79 This was an interesting project, in that it sought to
record children’s experiences, at a time when one might think few
adults would find them important. The stark gendered differences
reported suggest that children felt obliged to live up to social expecta-
tions of them (and/or that the report simplified and emphasised gen-
dered differences). It seems that this essay-writing scheme may have
related to LCC planning concerns for wartime. For some efforts were
made during the war to ‘save the children’. For instance, a leaflet issued
by the Hampstead Council of Social Welfare, urged mothers ‘whose
children’s nerves have been badly shaken’ to apply for help; ‘We may be
able to get some away’.80 In the 1930s, officials would have used these
kinds of information when planning for the welfare of city children in a
future war.81
SCHOOL AND THE WAR EFFORT 149
Oh, we were brought up on the war. And we had maps on the wall, you
know, where the front was and moved flags about. And then we used to take
all sorts of things to school and make parcels, for those … And the Atkinsons
… they had three daughters and five sons. And four of them were killed in
the war and the other one lost an eye. And then there were various others
and we used to send them parcels to the front.
The interviewer adds that there was a hospital locally for wounded sol-
diers. That reminds Gwen to record that she and her brother, as guides
and scouts respectively, used to help out at the hospital, by chopping wood
and carrying coal. Her account typifies how people’s memories are sparked
off. The interviewer’s mention of the war reminds her of school. School
promoted knowledge about how the war was proceeding; and at school,
she remembers, they made up parcels to send to soldiers. And that reminds
her about the Atkinsons, who lost so heavily.
Undoubtedly, considerable efforts were made by the churches and the
schools to enlist school-age children in support of the war effort, though
as preceding sections have indicated, children were already taking on
extra duties in response to the exigencies of war. However, at school,
they were a captive audience. One aim was to maintain morale among
children (and their families) by showing that everyone could contribute.
Since over five million men fought in the war, probably most people
knew someone who had enlisted, and doing your bit for the war effort,
including sending parcels to those at the front, was one way to
contribute.82
150 5 WOMEN AND CHILDREN AND THE GREAT WAR YEARS
handkerchiefs) for the soldiers. Together they have also supported 24 chari-
table funds by contributing the sum of £52.4s.8d.
Discussion
The early years of the twentieth century saw huge industrial unrest, as
working-class men and women fought for better conditions of work, for
better pay and for equal pay.84 For instance, in 1911 strikes by male
152 5 WOMEN AND CHILDREN AND THE GREAT WAR YEARS
for the poorest children, and helped in kind and in some cases with
money. Through the Poor Law, the poorest got a breakfast at school.
Perhaps the school régime was beginning to influence child health,
through physical exercise (‘drill’) and swimming lessons, through nature
study expeditions and through gardening, at first for boys only, but as the
war continued, for girls too.
However, children themselves continued with their domestic tasks: and
with their duty to their family to help with bringing in much-needed
money; their work towards a better life for themselves and their family.
More generally, this chapter has raised the question of whether the social
status of children rose in wartime. It seems clear from the protracted
debates towards a new Education Act (in 1913 and early 1914) that chil-
dren were increasingly described in political discourse as a national
resource, which must be fostered. The health of the children mattered for
the future. Children, all children, should be thought of as future citizens.
There should be secondary education for all.89 However, as I have sug-
gested, many children’s experiences of school did not live up to this rheto-
ric. And whilst a few children were eagerly taking up opportunities to
work for their own better future, for many children school was a minor
component of a social world dominated by socio-economic pressures on
families.
One of the lessons to be learned from the study of working class child-
hoods in the early twentieth century is that, in some important respects,
children were fully engaged as members of society. This can be seen in
their participation in the life of the neighbourhood, as they ran errands,
negotiated with shopkeepers, attended the same entertainments as adults.
During the war years, children increasingly worked alongside adults in a
variety of paid jobs, in some cases working as substitutes for men. And, as
this chapter has also noted, some adults thought it appropriate to engage
children directly with social movements, with politics. Children took part
in celebrations, but also in political protests, including marches. They
were there listening when women preached socialism at street corners.
The fact that people called children (under 18s) were fully engaged with
the lives lived by adults may be seen as a marker of children’s status; that
is, children were not a species apart, corralled into children’s spaces, in
preparation for adult life. Children were active in the socio-economic
activity of their neighbourhoods, and some children were directly engaged
in socialist and political movements of the day.
154 5 WOMEN AND CHILDREN AND THE GREAT WAR YEARS
Notes
1. Connelly 2013, chapter 2. See also Liddington 2006, chapter 1. Liddington
reproduces the WSPU membership card designed by Sylvia Pankhurst
(1906) which features working class women in shawls and aprons, holding
babies and, in one case a pail and a baby (p. 28).
2. Winslow 1996, p. 95.
3. See Jackson and Taylor 2014, Connelly 2013 and Winslow 1996. The
Dreadnought journal was originally called the Woman’s Dreadnought, but
as the ELFS’ work developed during the war, and included mobilising
men, the ELFS renamed it The Workers’ Dreadnought.
4. Jackson and Taylor 2014, pp. 111–114.
5. Jackson and Taylor 2014, p. 113.
6. Roberts, R. 1977, p. 194.
7. Braybon 1981, pp. 46–47. Women working as domestic servants and in
small dressmaking establishments were excluded from the figures, so some
of the increase in women at work is accounted for by women moving from
these kinds of work into industry—generally better-paid and offering more
freedom.
8. Braybon 1981, pp. 44–49.
9. Married Women’s Work, edited by Clementina Black, gives a comprehen-
sive account of the work married women did and the rates of pay, which,
as she says, were not enough to live on (Black 1983, p. 8).
10. Jackson and Taylor 2014, chapter 7. For discussion of men’s trade unions
in relation to women’s wages, see Alexander 1995.
11. Flint 1963, chapter 10.
12. Flint 1963, p. 111.
13. See Kennedy 2014, chapter 2.
14. May Bowness typed interview, page 3.
15. Pember Reeves 1988, p. 39.
16. Jackson and Taylor 2014, p. 75.
17. Jackson and Taylor 2014, p. 76.
18. Vicinus 1994, p. 232 seq.
19. Vicinus 1994, p. 350, note 104.
20. Vicinus 1994, p. 245.
21. Connelly2013, especially chapter 4.
22. Rowbotham 1996; Introduction to Winslow.
23. At the time, men had the vote only if they were registered at one place for
a year; and men on poor relief were also not eligible. Thus in Bow only 13
per cent of men were registered to vote; and in Poplar, near the docks,
about the same percentage (Winslow 1996, pp. 70–71).
NOTES 155
References
Adams, R. (1991). Protests by pupils: Empowerment, schooling and the state.
Brighton: Falmer Press.
Adie, K. (2014). Fighting on the home front: The legacy of women in World War
One. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Alexander, S. (1995). ‘Bringing women into line with men’: The Women’s Trade
Union League 1874–1921. In S. Alexander (Ed.), Becoming a woman.
New York: New York University Press.
Ashton, A. (1996). Fifty years’ work in a Suffolk Parish. Suffolk: Sole Bay Printing.
Bennett, H. J. (1980). I was a Walworth boy. London: The Peckham Publishing
Project.
Black, C. (Ed.). (1983). Married women’s work. London: Virago. First published
1915.
Braybon, G. (1981). Women workers in the First World War. London: Croom
Helm.
Connelly, K. (2013). Sylvia Pankhurst: Suffragette, socialist and scourge of empire.
London: Pluto Press.
Cookson, C. (1977). Our Kate: An autobiography. London: Corgi Books.
Davies, M. L. (1984). Life as we have known it: By co-operative working women.
London: Virago. First published 1931.
Evans, G. E. (1976). From mouths of men. London: Faber and Faber.
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London: Faber and Faber.
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Vicinus, M. (1994). Independent women: Work and community for single women
1850–1920. London: Virago.
White, J. (2015). Zeppelin nights: London in the First World War. London: Vintage.
Winslow, B. (1996). Sylvia Pankhurst: Sexual politics and political activism.
London: Routledge.
CHAPTER SIX
during the Great War.2 In 1919, she and Barbara Ayton Gould, a
peace campaigner for WILPF, were arrested and charged while cam-
paigning in Trafalgar Square for an end to the suffering of children.3
Later that year, she travelled to Vienna with other humanitarian
women (notably Dr Ethel Williams),4 where they saw starving chil-
dren unable to walk. They fought to end the allied blockade which
in part caused the starvation. In 1919 Eglantyne and Dorothy
founded Save the Children, which soon received large numbers of
donations and was quickly established in several countries. In 1923
Eglantyne wrote one of the first declarations of the rights of the child
(ratified in 1924), known as the Declaration of Geneva.
Eglantyne recognised that children in Africa and Asia were even
more neglected and deprived than those in Europe and she started a
campaign to address these problems. She died prematurely in 1928.
Dorothy continued to fight for women and children through the
1930s, publicising information about concentration camps in
Germany, and keeping contact with underground groups in Germany
during the Second World War.5
If the present generation can attend to the physical condition of their chil-
dren, enlarge their occupations, widen their sympathies, increase their intel-
lectual freedom and encourage them to use their gifts in mutual service, it
will have done the best thing it can do to ensure the peace, the prosperity
and the independence of our country.9
Votes for Women
In the last year of the Great War and in its immediate aftermath, two inter-
locking advances were made. Women (some of them) were at last granted
the vote, and children’s interests were recognised—as objects of welfare
work in 1919, and internationally as holders of rights in 1924. Women
fought for both causes, based on socialist visions of a better society, fairer
for all. They thereby improved the social and political status of both
women and children.
The fact that women did valued paid work during the Great War probably
helped to change (some) male views. This included work in agriculture, in
offices and factories—especially munitions work, in medicine, nursing, polic-
ing, in transport. In her 2015 book describing and celebrating women’s
work, Kate Adie has no doubt that the effort women put in paid off, in terms
of the vote. She argues that their contributions to the war effort proved their
case—and she notes that during debate in parliament, MPs supported this
166 6 AFTER THE GREAT WAR
view.25 Millicent Garrett Fawcett, born in 1847, who had worked for wom-
en’s interests all her life, gave a more nuanced view. On the one hand, she
noted:
But she also noted that the vote was granted partly because the war
brought problems requiring solutions, in relation to the local government
electoral register. A man had to be registered on the register as having a
residence. But many men did not qualify, since they had been away fight-
ing or they had insecure tenancies. Yet it was obvious that if they were
required to fight for their country they must have a vote. And women too
had been working for victory. Surely they too should have a vote?
In 1917 Millicent Fawcett (aged 70) led a deputation of women work-
ing for suffrage organisations to the House of Commons. Asquith had
been replaced as Prime Minister by Lloyd George, who was more
favourable to women’s suffrage.27 The 1918 Act (February 1918) gave the
vote to women over the age of 30 who were householders (or jointly with
their husband). At the celebration meeting held by the NUWSS, the over-
ture to Beethoven’s Fidelio was played (celebrating freedom and women
as saviours of husbands!) and they sang Jerusalem, Blake’s poem set to
music by Parry, who gave them permission for this. The song became a
symbol of women’s fight and was later taken up by the Women’s Institutes
organisation as their theme song.
This gain in women’s rights offered the hope that women might be
more influential in working for a fairer society, by addressing issues of both
gender and generation, notably women’s economic independence, and
the health and advancement of children. How this hope worked out in
practice during the interwar years is another story.
offering sympathetic, caring help to the poorest people. In 1919 she went
to Vienna and reported on the condition of the children, starving under
the Allied blockade.
Almost all the children under two … were rickety. In the poorer parts of
Vienna I saw no children of two and three walking the streets at all: those I
saw were being carried by their mothers, miserable little morsels of human-
ity. The [older] children one saw … were white-faced, anaemic, with sunken,
discoloured eyes, and nothing but skin and bone … little children unable to
stand or walk, sitting with crooked backs and twisted limbs like little sad-
faced chimpanzees … The picture of that Out Patient Department is burnt
into my mind … There was no playing, no laughing, no child running
about. Life for them had become a thing to be endured.28
These noble sentiments provide one sort of explanation for the popu-
larity of the SCF movement, but they also lead into consideration of
Eglantyne Jebb’s subsequent work on children’s rights. This has intrinsic
importance internationally, and is important here also because features of
it resonate with much of the story told in this book.
The Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child 1924
1. The child should be given the means requisite for its normal devel-
opment, both materially and spiritually.
2. The child that is hungry should be fed; the child that is sick should
be nursed; the child that is backward should be helped; and the
CHILDREN’S WELFARE AND CHILDREN’S RIGHTS 169
delinquent child should be reclaimed; and the orphan and the waif
should be sheltered and succoured.
3. The child should be the first to receive relief in times of distress.
4. The child should be put in a position to earn a livelihood and should
be protected against every form of exploitation.
5. The child should be brought up in the consciousness that its talents
are to be used in the service of its fellow men.
This Declaration of the Rights of the Child, written by Jebb, was later
printed in a paper she wrote about the work of SCF, published in the
Contemporary Review (August 1925). So it would seem that she saw no
incompatibility in conceptualising child protection as a constituency of
rights. For the Declaration, as has rightly been said, is concerned not so
much with the rights of a person as subject, rather more with child protec-
tion and with the enabling environment for the child’s healthy develop-
ment.35 So its emphasis is on adult duty to protect and foster children. Yet
the fourth article focuses on children as persons taking their place in the
working world; and the fifth article emphasises children’s duty to be active
in the service of their fellow men. Similarly, the 1959 Declaration of the
Rights of the Child, which is rather generally (and expansively) worded
and does not make clear who is to do the work of implementing it, empha-
sises child protection, but in the last article (Article 10), the same point
about service is given:
Article10. The child shall be protected from practices which may foster
racial, religious and any other form of discrimination. He shall be brought
up in a spirit of understanding, tolerance, friendship among peoples, peace
and universal brotherhood, and in full consciousness that his energy and
talents should be devoted to the service of his fellow men.36
Duty
Through all my years since I was a little girl the word duty has haunted me.
Our early training seems to have revolved around a key word—duty.41
This statement was made by Mona Chalmers-Watson, who was one of the
second generation of women to train as doctors (she was one of the doctors
who ran a hospital for wounded soldiers in London during the Great War).
It seems that she, like other well-to-do women, felt a strong requirement to
serve and not least a duty to build on their mothers’ hard-won achievements.
I think we have to look to the history of the women’s movement and to that
of the society they were working in, for and against, to find an explanation of
Jebb’s inclusion of duty in her Declaration of 1924. That is, that the concept
of duty, incumbent on both adults and children, is a key theme, at least over
the preceding half-century, and operating across social class. Once married,
women, as subordinates in marriage, were duty-bound to obey their hus-
band, as the letters on maternity, sent in to the WCG, indicate.42 Unmarried
daughters were taught of their bounden duty to serve their family and were
denied a life of their own. But, as one rebellious daughter wrote:
She has paths of her own she longs to walk in, and purposes of her own she
is eager to carry out. She is an independent being, created by God for the
development of her own talents and for the use of her own time.43
demand that she return to England to run their household.44 This echoes
the story of George Eliot (1819–1880), who, as the daughter of the family
had to postpone her own career in order to nurse her dying father until his
death freed her for a life of journalism in London.45 She was heard to speak
on duty: ‘taking as her text the three words which have been used so often
as the inspiring trumpet calls of men—the words God, Immortality,
Duty—she pronounced with terrible earnestness, how inconceivable was
the first, how unbelievable the second and yet how peremptory and abso-
lute the third.’46 Similarly, the history of women who fought over many
years for women’s higher education, is infused with their reliance on duty
as their guiding spirit, through many dispiriting years of battles.47
The notion of duty was a general one in social discourse. Pease, quoted
above (p. 163), readily appealed to children to engage in ‘mutual service’.
And we learn from the memoirs that working class children were linked
into the social order through their duties towards their parents; and these
duties were reciprocated—they were intergenerational. Children at school
were taught of their duties to family and society. Children’s Playing
Centres, started by Mrs. Humphrey Ward in 1904, were described in
1911 as ‘fostering love of duty, discipline, self-control, appreciation of
beauty’.48 We also learn, from sad examples, that adults’ duties of care up
the generations sometimes had to give way in the face of dire poverty.
When people became too old to work, their adult children sometimes
abandoned them to the Poor Law and the workhouse.49
In composing the five articles of the 1924 declaration, Jebb drew on
current assumptions about the individual’s relations to others in society,
on the notion of duty. People, including children, were urged to act on
the basis of their duties and responsibilities to those closest to them, but
also towards the improvement of society. This idea was later promoted in
the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR):
Everyone has duties to the community, in which alone the free and full
development of his personality is possible. [UDHR 1948: Article 29 (1)]
teacher–child relationship but the subjects. They were to make their own
way, through hard work.
the doors on formal education in school closed early on, had perhaps
enough of the rudiments—literacy and numeracy—that enabled them to
go on to gain further education in craftwork, in mills and factories, the
trenches, informal groups, girls’ clubs, evening classes, trade unions and
women’s groups such as the Women’s Co-operative Guild. And the
growth of written literature, readily available, made such learning easier to
come by. Socialism was in the air, as, for instance, described by Kathleen
Woodward in her fictionalised memoir, where her protagonist joins a back
street socialist agitators group, and campaigns for better conditions of
work for women.54
Thus I think we can begin to think that children who went through
elementary school by 1920, as compared to those who presented them-
selves to schools in 1870, presented a different face to adults. Though
literacy had been widespread before 1870, the very poorest had been left
out; now all children attending elementary school had opportunities for
literacy.55 Literacy, however, hard won, was a blessing; it allowed children
and the adults they became access to the knowledge and thinking of the
society. They were now not so much the submerged mass of poor, they
were more solidly part of the mainstream population, in touch with social
movements. This leads on to another point: that children presented a
different face to adults in another set of ways. Though extreme poverty,
ill-health and poor nutrition continued to be endemic, some education,
health and welfare measures had been set in place, which allowed onlook-
ers to think in terms of working-class children, not as burden on capitalist
society, but as an acceptable new generation. For thinking at the time
undoubtedly embraced the idea of the next generation as the only source
of prosperity for the future; and the children of the poor now began to
take their place within that new generation. Indeed, the changes in the
ways in which educationalists talked about the purposes of education
over the years, suggest a change in their assumptions about the children
of the poor. Some of them were intelligent, it seemed, even intellectual.
Perhaps all could benefit from education through the years to 18. If not
suited to high-grade intellectual pursuits, they could be trained for tech-
nological, secretarial, craftsman’s work. All could be trained in good
citizenship.
I am arguing in this book that the work of women, various in charac-
ter and aim, was instrumental in helping change views about children
and childhood. Some of this was accomplished by promoting changes in
practices, so that children presented a new face—cleaner, brighter—to
CHILDREN AS A NEW GENERATION 175
their betters. Some pioneers, such as Mrs Humphrey Ward were conser-
vative rather than socialist; she focused on helping children have happier
childhoods and in so doing pointed to commonalities among children,
for she showed that working-class children could enjoy songs, dances
and stories just as children of the wealthy did. Some of the work focussed
directly on changing ideas about childhood, for instance in emphasising
children’s rights. And a central point is that socialist women who argued
for the vote also fought for a socialist society, more or less radically con-
ceived, but one in which the interests of all social groups, all ages of
people, had a right to be enabled to live a better life. And, as I noted in
Chapter Two, the maternalism thesis allowed and encouraged women to
speak up for children. Women could indeed draw on many current
strands in thinking: socialism, feminism, Labour Party visions, alongside
maternalism.
For example, (to take up again the pioneers who front my chapters),
Margaret McMillan, though well read in revolutionary socialism, chose
to go down a gradualist reform route, within the existing system; and in
particular, she saw children, the next generation, as agents of change.56
Maud Pember Reeves, as a member of the research group within the
Fabian Women’s Group, set out to examine causes of infant mortality.
Her study demonstrated the impossible task faced by women trying to
raise children on £1 a week. She argued for direct financial intervention
by the state to ensure that families were adequately provided for each
child. In the end, she argues, the state is responsible for child welfare.
This was a strong statement at the time (1913), as it is today. Mary
Bridges Adams challenged current assumptions—that education for the
poor should be a poor service—and instead proposed a complete over-
haul of education, with common schools for all, free at the point of use.
Sylvia Pankhurst combined many of the facets of women’s work during
the Great War; she provided hands-on services to women and children;
she fought for the rights of women and of men—to decent working
conditions and to the vote; she included children in her thinking and
practice: children were encouraged to participate in political activity.
Finally, the Jebb sisters worked at international levels to advance the
rights of children to protection and to lives of service to their fellow
men. Women’s work for their own advancement involved them in
rethinking the social order and that required them to rethink
childhood.
176 6 AFTER THE GREAT WAR
Children of the State?
In the light of the above points, and given our journey through this book,
with its chapters on memories of children’s experiences, I return to a
question discussed in Chapter Two: is it appropriate to think that chil-
dren in the early years of the twentieth century became thought of, in
some sense, as children of the state? I noted that contemporaries asserted
this and that modern historians have, too. I contributed to this debate by
arguing that elementary school children themselves probably thought of
themselves mainly as children of families, with serious duties to contrib-
ute to family economic welfare. And I observed that whilst commentators
both then and since may point to legislative reforms and thus to a chang-
ing role for the state in relation to children and to childhood, yet I think
we have to take account of other factors as well. It is these I return to
now.
Perhaps the first point is that the education system, though it allowed a
tiny minority to advance, was clearly inappropriate when viewed as a ser-
vice provided by the state for its children. It had been initiated partly in
response to the widening of the male franchise in the 1860s and partly
through the perceived desirability of schooling the poorest.57 Though the
curriculum broadened and funding levels increased in the years to 1920,
the basics of the system—large classes, testing and inspection—were anti-
pathetic to education as understood by theory-influenced educationalists
of the day. It was difficult to incorporate child-led learning as promoted by
Froebelians and other ‘progressive’ thinkers—though some progress was
made. The example of Jane Roadknight in Nottingham showed that, with
a very determined woman employed in a position of some authority, and
a sympathetic education authority, changes could be made to both kinder-
garten and infant school classes. But teacher–child relations were condi-
tioned by the large classes; and the barrier to secondary education, for all
but a few at age 11 led either to disenchantment with school or to frus-
trated ambition. Essentially, no government was likely to provide what
Mary Bridges Adams fought for: a service for all, free at the point of use,
and of a character and quality MPs would want for their own children.
This analysis draws on the experiences reported in the memoirs, which,
though they are not representative of the population, have considerable
force. These memoirs also report that, yes, there were major developments
in people’s access to education once they acquired literacy; and these were
provided by libraries, newspapers, comics, story-books, films and newsreels;
CHILDREN OF THE STATE? 177
They (women) are resolved, we may take it, that laws and customs which do
not recognise that their children are the children of the nation are behind
the times and must be altered. Because they are the children of the nation,
the nation owes them all the care that a mother owes her own children.59
The hard lives lived by her Lambeth families and the high rates of child
death among them resulted ultimately, she argues, from state failure to
178 6 AFTER THE GREAT WAR
mother and her as she began to move in a different world, the world of
learning. And as the movement to increase the school-leaving age contin-
ued, and as the curriculum widened, generational differences might also
impact on family relations.
Thirdly, women took part in socialist debates about the causes of child
poverty and poor health. Some of this work was through research, as exem-
plified by the programme of research initiated by the Fabian Women’s
Group, represented here by Pember Reeves’ study of infant mortality and
by Clementina Black’s study of married women’s work. Some women
(such as Jebb) who had previously espoused COS charity dispensed from
above, saw that gross economic inequalities caused and sustained poverty.
She and her sister devoted their lives to policy-making in the interests of
children and childhood. Socialism, whether fully collectivist or more grad-
ualist, provided their understandings of how children were to be enabled
to live good lives. In a socialist society, Bridges Adams proposed, a com-
mon education service would be provided for all, rather than being struc-
tured according to social class prejudices. Socialist women who worked in
the mills of Lancashire, understood that they had responsibility for crucial
work as educators of their own children; they could do this work well only
if they themselves gained acceptance as full members of society, as Selena
Cooper argued (p. 26).
Fourthly, and most fundamentally, women were important contribu-
tors to an emerging theme in discussions about children, that is, that chil-
dren should rightly be regarded as constituting a social group within society.
By that I mean, as outlined in the Introduction, that there are features of
childhood which are common across childhoods (notably, that intergen-
erational relations are crucial to child well-being); and that childhood is
impacted on in ways specific to it, by socio-economic forces. It is not (as
far as I know) that commentators of the time would have used the phrase
‘a social group’ but that is the concept they were employing. They argued
that children were affected in specific ways by poverty, starvation and poor
housing. Thus, Margaret McMillan argued that child development took
place in stages over time, and if opportunities for specific developments
were barred, the loss could not be made up. Eglantyne Jebb and her col-
leagues demonstrated the point when they described the starving children
in Vienna after the Great War; they could not walk, since their legs had not
developed the necessary strength. Physically, whilst their mothers could
withstand starvation, they could not. Within the education field, women
were at the forefront in arguing that young children learn in specific ways:
through exploration and through consideration of what they explore: and
that this understanding should be the basis for the education provided for
them in schools. Women were especially important in this area of knowl-
LAST PARAGRAPHS 185
edge, since they were deemed by men to be naturally alert to and sympa-
thetic to children’s development and thinking.
Fifthly, children, regarded as a social group, were increasingly under-
stood in women’s thinking, as having rights. In the thinking of the time,
pronouncements about rights were cast in terms of children’s entitlement
to protection and enablement. The 1908 Children Act had brought
together earlier legislation on this entitlement and steered a delicate route
through parental and state responsibility.70 There was also an emerging
understanding among educationalists that children had a right to school-
based education; this was emphasised, for instance, in the arguments pro-
posed in the TES on the negative impacts on children’s education of child
employment in factories and fields during the Great War and in Fisher’s
presentation of the 1917 education bill. Women were important in for-
warding this understanding. Thus the Save the Children campaign (started
by the Jebb sisters in 1919) found ready acceptance internationally; and it
was given further solidity by Jebb’s 1924 Declaration of Geneva. In the
education field, women were able to make advances theoretically in their
emphasis on how children learn; and to initiate a few examples of how
such theories could and should be put into practice. For it fell to women,
such as Katherine Bathurst, Beatrice Ensor and Jane Roadknight to
explain, in the light of current progressive thinking, how young children
learned, and thus how the state education system should be altered to take
account of this thinking.
And finally on this, there was, as discussed earlier in this chapter, debate
about children’s relations with the state; undoubtedly, children were com-
ing to be regarded not just as the property of parents, but as having a call
on the state’s resources. As the next generation, the only hope for the
future of the country, children as a social group were the most important
resource society had. Women’s campaigning and research work on the
lives lived by poor people, and women’s pressure groups urging govern-
ment to take action, made some progress in shifting government behav-
iour towards intervention in the interests of child health.
Last Paragraphs
In this book I have explored some of the existing literature on the wom-
en’s movement and on child education and welfare, to focus on a neglected
topic, which nevertheless leaps out of the pages when you read the
186 6 AFTER THE GREAT WAR
Notes
1. Mulley 2009, chapter 6.
2. Mulley 2009, chapter 8.
3. Mulley 2009, pp. 233–236.
4. Oldfield 2006.
5. Oldfield 2006, pp. 35–36.
6. For discussion, see Education Enquiry Committee, pp. 36–39.
7. Hendrick 2003, pp. 64–65.
8. Vicinus 1994, p. 245 and note 104 on p. 350.
9. Sherington 1981, p. 31.
10. See quotation from Morant’s Introduction to the Code of 1904–26, See
Chapter Four, section headed ‘Development of the state school system’.
11. Sherington 1981, p. 37.
12. The Geddes Committee was established to consider savings in national
expenditure, during the slump, following the Great War.
13. See Appendix B.
14. H. A. L. Fisher speech presenting his education bill in 1917. Quoted in
Van der Eyken 1973, pp. 219–232.
15. For a full discussion on how children continued to leave school at 12 or 13
until the passing of the 1944 Education Act, see Morrow 1992.
16. Committee on National Expenditure 1922, quoted in Van der Eyken
1973, pp. 276–286.
17. For discussion see Richmond 1945, chapter 6.
18. Both quotations are from a newspaper article dated 14 February 1918. See
Van der Eyken 1973, pp. 251–255.
19. Tawney in Van der Eyken 1973, pp. 264–268. Excerpt from Secondary
Education for All, by Tawney (1922). For extensive discussion of Cyril
Burt’s work on intelligence, see Hearnshaw 1979.
20. For instance, Tawney 1936.
188 6 AFTER THE GREAT WAR
21. For discussion see Selleck 1968 and 1972; also Aldrich 2009.
22. Aldrich 2009.
23. Boyd and Rawson 1965, chapter 4.
24. Richmond 1945, chapter 6.
25. Connelly also says that women’s war work was rewarded by the vote, as
part of the effort to defuse industrial action (2013, p. 98). Unfortunately,
Kate Adie does not distinguish between women’s and girls’ work.
26. Crawford 2002, pp. 262–263.
27. Crawford 2002, pp. 262–263.
28. Oldfield 2006, pp. 276–277.
29. Steedman 1990, especially chapter 10.
30. Roberts, S. 2009.
31. Tomlinson 1947, pp. 18–21.
32. Richardson 1948.
33. Alden 1925.
34. Alden 1925.
35. For instance, Milne 2015.
36. The 1924 and 1959 Declarations, along with the 1989 UN Convention
on the Rights of the Child are helpfully printed in Milne 2015.
37. Liebel 2012.
38. Korczak (1878–1942): his statement of child rights is quoted in a leaflet on
an exhibition of his work, provided by the Museum of Warsaw (undated).
39. Liebel 2012, p. 29.
40. Liebel 2012, chapter 2.
41. Crawford 2002, p. 41.
42. For instance, letter 8 on page 27 of Maternity gives a precise account of
what many of the women correspondents hint at or assume (edited by
M. Llewelyn Davies 1984).
43. Pearsall-Smith 1951 [1894].
44. Brittain’s account of nursing wounded soldiers in France is given in her
chapter 4.
45. Uglow 2014, especially chapter 3.
46. Sutherland 2006, p. 4.
47. Sutherland 2006, p. 4.
48. The School Child, April 2011, offers this account of Children’s Playing
Centres. By then there were 170 of them with average attendance of 200
children, at evening and Saturday morning sessions, offering handicrafts,
exercise and story-telling.
49. An example of this poverty-driven refusal to help aged parents is given by
Foakes, chapter 39.
50. Freeman 2009, p. 382.
51. African Charter 1990: Article 21 (2). See Freeman 2009, p. 383.
REFERENCES 189
References
Alden, M. (1925, December). Geneva and the world’s children. Contemporary
Review.
Aldrich, R. (2009). The New Education Fellowship and the Institute of Education
1919–1945. Paedagogica Historica, 45(4–5), 485–502.
Boyd, W. & Rawson, W. (1965). The story of the new education. London:
Heinemann.
Connelly, K. (2013). Sylvia Pankhurst: Suffragette, socialist and scourge of empire.
London: Pluto Press.
Crawford, E. (2002). Enterprising women: The Garretts and their circle. London:
Francis Boutle Publishers.
190 6 AFTER THE GREAT WAR
Qvortrup, J. (1985). Placing children in the division of labour. In P. Close &
R. Collins (Eds.), Family and economy in modern society. London: Macmillan.
Richardson, M. (1948). Art and the child. London: University of London Press.
Richmond, W. K. (1945). Education in England. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Roberts, S. (2009). Exhibiting children at risk: Child art, international exhibitions
and Save the Children Fund in Vienna 1919–23. Paedagogica Historica,
45(1–2), 171–190.
Rowbotham, S. (2011). Dreamers of a new day: Women who invented the twentieth
century. London: Verso.
Selleck, R. J. W. (1968). The new education 1870–1914. London: Sir Isaac Pitman
and Sons Ltd.
Selleck, R. J. W. (1972). English primary education and the progressives 1914–39.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Sherington, G. (1981). English education, social change and the war 1911–20.
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Steedman, C. (1990). Childhood, culture and class in Britain: Margaret McMillan
1860–1931. London: Virago.
Sutherland, G. (2006). Faith, duty and the power of mind: The Cloughs and their
circle 1820–1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tawney, R. H. (1922). Secondary education for all: A policy for Labour. London:
The Labour Party.
Tawney, R. H. (1936). The school age and exemptions. London: Workers Education
Association.
Taylor, R. (1993). In letters of gold: The story of Sylvia Pankhurst and the East
London federation of suffragettes. London: Stepney Books.
Tomlinson, R. R. (1947). Children as artists. London: King Penguin Books.
Uglow, J. (2014). George Eliot. London: Virago.
Van der Eyken, W. (Ed.). (1973). Education, the child and society: A documentary
history 1900–1973. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Vicinus, M. (1994). Independent women: Work and community for single women
1850–1920. London: Virago.
Woodward, K. (1982). Jipping Street. London: Virago.
Zelizer, V. (2005). The priceless child revisited. In J. Qvortrup (Ed.), Studies in
modern childhood: Society, agency, culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Appendix A
Here I give some details about the sources of information used in the
book.
Autobiographies
These fourteen accounts are given in published books. All the children
were born in the early twentieth century and went to elementary school
before 1920. Some went on to secondary school.
Cliff worked part-time on farms before and after school from age of
nine, through his elementary school years; also during the holidays. To
work on farm full-time in 1914. 22-page account.
Thomas Morgan. Born 1892 Southwark. Thomas youngest of 13 chil-
dren, several of whom died in infancy. Very poor family. Father violent
drunkard. Mother went out ‘charring’. Thomas was a ‘street arab’,
making money through casual jobs. Crippled in accident and had sev-
eral operations on his leg. Attendance at cripple school paid for by well-
wisher, where trained as a carpenter. 22-page account.
Annie Wilson. Born 1898 Nottingham. Ninth child of 12 of whom
four died in childhood. Parents illiterate. Father lost job, mother
worked in lace industry. Annie gained a free place at a senior school,
became a great reader; encountered class snobbery. She left at 13 for
job as errand girl, later worked as clerk. 33-page account.
Ambleside Interviews
This is a collection of interviews carried out in the 1970s and 1980s with
people living in and around Ambleside in the Lake District. They were
asked to talk about their childhoods in the area in the early twentieth
century, and it seems that the interviewers had a checklist of topics they
198 APPENDIX A
Logbooks
School logbooks, kept by the headteacher, are useful in providing infor-
mation about the academic and social life of the school: academic success,
visitors to the school (including inspectors, school nurses and doctors),
special events at the school, contacts with parents, attendance rates, infor-
mation about illness epidemics, reasons for closure of the school (illness,
weather, heating), innovations in the curriculum, school trips, h
eadteacher’s
preoccupations. Very few of those I consulted mentioned children’s war
work.
In order to help with making some comparisons between rural and
urban areas and school experiences, I chose, for convenience, two areas:
200 APPENDIX A
North-East Suffolk:
Cunningham Girls’ School, Lowestoft, 1912–27 (ref. no. 65/3.6.3)
Fritton Voluntary School, 1903–61 (ref. no. 434/2)
Halesworth School, Halesworth, 1905–22 (ref. no. 463/2)
Uggeshall and Sotherton School, Near Wangford, 1897–1924 (ref. no.
465/2)
Wissett School, Wissett, near Halesworth, 1904–31 (ref. no. 467/2)
Wrentham Modern School, 1913–42 (ref. no. 450/1)
Yarmouth Road School, Lowestoft, 1913–28 (ref. no. 65/3/22/4)
London:
Atley Road, Old Ford Road, E 3 (ref. no. EO/DIV5/ATL/LB/7)
Berkshire Road, Hackney, E 9 (ref. no. EO/DIV4/BER/LB/3)
High St., Stoke Newington, N 16 (ref. no. EO/DIV4/HIG/LB.3)
Hitherfield Road, Streatham, SW 16 (ref. no. EO/DIV9/HIT/LB/3)
Mantua, Road Battersea (boys), SW 11 (ref. no. EO/DIV9/MAN/
LB/4)
Mantua Road, Battersea (girls), SW 11 (ref. no. EO/DIV9/MAN/
LB/10)
North End Road, SW 6 (ref. no. LCC/EO/DIV1/NER/LB.3)
Oban St, Bromley-by-Bow, E 14 (ref. no. EO/DIV5/OBA/LB/2)
St Dunstan’s, Nr Fulham Road, W 6 (ref. no. LCC/EO/DIV1/CAP/
LB/1)
Timbercraft, Plumstead, SE 18 (ref. no. EO/DIV6/TIM/LB/5
Some logbooks are held in local history collections. In the Camden
Local Studies and Archives Centre, I was able to consult the following
logbooks:
Journals
201
Christ Church School, Regent’s Park Road, NW1 (ref. no. A/01163)
St Paul’s Parochial School, Elsworthy Road, NW3—girls department
(ref. no. A/01081/3/3)
St Paul’s Parochial School, Elsworthy Road, NW3—boys department
(ref. no. A/01081/3/2)
Journals
The main journals consulted were the Times Education Supplement for the
war years; and The School Child, studied from its inception in 1910 through
the war years. This latter was a journal for people involved in welfare work
for school children, including Care Committee members and Poor Law
Guardians; it focused mainly on the London scene.
Appendix B: Legislation and Other Board
of Education Documents Relating
to Children 1870–1918
I list here the principal acts of parliament from the 1870s through to 1918
that relate to the lives of English children and their status within society;
also other Board of Education documents that affected children.
I draw this information mainly from works by a number of scholars who
cover this topic. I give references here to the main contributions on each
topic.
1870 Education Act (Forster Act) This required parents to ensure that
their children received education, whether at home or in schools; but it
was up to local school boards whether to enforce attendance. The Act was
aimed especially at the poorest parents, including those who were paying
less than 9d. per week for schooling, or whose children were not in school
(some were in paid work). The age-range under consideration was children
aged 3–13, but for many reasons some of these did not have to be catered
for.1 The main focus was on children aged 5–10 years. In the first years,
parents had to pay for their children to attend school (1d. or 2d. per week,
per child).2
Before 1870, schools were mainly organised and financed by the
churches (Church of England, Roman Catholic and dissenters). The 1870
Act built on the existing system of denominational schools and filled in the
gaps in provision with schools paid for by block grants and through the
local rates.3 School boards were established in each area to oversee these
new elementary schools. It was up to the school board to decide whether
to include as part of the curriculum (non-denominational) religious
instruction, and if so, it should be at the beginning and/or end of the day.
In practice they opted for religious instruction and generally sited it at the
beginning of the day.4
The curriculum was devised in 1871 by T. H. Huxley and his commit-
tee. It included Christianity teaching, the 3 Rs, history (of England),
Geography, Social Economy, Drawing (boys), Music and Drill, Needlework
and cutting out (girls).5
The 1876 Act (Sandon) imposed a duty on parents to ensure elementary
school attendance, and required school boards to establish school atten-
dance officers to enforce this.6
The new system had no upper age limit, but this was formalised in the
1876 Act, which prohibited the employment of children during school
hours, if they were under the age of 10.7 The system had no lower age-
limit, so some parents sent two- and three-year-olds to school and gradu-
ally nursery classes were established for them. Age 5 became the age of
compulsory attendance. For children aged 5–7, the schools provided
infant classes, and children aged 7 and upwards proceeded through seven
Standards; these prescribed levels of learning and knowledge, which were
tested annually.8 In many schools, girls and boys were schooled separately
from age 7.
1880 Education Act (Mundella Act) This tightened the prescriptive
character of legislation; it said that parents had a duty to ensure their chil-
dren attended school; and school boards were to introduce bye-laws set-
ting out detailed requirements. School attendance officers for each school
attempted to ensure attendance.9 This Act also allowed children of 13
exemption from attendance if they had a record of a sufficient number of
attendances.10
APPENDIX B: LEGISLATION AND OTHER BOARD OF EDUCATION…
205
The 1891 Education Act abolished fees for school attendance.11 Under
the 1880 Act, children in their last year of schooling—at age 13—could be
exempted from attendance at school, if they were engaged in ‘beneficial
employment’. The interpretation of this phrase varied across LEAs, but
the clause remained in force until the 1944 Education Act.12
The school leaving age was progressively raised over the years. The
Education Act 1893 raised the compulsory age for attendance to 11; an
Amendment Act in 1899 raised it to 12. The Elementary Education Act
1900 gave permissive powers to school boards to raise the age to 14.13
1902 Education Act (Balfour Act) This is widely seen as a turning point,
on three main counts.14
In the first years of the twentieth century, public concern about the
health of the population led to the formation of an inter-departmental
committee to investigate. They examined the evidence for a deterioration
of the physique of the poorest in society over generations and concluded
there was no evidence for this. Rather, poor health was due to current sur-
rounding factors and so could be tackled by social measures. The Physical
Deterioration Report (1904) recommended that medical officers of health
be appointed in all local authority areas and that data should be routinely
collected on health and sickness; local authorities should tackle over-
crowded dwelling conditions; personal hygiene among poor people should
be improved via the training of mothers and older girls; meals for poor
children at school, and medical inspections should be provided. In all,
Harris argues, the recommendations amount to suggestions for a public
health service.25
1906 Education (Provision of Meals) Act empowered local authorities to
feed children ‘unable by reason of lack of food to take full advantage of the
education provided for them.’ If voluntary funds were insufficient, the
local authority could use the rates to finance the meals up to one half-
penny, if the Board of Education approved. In 1914 a further Act removed
the half penny limitation and approval by the Board of Education and
legalised the provision of meals during school holidays.26
1907 Education (Administrative Provisions) Act required LEAs to pro-
vide medical inspections in school.27 In response some leas also opened
clinics to treat the children—Bradford 1908, London 1908. By 1914
most leas provided some treatment centres.28
1908 Children Act. This act aimed to bring together previous measures
to protect children from cruelty and neglect. It allowed a local authority
to prosecute parents for failing to give their children adequate food, cloth-
ing, medical attention or accommodation. Poverty was no excuse, for par-
ents who could not provide, must apply to the poor law guardians for
help, or face prosecution. It has been argued that this new power increased
the instances in which the poorest parents were brought into conflict with
the state, since they now faced: school teachers, school attendance officers,
care committee members, school nurses and doctors.29 The 1918
Education Act also required the school health service to provide treatment
to secondary as well as to elementary school children—and this could be
through local medical services or their own staff; this was to placate the
British Medical Association (BMA) which foresaw that local medical ser-
vices (GPs) might lose trade if the LEAs provided treatment.30
208 APPENDIX B: LEGISLATION AND OTHER BOARD OF EDUCATION…
Notes
1. Maclure (1970: 22–24) details the calculations made for London in 1869.
Some parents did not want places for their under-fives. Children over the
age of 10 were allowed to be in paid work, half-time or full-time. Some
children were physically disabled or ill.
2. Cruikshank, chapter 2; Hurt, chapter 3.
3. Sharp 2002.
4. Cruikshank, chapters 2 and 3.
5. Maclure 1970, p. 39.
6. Maclure 1970, p. 32.
7. Lowndes 1960, p. 3.
8. Lowndes 1960, chapter 7; Gordon 2002.
9. Maclure 1970, p. 32.
10. Curtis 1967, pp. 282–283.
11. Hurt 1979, p. 161.
12. Tawney 1936.
13. Lowndes 1960, p. 61.
14. Lowndes 1960, p. 48; Cruikshank, chapter 4.
15. Cruikshank 1963, chapter 4; Lowndes 1960, p. 122.
16. Lowndes 1960, p. 45; Maclure 1970, pp. 49–51.
17. Maclure 1986, pp. 154–155.
18. Maclure 1986, pp. 190–191.
19. Maclure 1986, p. 162.
20. Maclure 1970, p. 118; Education Enquiry Committee, chapter 2.
21. Tawney 1936.
22. Lowndes 1960, p. 36.
23. Lowndes 1960, p. 61. For Mary Dendy’s work on feeble-minded children,
see Martin and Goodman 2004: chapter 5.
24. Rees 2009.
25. Harris 1995: 14–25 gives full consideration to the work of the Committee
and its report.
26. Hurt 1979, chapter 6.
27. Harris 1995, chapters 3 and 4.
28. Williams et al. 2001; Hendrick 2003: chapter 2; Cunningham 1991,
p. 208.
29. For discussion, see Harris 1995, p. 81.
30. Harris 1995, p. 81.
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Index1
A B
Agriculture Bathurst, K., 38, 52n59, 53n64, 185
demand for child labour, 137 Bennett, H. J., 122n42, 122n44,
in the Great War years, 178 122n45, 124n83, 131, 155n51,
rates of pay, 64, 65, 179 193
Akenfield Besant, A., 29, 80
and craftsmen on schooling, 94 Black, C.
Thompson, L., 64–66, 76, 84n26, Married Women’s Work, 51n13, 77,
94, 95 84n28, 157n86
Ambleside interviews and match girls’ strike, 29
Barrow, D., 121n15, 198 and Maternity, 25
Bowness, A., 123n72, 198 and Women’s Industrial Council,
Bowness, M., 132, 154n14, 198 80
Buntin, M., 68, 85n34, 198 Bold, E., 120, 196
Creighton, A., 114, 123n73, Bonwick, T., 108
198 Boy soldiers, 139
Ellis, J., 68, 99, 100, 198 Bridges Adams, Mary, 11, 89, 137,
Hall, G., 67, 149, 198 175, 176, 184
Hodgson, J., 123n72, 198 Burnett, J. (Destiny Obscure)
McEwen (Mrs), 96, 198 Andrews, B., 106, 196
Andrews, B., 196 Bold, E., 77, 85n61, 97, 120, 196
Autobiographies, see Data Brady, J., 77, 85n65, 85n66, 196
Education out of school (cont.) and higher education for girls, 183
libraries, 78, 176 National Union of Women’s
Socialist Sunday schools(SSS), 8, 10, Suffrage Societies(NUWSS),
39–41, 134, 183 20n11, 166
trades unions, 177 Federation of British Industries (FBI)
Women’s Co-operative during Great War, 164
Guild(WCG), 32, 80, 135, and Tawney critiques, 164
152, 170, 174, 183 Feminism
Education service from 1870 (state) and economic independence, 5, 45,
curriculum, 12, 93, 204 80, 81, 166
health of the children, 153, 206, and socialism, 107, 175, 182
207 Flint, E., 105–108, 194
provision for ill and defective Foakes, G., 53n79, 71, 72, 74, 77,
children, 186, 206 85n46, 85n47, 85n54, 108, 114,
school boards and women’s 122n42, 123n53, 123n74,
participation, 25, 203–206 123n75, 188n49, 194
welfare service developments, 3, Foley, C., 26
206, 207 Food, 59, 68, 70, 71
women’s work for children, 5, France, 19, 35, 131, 136, 139, 188n44
30–41, 49, 206 provision of nursery education, 35
Eliot, George, 24, 171 Froebel
Ensor, Beatrice, 14, 42, 185 Froebel Institute, 38
and New Education and nursery schools (see child-
Fellowship(NEF), 42 centred education)
Evans, G. E., 118, 122n24, 124n93,
147, 156n71, 156n74, 156n75,
156n76, 157n77, 157n78 G
Ezard, E., 103, 122n43, 131, 155n52, Garrett Anderson, E., 24
172, 194 Garrett Anderson, L., 25
Geddes, Axe, 164
Gentry, 146–148
F Germany
Fabian Women’s Group(FWG), 80, 93 education service, 28
aims, 93 industrial rivalry, 28
research programme, 10, 29, 43, Gilman, C. P., 5, 10, 19n1, 26, 43–47,
58, 184 54n96, 54n97, 54n98, 54n99,
Family allowances 54n100, 54n101, 80, 85n71,
and Eleanor Rathbone, 46, 178 179, 183
and Pember Reeves, 177 Concerning Children, 54n100
Fathers Herland, 46, 47
Status in family, 76 visits to England, 26, 45
Fawcett, Millicent Garrett, 166 Women and Economics, 45
INDEX
225
I L
Independent Labour Party (ILP), 23, Labour Party, 26, 30, 31, 35, 152,
29 164
Industrial action, 29, 130 Lawrence, D. H., 63, 84n18, 111,
formation of trades unions, 25 112, 123n62
re education, 35, 163 on living conditions, 63
strikes, 151 on teaching, 111
women’s unions, 25, 131 Lee, L., 14, 15, 20n29, 20n30,
Inspectors’ work in schools, 93 84n32, 106, 123n50, 194
Institute of Education, 168 Legislation re children, 203–207
226 INDEX
Poverty, relief of, 57, 61, 62, 64 poverty, 29, 66, 67, 69, 95
parish relief, 71 power of clergy, 119, 134
workhouse, 59, 101
S
R Save the Children (SCF), 11, 148,
Relations of ruling, 7, 181 162, 167–169, 185
children’s perspectives, 181 and Jebb sisters, 185
women’s perspectives, 181 Scannell, D., 16, 20n36, 20n37,
Richardson, M., 168, 188n32 72, 79, 85n48, 85n67, 85n68,
and children’s art exhibitions, 168 102, 118, 119, 122n35,
Riddleston, B., 194 122n36, 139, 155n45, 183,
Rights, children’s 189n69, 195
African Charter on the Rights and School histories, 199
Welfare of the Child 1990, 172, Schooling, state, 103, 146, 153
188n51 elementary, 31; children’s
Declaration of the Rights of the experiences of, 146
Child (Geneva Declaration) secondary; children’s experiences of,
1924, 11 153; odds against, 103
Declaration of the Rights of the Schools, elementary
Child 1959, 169 class sizes, 39, 117
UN Convention on the Rights of gendered curriculum, 108
the Child (UNCRC) 1989, 7, illnesses, 17, 146
171, 188n36 log books, 120
Universal Declaration of Human patriotism and empire, 5
Rights (UDHR) 1948, 171 physical conditions, 64, 163
Roadknight, J., 93, 176, 185 religion, 37, 41, 64, 67
Roberts, R., 194 rural and city, 100, 145
and local economy, 69, 77 teachers, 103, 110, 113, 142
and schooling, 98, 103 testing, 47, 109, 117, 120, 176
and women’s shopping methods, 77 Schools, secondary
Rolph, C. H., 59, 83n6, 84n10, 194 competition for places, 99
Rowse, A. L., 67, 68, 84n32, 141, number of places at, 103
150, 155n53, 195 teachers, 91, 92, 97, 102, 105, 109,
on social class distinctions, 69 110, 120, 140
Rural life Shelley, E., 195
agricultural work, 13, 134, 142, 148 Social class, 68, 72, 108
casual work for children, 2, 29, 59 Socialism
education services, development of, and the Labour Party, 107, 175
91 north-west England, 129
employment opportunities, 119 William, Morris, 44, 133
gentry and noblesse oblige, 118, and women’s movement, 23, 26,
119, 147, 148 29, 30, 39, 46, 185, 186
228 INDEX