Chapter 1.
'A superior class of parochial schoolmistress'
Whitelands College 1841-70

The foundation of Whitelands College in 1841 was part of the political strategy of the Church of England to retain its authority in the field of education. Anglicanism was not merely one feature, it was the very essence of the new college. 'The object of the Institution shall be to train Teachers for National and other Church of England Schools in which provision is made for the education of the Poor' [WC, 1850, 3]. This was how the National Society defined the mission of Whitelands College.

The National Society itself had been set up thirty years earlier dedicated to 'promoting the education of the Poor in the Principles of the Church of England'. Partly it was a reaction to the foundation of the British and Foreign Schools Society in 1808, a Dissenting organization with some broader non-denominational support, which had a similar mission to educate the labouring poor. But more than that, it was a response to the failures of the Church in this field. In the early eighteenth century the Anglican Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge had gone some way towards providing education for the lower orders through charity schools. Teaching working-class children the virtues of humility and submission to superiors, they had some limited impact in towns, but much less in the countryside where the bulk of the population lived. Their significance had faded to almost nothing by the late eighteenth century.[fn 1] In a period of rapid population growth, disruptive economic and social change and a recurrent crisis situation in which a dissident working class seemed, from the 1790s, to threaten political order and dominant property relations, education became an urgent political issue. The rapid growth of Sunday Schools from the mid-1780s was symptomatic of renewed commitment on the part of the churches, Anglican, Methodist and Dissenting, to the moral education and social discipline of the lower orders. The British and Foreign Schools Society and the National Society, with similarly explicit social and political agendas, set about expanding provision of day schools.

Their effects were limited. Only a minority of working-class children were being educated in any kind of schools by the 1830s. Various enquiries revealed that in major cities such as London, Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool anything between 30% and 60% of children were receiving no formal education. Illiteracy in some, especially industrial, areas was rising. Meanwhile practical evidence of working-class disaffection was obvious. During 1830-2 extensive riots across the rural districts of southern England ('Captain Swing') and a serious breakdown of social order in Bristol and Nottingham rattled the authorities. Only a major reform of parliament in 1832 averted the threat of civil war. In its aftermath popular education rose even higher up the political agenda.

In 1833, J.A.Roebuck, a radical MP, introduced in parliament a motion to establish a universal and compulsory education system under the control of a Ministry of Education. As he told the House:

At all times, but more especially at a period of excitement like the present, it was the duty of Government to watch narrowly and endeavour to direct the culture of the people. He wished to see the mass of the people accustomed to good habits, equally acquainted with their rights and duties, prepared to act as good men and citizens, and possessed of strength of mind and heart to follow the path of duty. These results he expected from education and from the interference of the Government to raise the mental and moral culture of the people. [fn 2]

There was considerable support for these new educational policies, especially among the urban middle classes and the Dissenters. But they provoked uproar from the Church of England and the powerful interests it represented. Their traditional authority in the field of education was being threatened. The House of Lords protested in an Address to the Queen. The influential Vicar of Leeds, Walter Farquhar Hook, presented figures to show that the Church was fulfilling its duties in educating the people, in contrast to other religious bodies. There were just over 47,000 pupils in dissenting day schools but more than 514,000 in elementary schools connected to the National Society. 'We may, then, fairly assert that we have the education of the people in our hands; and why should it be taken away from us?' [fn 3] A resolution at a large meeting of the National Society in May 1839, chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury, was similarly uncompromising, asserting the right of the Church of England to provide a national education system for the people.

Anglican opposition was reinforced by the protests of the Methodists, anxious that the Whig scheme might benefit Roman Catholics. An already weak government buckled under the onslaught. Plans for a non-denominational institution for the training of teachers were scrapped. Appointment of inspectors would be subject to the approval of the Bishops. State funding would continue to be siphoned through the voluntary bodies. The Committee of Council on Education and the annual parliamentary grant barely survived.

This political contest left a residue of bitterness on all sides. It drove the defeated Dissenters into wholesale opposition to state education per se. The battle was resumed in 1843 over Graham's Factory Education Scheme. This time the educational policies of a Tory government were wrecked by vehement dissenting opposition. At the same time the Anti-Corn Law League mobilised huge dissenting support against the landed interest and its clergy. It was apparent by the mid-1840s that any state scheme for national education -- Whig or Tory -- was doomed to fail. If the Church was capable of successfully opposing any attempt to establish a centralised, secular education system, the other churches were powerful enough to block Anglican hegemony. The inveterate hostility of Church and Dissent gave the voluntary system a new lease of life.

In key respects, it was the Church of England and the National Society which emerged from the education wars as the winners. Of the £500,000 of state funding going into education during the 1840s, over 80% went to the National Society. One of the issues the Church now began to address was the training of teachers. The National Society had of course been involved in the practical training of masters and mistresses in its schools since its foundation. But the inadequacy of much of the teaching in day schools of all kinds had been a recurrent theme in the debates and enquiries of the 1830s and Church authorities were becoming critical of monitorial schools. Hook commented in 1839 that the main failure of the National Society was in not making proper provision for the training of teachers. It had depended too much on Bell's monitorial system:

The fault of the National Society has been, not in adhering to Dr Bell's system, but in making the observance of that system the primary object of attention. The society recognises the duty of training masters, but it does not see that this is the first and grand object. We want not systems but masters. [fn 4]

Recruiting the parochial schoolmistress

Whitelands was initially managed directly by the National Society. Responsibility was devolved to an elected Council in 1849. This had, of course, no female representatives but a careful balance was maintained between lay and clerical members: each were to constitute at least one-third of the Council. Its members in the early years were nothing if not prestigious. Among its four High Church Bishops were Charles James Blomfield, the Bishop of London, and Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and leader of the High Church party, probably the two most politically-influential Bishops of the day. The ranks of the clergy were reinforced by influential laymen. Several representatives of the nobility sat on Whitelands Council in the 1850s and 60s: the Earl of Harrowby, the Marquis of Blandford (later the seventh Duke of Marlborough), the Earl of Ellesmere, Lord Ashburton (William Baring of the great financial dynasty) and Lord Grosvenor (later the Duke of Westminster). There were also several influential members of parliament -- the Peelites T.H.Southeron and Edward Cardwell (President of the Board of Trade 1852-5), the Tory Sir Thomas Dyke Acland and the Liberal C.W.Puller. Whitelands Council had political clout. It also had financial backing at the highest levels of the English establishment. Contributors to the building fund in 1851 included not just the church hierarchy, nobility and a scattering of MPs but also Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Gloucestershire. The Corporation of the City of London gave 50 guineas and four City Companies together gave over £100.

Church influence saturated the day to day life of the college. Whitelands' first Lady Superintendent was a Scottish widow, Julia Field, assisted by her unmarried daughter. But local churchmen provided much of the teaching in the early years, including Derwent Coleridge, Principal of the nearby male Anglican training college, St.Mark's, and Charles Kingsley, the Rector of Chelsea, father of the writer. As student numbers increased, reaching 54 by the mid-1840s, new governesses were appointed: two in 1843 and a third in 1845. Their role, however, was largely to supervise daily life in the college and provide some support for the students' private study. Visiting male lecturers, usually clergymen, continued to be the star performers. And increasingly the college chaplain -- especially after the appointment of Rev.Harry Baber in 1846 -- was identified as the key figure of authority, de facto Principal.

The College had no chapel of its own but its relation to the nearby parish church of St Luke's was close and there was much coming and going between the two. Kingsley, the rector, not only came to Whitelands to teach the students in the 1840s, he was also a member of the new College Council from 1849. Conversely Baber sometimes assisted in church services at St Luke's. The students not only attended each Sunday but frequently served as the choir. One of the first Whitelands governesses, Miss Field, married the curate, Rev.C.A.Johns in 1846. Another curate of St Luke's, Rev R.Demaus, stood in as college chaplain and lecturer in 1868 during Baber's illness and was to succeed him at Whitelands in 1872.

Anglican in its management, in its teaching force, and in its whole ethos, the aspiration of the new College was 'to produce a superior class of parochial schoolmistress'. An applicant for a place at Whitelands required a written recommendation from her clergyman, a medical certificate and a baptismal certificate. The minimum age of entry was 17 and the maximum 25 (by which age, it said, 'the character is in general too settled to be materially benefitted by the discipline of a Training College'). An applicant was also required to be able to read aloud fluently, write accurately from dictation, know the Church Catechism and some scripture history, have a basic grasp of arithmetic and possess the ability to do plain needlework. So much was clear and straightforward. But these mere skills and accomplishments were not enough. Applicants also needed to possess something more:

Good temper and good sense, gentleness coupled with firmness, a certain seriousness of character blended with cheerfulness, and even liveliness of disposition and manner, a love of children, and that sympathy with their feelings which experience alone can never supply, -- such are the moral requisites which we seek in those to whom we commit the education of the young; and of these some tokens should appear before they are received into training. [WC, 1850, 9]

... the Institution, established primarily to improve the education of the poor, is incidentally instrumental in educating a certain number of young persons who belong to the middle classes of society, giving to that class a close and personal interest in the prosperity of the Church of England, and to their daughters a legitimate and orderly method of shewing their religious zeal. [WC, 1850, 8]

Did Whitelands College in the 1850s attract daughters of the middle class to train to become 'a superior class of parochial schoolmistress'? Mrs Fuge, who as Miss Cuckow was the first trained governess when appointed in 1845, recalled her students many years later: 'They were socially unequal, some being the daughters of professional men, whilst others were in a much lower station of life' [WC,1891, 13]. A College Prospectus of 1851, designed to appeal to a fee-paying middle-class clientele, claimed: 'The students at Whitelands are, for the most part, daughters of professional men, respectable tradespeople or farmers, besides a few of the lower class who have risen into notice by their good conduct as monitors'. The most valuable source of evidence on the social backgrounds of entrants to Whitelands is the student register which provides details of each student's family background. This qualifies some of these contemporary accounts. Among the fathers of the first generation of Whitelands students there were, of course, no bankers or city merchants, no substantial factory employers and no members of the landed classes. But nor was there much trace of 'professional men'. There were a few occupations which might have unconvincingly aspired to professional status: a retired sea captain, an omnibus proprietor, three tax officials, a superintendent in a brewery, a couple of workhouse masters, a half-pay army captain, a police inspector, a sheriff's officer, a station master, and even an artist. But there was a singular lack of fathers of substantial professional status, such as lawyers, barristers, doctors, or clergymen. The solitary cleric who does appear in the registers officiated in a Welsh parish and his daughter had her fees paid by the Welsh Education Board and the Bishop of St. Asaph -- indicative of a poor church living. One student arriving in 1851 was stated to be the daughter of a deceased physician. Her mother paid her fees, but the fact that she herself held the low-status position of 'nurse' (categorised by the official census of that year as a form of domestic service) indicates either a considerable inflation in her father's status or a rapid fall in family fortunes.

Students entering Whitelands in the 1840s and early 1850s were, by and large, the daughters of modest and insecure families on the boundaries between capital and labour -- small farmers, shopkeepers, small businessmen, minor officials, clerks and white-collar workers, supervisory staff or skilled artisans, the non-commissioned officers of nineteenth-century capitalism. [fn 5]

The picture is also more complex than this. If we look at how fees were paid in the early years of Whitelands College, a picture begins to emerge of an institution in which social patronage was a defining feature. In 1848 the fees were over £17 per annum and by 1852 had risen to £20 -- a considerable outlay when £50 per annum was a standard sort of wage for a working man. Some students had their fees paid by their parents who clearly thought that the National Society's training and certification were a worthwhile investment. Despite the upper age limit of 25, there were also a handful of independent young women in their late twenties, with several years of teaching experience behind them, who paid their own fees. But a substantial number of students came from families which had fallen on hard times. Orphans and daughters of widows made up a significant proportion of students – around 20% in most years. In Victorian England the loss of even a prosperous male breadwinner deprived a family of security and threatened their descent into the impoverished lower orders. Teacher training at a College like Whitelands promised some kind of rescue for a respectable young woman without family property to support her. Such students were sometimes trained without charge on condition that the fee was repaid to the College later when they were established as teachers. In some cases a scholarship or some other form of financial assistance was provided directly to a deserving candidate by the National Society or by a Diocesan Board. Some students were helped by a patron to find the annual fees, perhaps a member of the family -- often an 'aunt' -- but sometimes not. In 1848, for instance, one student, an orphan, had her fees paid by Lady Mary Farquhar, another by Lieutenant Colonel Upton and two others by clergymen. More often the student register simply states that her fees were paid 'by her friends' -- which could mean wealthier relations but might be a patron of the family, an employer or a prominent and wealthy figure in her parish church. Twin sisters of an army captain, 'in reduced circumstances', entered the College unwillingly in 1842 at the urging of friends who had raised a subscription to support them until they became independent. Ill-health forced them to leave without having completed the course and they died of a 'rapid decline' soon after. A number of Whitelands students in the College's first decade were 'deserving cases', dependents on the generosity of their betters.

This was not always a charitable response to a family's social difficulties. Some of the early students at Whitelands came from families who were in service to the landed elite and may have been the beneficiaries of patronage. The daughters of both a gamekeeper and an under-steward to the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth House were sent to Whitelands, in 1847 and 1850 respectively. Other students in this period included the daughters of a labourer in the Queen's employment at Windsor Park, a couple of gentlemens' coachmen, a butler, a gamekeeper, a servant in a Cambridge College and several gardeners.

In its first decade or so, cobbling together a student body from various sources, Whitelands failed to attract its ideal daughters of the Church. Recruitment to the college was transformed in the 1850s by the coming of the Queen's Scholars, products of the pupil-teacher system and financed by the state. They began to take up more and more College places. At the same time direct patronage of students seems to have faded. The first four Queen's Scholars arrived in 1851. In 1852 there were 16 of them among the 58 new students. By 1853 they were the majority: 29 out of 51. Within a few years almost all students at Whitelands College were ex-pupil teachers: by 1857, for instance, 105 out of the 108 resident students.

Pupil-teachers and middle-class girls

Introduced in 1846, the pupil-teacher system was modelled on the apprenticeship system in the skilled trades. The pupil-teacher was apprenticed to the Head of a school at around the age of thirteen, if she fulfilled some basic requirements: ability to read fluently, write neatly and correctly, handle some basic arithmetic, demonstrate some grasp of geography, sew neatly and knit, be able to show appropriate religious knowledge, and teach a junior class to the satisfaction of an Inspector. The pupil-teacher helped the Head in the day-to-day work of classroom teaching and school management. In return she received both practical training and academic instruction. There was a detailed syllabus for each year of study and annual examinations. The pupil-teacher had to satisfy an inspector that she had reached the required standard in a range of subjects and skills. She received a small but rising wage: in 1846, £10 a year at the age of 13, rising each year to £20. On satisfactorily completing five years of apprenticeship, the pupil-teacher could immediately take up a post as schoolmistress. Or she could sit an examination and if successful would receive a Queen's Scholarship to the value of £20 or £25 a year in order to attend a recognised training college for two years.

In theory, then, the pupil-teacher system would generate a regular supply of eighteen year-olds who had had five years of teaching experience in schools and a basic education which would equip them for a further two years of full-time study at a training college. The government did all it could to popularise the scheme, even instructing its inspectors to be cheerful, affable and scrupuously polite in their examining procedures so as to leave on the minds of the candidates 'the most grateful personal impressions' and to give confidence in the government's good intentions towards the teaching profession. In practice, however, there were problems with the pupil-teacher system from the beginning. Instruction from the Head, one and a half hours each day, had to take place out of school hours. In some cases these classes began at seven o'clock in the morning; pupil-teachers were then engaged in a full day of teaching and each evening were expected to devote several hours to study at home. In other cases classes, and then homework, came at the end of a long day's teaching. In either case, this would have been a strenuous regime for any adult, but for children as young as thirteen and fourteen years old it was crushing. Baber, Whitelands chaplain, commented in 1860 on the pressures they experienced:

They have to work for five or six hours in the school; then to receive instruction from their schoolmistress for an hour and a half. They are frequently required to give up time daily to the preparation and putting to rights of the school-room. They have to work up at night the lessons which they have received in one day and to prepare for the lessons of the next day, and they have to come to and from school in all weather. For many girls between the ages of thirteen and nineteen this is too great a strain. [WC, 1860, 5]

By the 1850s more and more of Whitelands students were keen, hard-working and well-behaved Queen's Scholars bringing with them a government grant. But the college could not give up its efforts to attract middle-class girls. Aspiring 'to produce a superior class of parochial schoolmistress', and still dreaming of the virtuous daughters of the Church, the College continued to advertise the advantages of the education it provided. Much was made of the healthiness of the College environment, the social exclusivity of the student body and 'the honourable and remunerative' position of a schoolmistress in a Church school. This self-advertising was not merely in order to attract the fees brought by independent students, though extra income was welcome. It was predominantly about raising the social tone. The urge to recruit students from beyond the ranks of the pupil-teachers came, according to the Annual Report of 1852, 'from the desire to secure the services of those who have been brought up under circumstances of greater advantage' [p.6].

This ambition received a boost from Angela Burdett-Coutts, 'the richest heiress in all England'. [fn 6] She was an important patron of Whitelands College in the 1850s. She was a visitor on a number of occasions and presented prizes to the students in 1855 for essays on 'common things'. Their primary purpose as teachers, she condescended to tell them in 1856, was the social training of the working class. The mission of Whitelands, and Church of England elementary schools, was, she said:

to encourage mistresses who will strive to promote, to the best of their means and ability, amongst the children under their care, a sound scriptural education, industrious habits, and such an amount of information upon all subjects connected with their wants and occupations as will render them happier and more useful in their respective stations and classes. Social differences among classes must exist; but to whatever class a person may belong, the industrious discharge of the duties of that station in life is a social and religious obligation. [WC, 1856, 9]

Where would these schoolmistresses, capable of serving as social missionaries, be found? Angela Burdett-Coutts seemed doubtful that they would come from the ranks of the pupil-teachers and students she encountered at Whitelands. In 1857 she published a pamphlet: Remunerative and Honourable Employment for the Daughters of the Middle Classes, and Information as to the Government Plan for Promoting Elementary Education. Most trainee schoolmistresses, she had been disturbed to discover, came from families 'whose condition in life was extremely humble'. This was not, she ventured, 'socially advantageous'. If efforts were made to recruit young women from among 'the middle classes', this would provide useful employment for educated young women and, she suggested, would produce 'an increased estimation attaching to the office of teachers'. [fn 7]

Would middle-class women be attracted to the work of an elementary schoolmistress? One witness to the Newcastle Commission at this time thought not: 'the rough course work of these schools, the publicity, and the low associations, must render the office of teacher extremely repulsive to those who have been brought up as ladies'. Nevertheless, Lady Burdett-Coutts' words seem to have been taken seriously at Whitelands and in 1858 determined efforts were made to attract as trainee teachers young ladies from a more exalted social sphere. Embarrassingly, they displayed such ignorance that without exception they had to be rejected as candidates for the Queen's Scholarship examination. The College's tenth annual report tells the story, with barely-concealed irritation:

In the year 1858 a large number of the daughters of the middle class came forward. They were examined, and in all cases, they were found to be so backward, and to have been so imperfectly taught, that with every desire to encourage such young persons, it was impossible to admit them to the Examination with the slightest hope of success. The council of Whitelands regret to be obliged to observe the defective state of middle-class education, as they earnestly desire to see young women of this class devote themselves to the profession of schoolmistress. [pp.4-5]

These very girls may be amiable, well-behaved, may, indeed, possess many of those recommendations which go to make up the character of an agreeable and good woman; but in the technical matters of school teaching, such as would enable them to pass an examination with credit, they may be, and often are, sadly deficient. [fn 8]

we are very anxious to obtain, if we can, a supply from a rather higher grade of society ... we are all very strongly of opinion that it would be an immense boon to the cause of education in general if persons of better home training and better home circumstances could be induced to come in.

Discipline, curriculum and social order

Whatever the disappointments about the social character of its students, the mission of Whitelands College remained: to send out Church of England teachers to moralise the poor and to train them into a respect for social authority and an acceptance of the economic and political status quo. The College's male lecturer, William Knighton, spoke in 1854 in precisely the same terms as Angela Burdett-Coutts. In a public lecture he defined clearly the role of the elementary-school teacher: to counteract the effects of the working-class environment. 'The sinking and the sunken classes have evil guidance ever influencing them in the streets and lanes in which they live -- vicious examples constantly in operation around them'. The school must provide counter-examples, instilling the social discipline and moral behaviour which the working-class family had failed to provide. This would have important political effects. Not only would it reduce crime, vandalism and violence. It would also inculcate a respect for private property and for authority. Education was, he said, 'an antidote to the political poison so freely vented by noisy demagogues, when for some paltry spite or to attain some paltry end, they vilify and denounce all that is great and grand in the state, in constituted authority, in tradition, or in history'. [fn 9]

If the new elementary-school teachers were being trained as political missionaries to return a dissident (and dissolute) working class to the paths of righteousness, there was a rather more mundane sub-text here. One observer of Whitelands College in the 1850s was delighted that these new-style parochial teachers would solve another perennial headache for the propertied -- the servant problem:

a happy change may be hoped for in the race of young servants who issue from our schools if we obtain mistresses able and willing to instruct them in the proper method of performing the simpler offices of their station. [p.10]

the inmates of the Institution lead a homely life, practising domestic duties, engaged in domestic labours, and cultivating domestic acquirements. They are subjected to a mild yet watchful discipline; they are exercised in habits of order and neatness, of patience and forbearance, of activity and persevering industry; they are accustomed to regular devotions, and preserved, as far as possible, in lowliness of mind. [fn 10]

The anxiety of the college authorities to ensure humility and subordination among the students involved surveillance of every aspect of their public behaviour. When, impressed by their contribution to the congregation's singing, the rector of St Luke's invited the Whiteland's students to move from the free seats at the back of the church, the Lady Superintendent refused. She wanted, she said, 'to keep the students as much as possible from being conspicuous'. 'Regulations respecting Dress', a handwritten sign of the 1850s, indicates the fastidious control over the students. [fn 11] Dresses were to be of a single colour. Silk was banned and skirts were not to be trimmed. Bonnets were to be either black or of a dark colour, trimmed neatly with ribbon of a single colour -- pink or (Lord save us!) red ribbon was specifically forbidden, as were flowers. No bows or ribbons were to be worn in the hair and jewellery was forbidden. Crinolines were only to be worn on a Sunday. 'Lowliness of mind' required a severe modesty of dress and demeanour. This was a matter that continued to worry the Principal. He commented in 1860 that as elementary teachers his ex-students were paid too high a wage, in some cases twice as much as their fathers: 'I think they do not know how to spend their money, and that consequently a good deal of money is spent very foolishly, particularly in dress'. And he reiterated the College's commitment to preparing the students for a modest, disciplined and self-denying life of public devotion. [fn 12]

Not only was the College ethos that of a secular convent, the academic year was long and hard -- 42 weeks, beginning in January and ending in December. There was a six week break in the summer and four weeks at Christmas. The weeks and the days were long too. The students rose at 6 a.m., dressed, and arranged their dormitories. At 7 a.m. they had one and a half hours of morning prayers and scripture study. At 9 a.m., after breakfast, they had an hour or so to perform various household duties and a period of freedom to walk in the College grounds. Then from 10.15 a.m. until 1 p.m. they had lessons. After a break of an hour for lunch there were three more hours of lessons in the afternoon, followed by an hour for tea and recreation. Further lessons and private study occupied the students from 6.00 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. After another scripture lesson, there were evening prayers, supper and then bed after 9 p.m. Sundays were a day of rest but the college was strictly sabbatarian and students were forbidden to study or even to write family letters.

Students had little privacy and little time to themselves -- though they were permitted to return to their dormitory in their rare recreation periods or between meals and lessons. They were not allowed to wander out of the College and into the streets of Chelsea. Visits from relatives were permitted but only once each month. As part of the chastening moral experience of this regime the students were subjected to what was called 'industrial work'. They played a major part in the day-to-day running of the College via cleaning and washing and cooking. Each student was responsible for her own cubicle and shared in the regular sweeping and cleaning of the whole dormitory. Each student was also involved during various periods of her stay at the College in many hours of sweeping the corridors and classrooms, laying tables in the dining room before meals and washing the dishes after, assisting in the preparation and cooking of meals, and washing starching and ironing in the College laundry. There were also hours of needlework every day for every student.

This 'industrial work' was a crucial part of their training, preparing them for the work of socializing the working class. As Whitelands Council noted:

they learn how to prepare children for service, by instructing them as to their future employment; the style and character of their dress; and the proper application of their wages; whilst at the same time their attention is called to the comparative value of different kinds of food most generally within the reach of the poor; and to various simple methods of combining different articles of food, such as would enable the poorer classes to make the most of their hard-earned means of subsistence. [WC, 1852, 4]

The system of training there seems to me perfect and they make a very great point of needlework, particularly cutting-out, and shirt-making and gown-making as well as fine work. There seems such a desire to make them really humble unpretending Village Teachers, making them clean, cook and iron (not wash) that they mayn't fancy themselves fine ladies because they teach them Geography and History. [fn 13]

Orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography and general cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra, land-surveying and levelling, vocal music, were all at the ends of his ten chilled fingers. He had worked his stony way into Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council's Schedule B, and had taken the bloom off the higher branches of mathematics and physical science, French, German, Latin and Greek...

Long hours of work for 42 weeks in the austere and regulated environment of Whitelands had redeeming features for the students. For many of them the material quality of college life was better than they had been accustomed to, either at home or at school. The College authorities, as we have seen, commented on the wear and tear of the pupil-teacher system on young women arriving at Whitelands. For instance, of 145 candidates for admission to the College in 1859, 19 were rejected on grounds of poor health and a further 27 were not in good health when they arrived at the beginning of their first year. The college claimed to have a beneficial effect on the health of its students. The diet was stodgy and monotonous but was regarded as healthy at the time. An HMI reported in 1859: 'The proof that good food, and that in abundance, is provided everywhere seems to be entirely satisfactory'. Breakfast and tea consisted of bread and butter with tea or coffee. At supper there was bread and cheese, or bread and butter and broth, or bread and butter and beer. The main meal of the day was dinner at 1pm. This consisted of meat (roast beef, mutton, salt beef, Irish stew) and vegetables followed by a heavy pudding (treacle, rice, batter or currant pudding).

The College had initially faced problems in provided a healthy environment. The previous occupants of the original Whitelands House in 1841 had been a girl's boarding school. Substantial renovations had been carried out, costing nearly £600, before the first students arrived in January 1842. But problems remained, especially as student numbers increased. The first HMI inspection in 1848 was very critical of the half-acre site on the Kings Road in Chelsea. Everything was wrong. 'The rooms are badly situated for their purposes; they are with few exceptions, low, ill-lighted and insufficiently ventilated; they are deficient in number and inconvenient in size.' The windows of the main classroom opened directly onto the King's Road, then as now 'a scene of continual noise and distraction'. The dining room was at the end of a long dark corridor and up a flight of ricketty stairs. It was low, dark, ill-ventilated, with an unsafe floor. The dormitories were low and ill-ventilated. The scullery and laundry were overrun with rats, as were some derelict buildings on the site. Money was invested in improvements. A new dining room and several new classrooms were built and there were continued renovations and extensions as student numbers expanded.

Evidence of the positive physical benefits of college life for Whitelands students was collected and publicised. Each student received weekly medical checks by the College doctor and his reports were entered into a book which was open to scrutiny by members of the College Council. In 1866, for instance, the college medical officer noted the improvement in the health of the previous year's intake:

I attribute this improvement, which, indeed, I have often observed before, to the excellent sanitary arrangements of the Institution, its good ventilation, draining, etc., to the most excellent food, and to the regular habits into which the students are brought. [WC, 1866, 5]

The life of the Whitelands governesses in the 1850s was hardly less constrained than that of their students. Almost all of them were former pupil-teachers recruited in their early twenties from the best of the Whitelands students. They were chosen not just for their academic ability but for their exemplary conduct and had already, therefore, successfully internalised the values of the institution. Their personal life was rigorously supervised. They were, of course, unmarried and their relations with the opposite sex were restricted. Some clearly managed some kind of personal life involving men since they left to get married. One Whitelands Governess, came into conflict with the College authorities over this issue in 1857. Refusing to restrict her tristes with her fiance to once a week, she was dismissed 'for defying the authority of the chaplain and the superintendent'. This is a rare instance of rebellion. Whatever solitary flame of defiance might occasionally have burned inside them and whatever petty insubordinations might have been plotted in the privacy of their rooms, the Whitelands governesses seem to have accepted their subordination and lowliness.

Humble status was reflected in low salaries. When Whitelands was opened in 1841 the governesses, Mrs and Miss Field, were appointed on a joint salary of £150. This seems very high and it may have included some reimbursement for expenses. Miss Cuckow was appointed an assistant governess in 1845 on £25 per annum. Though she also received free board and lodging, this was still appreciably less than most newly-qualified elementary schoolmistresses would receive. A year later a male chaplain was appointed on £300 per annum. He was de facto principal of the whole institution and an Anglican cleric. He was thus expected to be a gentleman and to have salary commensurate with this status. Nevertheless the wage differential is huge.

The low salaries at Whitelands were commented on by the HMI in 1849:

With the exception of the salary paid to the chaplain ... the payment made to all the officers of the institution is very much below what they might reasonably expect, or what their talents and attainments might command. [CCE, 1849, 670]

The 1860s

After an unsteady beginning, Whitelands was securely established as an institution by the later 1850s. In particular it had solved, however grudgingly, its problem of where to recruit the Church's future schoolmistresses. But elementary education remained a political hot-potato in these years and training colleges like Whitelands were vulnerable to changes in government policy. Despite their voluntary status, their affiliation to the Church of England and their prestigious patrons, around 75% of annual income derived from parliamentary grants. Nationally government spending on education was spiralling upwards: £30,000 in 1839 had become £100,000 by 1846, £260,000 by 1853, £663,000 by 1858 and was heading for the million-pound mark. The cost of the pupil-teacher system alone had trebled between 1851 and 1857. There were increasing calls for national economy, not least because of the costs of the Crimean War. A Royal Commission on education, chaired by the Duke of Newcastle, was set up in 1858 to investigate the efficiency of the existing system. Its report was sharply critical. Despite steeply-rising costs, elementary schools were failing to recruit sufficient working-class children; those who were on their books were often attending irregularly and their achievements in basic literacy and numeracy were very limited. The government acted decisively. The numbers of pupil-teachers permitted in any school were restricted in 1859. A year later it was announced that no new applications would be accepted for building, extending or in any way improving training colleges. And in 1862 the notorious 'Revised Code of regulations' -- with its 'payment by results' -- was imposed by Robert Lowe.

These measures succeeded in cutting costs. State spending on education fell back -- from £837,000 in 1859 to £637,000 by 1865. But they caused financial problems for the training colleges. In particular, they affected recruitment, making life more difficult in elementary schools both for the pupil-teacher and the certificated teacher. For the latter automatic annual increments were removed and they no longer received payment for educating pupil-teachers. Average salaries fell by around 10% within a few years. The incomes of teachers in elementary schools now depended on the success of their pupils in passing annual examinations in reading, writing and arithmetic -- 'payment by results'. For the pupil-teachers the number of hours provided for study was reduced from seven and a half hours to five hours each week. Their work-load was also increased significantly and the ratio of pupils to pupil-teachers rose steadily from around 50:1 to over 90:1. The pressure on pupil-teachers was thus increased at both ends -- they taught more pupils and received less support in qualifying for training college. The outcome was predictable. The number of pupil-teachers in elementary schools fell from nearly 14,000 in 1861 to less 9,000 by 1866. The numbers applying to training colleges likewise fell sharply. There were 2513 applicants for a place at training college in 1862. Within four years this had fallen to 1584. Whitelands Council commented:

whatever advantage may accrue from the regulations of the Revised Code, it must be regretted that the result of the withdrawal of their encouragement is now seen in the diminution of the sources of the supply of trained Teachers. [WC, 1868, 4]

And let it be strongly impressed upon the Candidate, and constantly remembered by her friends, that by availing herself of the advantages of an Institution established, and principally supported, by charitable funds for a particular object, she places herself under a strict engagement to devote herself to that object. [WC, 1869, 12-13]

Whitelands survived the financial difficulties of the 1860s and, as female flagship of the National Society, was in a strong position to respond to the new pressures on teacher training that were to follow the 1870 Education Act.

on to chapter 2

footnotes

1. See M.G.Jones, The Charity School Movement (Cambridge 1938).

2. For Roebuck's speech see Hansard, 3rd series, XXIV, 1834, 127-30.
3.W.R.W.Stephens, ed., The Life and Letters of Walter Farquhar Hook (1880), .265.

4. Ibid., 266.

5. For a thorough account of the social backgrounds of Whitelands students, with some broader analysis of the social status of female schoolmistresses, see Frances Widdowson, Going Up Into the Next Class. Women and elementary teacher training 1840-1914 (1983).

6. See Edna Healey, Lady Unknown. The Life of Angela Burdett-Coutts (1978).

7. See A.Burdett-Coutts, 'Project for young ladies as school-mistresses. A circular', English Journal of Education, XII (April 1858), 148-52.

8. Mrs Ellis, Education of the Heart: Women's Best Work (1869), 7.

9. William Knighton, Training in Streets and schools. A Lecture ion the Training System of Education... (1855), 5-6, 37-8.

10. Quoted in E.M.Forster, Marianne Thornton. A Domestic Biography (1956), 228.

11. The original copy of this notice is preserved in WCA.

12. Baber, Evidence to the Newcastle Commission, PP 1861, XXI

13. Quoted in E.M.Forster, op.cit., 227.