Pioneering Women’s Education: Dorothea Beale, An Unlikely Reformer

By Sally Ann Waller

Although much less well known than some other nineteenth century female campaigners, such as Florence Nightingale or Emmeline Pankhurst, Dorothea Beale is nonetheless deserving of wide recognition for her pioneering, and at times radical, ideas. Dorothea's work for the education of girls made just as significant an impact on the liberation of women as did that of Florence Nightingale in ennobling the nursing profession or Emmeline Pankhurst in drawing attention to women's political inferiority. Although very much a woman of her times, through her work as Principal of the Cheltenham Ladies' College, her writings, her speeches and her widespread involvement in societies promoting women's interests, Dorothea helped to show what women were capable of, providing them with greater confidence and self-belief. Drawing on a wide range of original sources, this book traces Dorothea's life and work. It considers the formative influences of her youth, her response to the disappointments of her early career and examines how her own educational ideas evolved, were put into practice and came to influence schools and colleges both at home and abroad. As well as an in-depth analysis of her pioneering work in Cheltenham, her many other interests, connections and involvements, including her contribution to the suffrage campaign are also explored. However this book is not just a story of one woman's achievements, great though they were. There is an attempt to understand Dorothea as a person with reflections on her character and personal life throughout and the book ends with an appraisal of the many contradictions to be found in this intriguing 'conservative reformer'. Dorothea Beale was a woman whose quiet and unassuming manner hid a strong sense of vocation, a fierce determination and an undoubted practical ability to achieve her ends. Dorothea would have been amazed at the changes that occurred in the position of women in the century after her death in 1906, and yet it was in no small measure thanks to her work that this breakthrough in female opportunities occurred.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781399012300

Book preview

Preface

An Unusual Sight

Tricycles were not a particularly common sight on the streets of Cheltenham in 1898. Nevertheless, every morning at 7 am, an intrepid lady of 67 might be seen gliding through the town, her black skirts billowing in the wind and her face set with determination. The doughty Dorothea Beale, Principal of the Ladies’ College in the heart of the town, had only recently bought a tricycle, but it had rapidly become her trusted friend.

Dorothea had not shown much interest in bicycling when it had first become fashionable for young women a decade or so earlier. Indeed, when some staff and day pupils had started bicycling to the college in the mornings, she condemned the practice, believing that a brisk walk provided all the health-giving benefits of good fresh air that an individual needed.¹ In polite society the idea of women riding bicycles was still seen as immodest and fears were expressed that it led women to develop flushed and strained facial features. At the very least, the older generation viewed bicycling as a potentially dangerous activity. Nevertheless, times were changing and Dorothea was eventually persuaded that this new mode of transport had some merits. So, she quietly backed down and even ordered the construction of some bicycle sheds at the college.

In 1895, while out walking on Leckhampton Hill, near Cheltenham, one Saturday, Dorothea slipped and fell heavily, breaking both bones of one leg just above the ankle.² She was alone at the time but, with the assistance of some passersby and a helpful farmer, she reached a doctor, who was able to set the leg. Nevertheless, she had to take five weeks out of school, which was quite a punishment for her, and when the splints eventually came off, she had to do exercises to prevent contraction and leg-shortening. She was assiduous in carrying out the doctor’s orders and she recovered well, but she found the exercises painful and her once-pleasurable walking became tiring and more difficult.³

It was in such circumstances that one of her staff suggested that she tried bicycling, to relieve the weight on her joints. Dorothea clearly pondered the idea during her summer holidays of 1898, which on her doctor’s advice she took away from Cheltenham, staying with an ex-pupil, Miss Amy Giles, at Bonchurch on the Isle of Wight. On her return, she began her bicycling experiment and was pleased to write to Amy: ‘28 August 1898: The doctor thought me wonderfully well. He highly approves of cycling if I can do it.’⁴

However, it was clearly a struggle, despite the patient efforts of Miss Reid, a devoted teacher of geography, who took it upon herself to teach Dorothea. Dorothea found the balance required in bicycling a challenge too far at her age and the following month she again wrote to Amy, suggesting a new plan: ‘7 September 1898: I had some bicycle lessons at Woodchester, but all united in recommending tricycling instead for me.’⁵

The rotary chain-drive tricycle had followed hard on the heels of the ‘safety bicycle’, which had equal size wheels and inflated tyres, and by 1884 there were over 120 different models being produced by 20 different manufacturers. Tricycles were not cheap, but they appealed to riders who did not feel comfortable on the old large-wheeled cycles or straddling the more modern safety bicycles. Tricycle manufacturers advertised them as being suitable for ‘nervous riders’ and women like Dorothea who wore long skirts and dresses found a tricycle with a chain-guard answered their needs. Dorothea was certainly in good company. Queen Victoria had purchased several tricycles herself in 1881 and her granddaughter, Princess Beatrice, rode a Rudge-Whitworth tricycle almost identical to Dorothea’s.⁶

So, in the autumn of 1898, again accompanied by Miss Reid, Dorothea set about mastering her new tricycle and she was clearly delighted with her purchase. She took every opportunity to try out her new mode of transport and the effect this had on her health and sense of well-being was clearly apparent in her next two letters to Amy Giles:

October 1898: The cycling is wonderful. I am so much better.

November 1898: I have cycled two mornings as far as our Sanatorium and got back about 8.00 am. I think this renewed life must mean that there is some more work for me to do.⁷

Ever since she had arrived in Cheltenham as a young woman of 27, Dorothea had always been in the habit of starting her days early, rising at 6 am. She liked to walk around three miles before breakfast and found the peace and quiet of the early morning provided the fresh air, freedom and solitude that she needed in order to clear her mind in preparation for the day ahead. So, just when her fall and natural ageing had threatened to jeopardize this precious custom, her tricycle opened up new possibilities once again.

Her enthusiasm became a cause of concern to everyone except Dorothea. Although she had mastered the tricycle, the machine was a cumbersome one and not without its dangers on bumpy roads and uneven pavements. To make matters worse, she was already quite deaf by the time she took up the tricycle and couldn’t always hear what was going on around. Since her eyesight was also becoming progressively worse, her school staff feared she was quite a liability.

Like many who bought these heavy tricycles, Dorothea lacked the strength to pedal uphill and needed help. Fortunately, the Ladies’ College employed pageboys to do odd jobs around the school and it was therefore easy for her to call on one of these to push her up the Bayshill Road at the side of the college each morning. Once she reached the top, she could then free-wheel or pedal back down it. It was just as well that there was usually very little early morning traffic around, as she would descend at some speed.⁸

Occasionally she met Dr Reginald Waterfield, then a young principal of the ‘boys’ school on the Bath Road’, as she called the male boarding school, Cheltenham College. He too liked his early morning outings and usually took them on horseback. When they encountered one another, they always exchanged a few words, jokingly referring to themselves as the old principal and the young.

On one occasion, failing to recognize the ‘young principal’, Dorothea hailed Dr Waterfield, who happened to be out on foot, walking along the pavement. He looked up when he heard the familiar deep voice crying out, ‘Young man! young man! Push me up this hill!’ He could hardly do other than obey, and in later life, when he became Dean of Hereford, he would often recount the story of how the tricycling Dorothea put him in his place.⁹

Dorothea sometimes called on her own pupils to push her if she wanted to go out and on at least one occasion looked round for the largest girl she could find to push her up Cheltenham’s ‘Promenade’. However, if none of her own girls were available, she was never averse to hailing a passerby. By the turn of the century, she was such a well-known figure in Cheltenham that it was almost seen as an honour among the citizens of the town to be able to render her this service.

She continued to use her tricycle right up to her very last year, 1906, by which time her poor hearing and what seemed to be rather reckless behaviour on three wheels were causing her friends even more serious alarm. When an apprehensive teacher warned her to be wary of the early morning milk delivery boys, who were renowned for tearing around corners and dashing about on their early morning rounds, she merely shrugged her shoulders. ‘They all know me and keep out of my way – they daren’t do otherwise,’ came her confident reply. To try to avert a potential disaster, one of the staff members took it upon herself to map out the routes which Dorothea might take, so as to ensure that she encountered as few obstacles as possible, and no ‘dangerous’ slopes or inclines.¹⁰

So, the redoubtable Dorothea Beale rose to the challenge of the tricycle and pedalled to the end of her days. It was a journey that was, in many ways, an apt reflection of her whole life. She was fortunate to have many opportunities, but not everything she wanted came easily to her. She had to face challenges and she sometimes failed, but she picked herself up and continued undaunted. Occasionally, she conceded that others had a just case and, when convinced, she was never ashamed to change her mind. Nevertheless, once she had set her sights on a particular course, she pursued it wholeheartedly. She was not afraid to ask for help along the way, but she would not tolerate any fuss or unnecessary concern. Tirelessly she pushed herself to her limits in all she did, showing a single-minded determination to reach her goal.

Chapter 1

An Exceptional Family

Although the world has now existed for several thousand years, the notion that women have minds as cultivable and as worth cultivating as men’s minds is still regarded by the ordinary British parent as an offensive, not to say revolutionary, paradox. There is a long-established and inveterate prejudice, though it may not often be distinctly expressed, that girls are less capable of mental cultivation, and less in need of it than boys.¹

So wrote the Schools Inquiry Commissioner, Sir James Bryce, in 1864. What a strange paradox it is that in an age often symbolized by its female monarch, Queen Victoria, who came to the throne in 1837, girls were almost universally seen as the inferior sex. Right across the class spectrum, it was taken for granted that girls would grow up to marry, attend to their homes and bear children. To do much more was to flout convention, and to encourage female ambition was to do a disservice to their sex. Victorian society was overwhelmingly patriarchal and, until 1882, even a woman’s property and income automatically passed to her husband on marriage.

However, it was not just the legal inequalities that restricted women’s lives. With the spread of industrialization and urbanization after 1780, a middle-class ‘domestic ideology’ had emerged with repercussions for all women. Various religious groups, and particularly ‘reforming’ Evangelicals, helped spread the view that men and women occupied separate but complementary spheres. Women were identified with the ‘private sphere’ of home and family, and men with the ‘public sphere’ of paid work, business and politics, as well as bearing economic and legal responsibility for their wives and children. These separate spheres were justified as the natural result of biological differences that made child-bearing women weaker and more emotional than men. Females were good at nurturing but, being less rational, were not suited to public life. There were even doctors who argued that women had weaker brains and limited energy reserves and that to demand too much of them was to impair their most important function – to bear children.

Of course, the reality was not quite as simple as this. Many working-class women had to undertake paid work, but, even then, much was still centred on the home where, in addition to their domestic duties, women worked in ‘sweated industries’, often involving sewing, for low pay. The middle classes looked down on those women who went out of the home to work in the mills and factories, a practice described by Samuel Smiles, author of the popular work, Self Help, as ‘lowering the sacred character of woman’.² Ladies of higher social rank certainly never dreamt of undertaking paid work unless forced to support themselves when single or widowed, in which case employment as a governess was about the only acceptable female ‘profession’. The best they might consider was some philanthropic activity.

What made the Beale household, into which Dorothea was born on 21 March 1831, exceptional was its disregard for this rigid philosophy. That is not to say that the family was anything other than typical Victorian upper middle class in most respects. The Beales were well off and enjoyed the comforts of a relatively large house in Bishopsgate, London. Dorothea’s father was the breadwinner and her mother ran the household, employing domestic servants to provide for their daily needs and governesses to help in the upbringing of their large family, which eventually reached eleven children, six boys and five girls. They attended the local church, mixed with their social equals and were regarded by all who knew them as respectable, upright people. However, the Beales differed from many of their contemporaries in one important aspect: they believed in the value of an all-round education for their daughters as well as their sons and were determined that their girls should never see marriage as an end in itself.³

Dorothea’s father, Miles Beale, came from gentry stock and since the late eighteenth century, his family had possessed an estate at Hyde Court in Chalford, Gloucestershire. Although Miles never actually lived there himself, it was the scene of many happy visits, and after his death it became home to his widow, Dorothea’s mother. By the time Dorothea, the Beales’ fourth child, was born, Miles was a practising member of the Royal College of Surgeons. He had trained as a young man at Guy’s hospital in London and, six years after marrying Dorothea Margaret Complin, who was herself the daughter of a surgeon, he had gone into practice as a doctor in the City.

Miles Beale was an assured and confident gentleman, holding a respected position in society. As well as being a doctor, he dabbled in business and, as befitted a man of his rank, had several additional financial interests. This gave him the security and income needed not only to support his large family but also to be able to pursue his many interests, academic, cultural and philanthropic. He was never overly self-indulgent, though, and certainly not self-satisfied or priggish. As a thoughtful and scholarly gentleman, who tried to live his life according to the teachings of the Church of England, Miles epitomized many of the most-prized Victorian values: earnestness, a strong sense of duty and morality and a desire to improve himself and help others.

Margaret Beale, as she was known, was devoted to her husband and family. She was an excellent hostess, a prudent housekeeper and she invested much time and energy into her children’s upbringing. In these respects, she fitted the conventional Victorian ideal of ‘the angel in the house’ perfectly. However, the likeness ended there. Margaret was far from a passive, weak or submissive wife and Miles would never have wished her to be so. On the contrary, she was a woman of some considerable intelligence and learning who shared her husband’s outlook on life, but was never afraid to air and defend her own opinions. She supported her husband but never leant on him, undoubtedly providing Dorothea with a valuable role model.

In short, Miles and Margaret enjoyed a happy marriage, and Dorothea a happy childhood. Margaret entertained the children with delightful stories and for the rest of her life Dorothea treasured a rhyme picture book that her mother used to read to her, The Courtship, Merry Marriage and Picnic Dinner of Cock Robin and Jenny Wren.⁴ Margaret liked to entertain her offspring with dramatic tales from history and literature which fired Dorothea’s mind with ‘magnificent visions’, while Miles, who was a Shakespeare enthusiast, would sometimes recite famous speeches. The impressionable young Dorothea was both fascinated and frightened by his powerful delivery. His reading from The Merchant of Venice, for example, must have had quite an impact on her as she was to write in later years:

I shall never forget how we learned to love Shakespeare, through my father’s reading to us, when we were quite young, selected portions. I still remember the terror which, as a very small child, I felt as I heard Portia pronounce the verdict. I thought Shylock had really gained the day.⁵

No doubt she tried to emulate her father when, as sometimes happened, the children were set to learn poems or passages of scripture by heart and the evening was spent reciting these back to the rest of the family.

The Beale household was devoutly Christian and religion played an important part in Dorothea’s upbringing. As in many similar households, Dorothea’s day began and ended with family prayers and the whole family went to St Helen’s Church, Bishopsgate, on Sunday mornings. The young Dorothea was highly susceptible to the emotional impact of church attendance. Even the inscription above the entrance, ‘This is none other than the House of God and this is the Gate of Heaven’, set her imagination alight. She believed she could see eyes looking down at her as she peered over the high pews at the coats of arms, scrolls and golden angels around the East window. She was transfixed by what she heard, imagining the whole church becoming dark when the story of the crucifixion was read. She would later write:

I know nothing of the substance of the sermons now, but I remember the emotion they often called forth, and how I, with difficulty, restrained my tears. The hymns were a great power in my life. I remember the joy with which I would sing, in my own room, Ken’s Evening Hymn and the awful joy of the Trinity hymn, Holy, holy, holy.⁶

In the afternoon, the children, under their mother’s guidance, were either introduced to passages in the family’s illustrated version of the Bible, or were treated to suitably edifying picture books, like the moral tale of Parley the Porter by Hannah More. In time, the family progressed from ‘stories of good and bad children’ to more adult religious literature. The sensitive Dorothea was quite terrified by Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, which portrayed the tortures inflicted on protestants in the days of Queen Mary. However, she found The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan rather more digestible, particularly since the family edition contained some rather good outline drawings which took her fancy.

Dorothea was clearly an earnest little girl who tried hard to do as she was told. Needless to say, like any other child, she didn’t always find this easy and she could be quite hard on herself, becoming desperately anxious when she felt she had done wrong. At such times she would throw herself on her knees and beg God’s forgiveness. Her mother’s sister, Aunt Elizabeth, who was also Dorothea’s godmother, proved a calming influence. A wise and kindly lady, she tried to guide and help Dorothea who later recalled that, ‘She was not shocked, as some of my relatives were, when I could not follow the beaten track’.⁷

Aunt Elizabeth was an important influence in many different ways. She lived with the Beales for a time and when Dorothea was a young child, her aunt would often be at hand to help her and her siblings with their reading. As Dorothea grew older, Elizabeth would patiently support her, explaining things that she did not understand and satisfying her boundless curiosity. Besides reading Latin, Greek and Hebrew, Elizabeth could speak several languages and she took it upon herself to teach Dorothea some Italian, a pursuit they both enjoyed. Elizabeth’s interests ranged from the ‘male’ study of mathematics to philosophy and it was her aunt who helped Dorothea grasp more difficult philosophical concepts. ‘If I took a wrong line she would first enter sympathetically into my way of thinking, and then gently lead me to see hers,’ Dorothea wrote.⁸ Such a comment might well have been made of Dorothea herself in her later years as a teacher.

It was through Aunt Elizabeth that Dorothea learnt about two relations that she never actually met, but who most certainly had a strong formative influence on her as a young girl. These were Margaret’s and Elizabeth’s aunt, Mrs Mary Cornwallis and Mary’s daughter, Caroline Frances Cornwallis. Elizabeth had lived with Caroline Frances in Kent for a time, before settling in London and was clearly proud of the family connection. Here were two scholarly and Christian women who had shown that a woman’s intellectual powers could certainly equal those of men.

Mary Cornwallis had defied social norms, by educating herself to a standard at least equal to that of her rector husband. She had written various religious books, and had even produced a most accomplished four-volume commentary on the scriptures. The story Dorothea liked best, though, was of how she patiently taught herself Hebrew in old age, simply so that she could help her grandson with his studies. Her daughter, Caroline Frances, was, in turn, a Latin, Greek and Hebrew scholar, with interests in philosophy and law. More significantly, for Dorothea, she was a fervent believer in the capabilities of women. She decried men’s low estimate of female intellectual powers, writing: ‘Every man you know, thinks he has a prescriptive right to be better informed than a woman, unless he has science enough to see that the said woman is up with him and therefore must know something.’⁹

She was the author of several books that were published as part of a series entitled, Small Books on Great Subjects. However, because of the prejudices of the day, her contributions were left as ‘anonymous’. Dorothea always delighted in hearing of how her work had been heartily praised by male critics who, had they known their true authorship, would undoubtedly have dismissed them as the worthless ramblings of a weak female brain.

Sadly, Caroline Frances, who was physically quite frail, died whilst Dorothea was still young, but Elizabeth often spoke of her aunt’s devout, selfless and earnest nature and maybe Dorothea subconsciously accepted these as the qualities that she should aspire to in her own life. Dorothea also acknowledged how Caroline Frances had sought ‘to raise my whole sex and with it the world’ and that ‘talk of her ability and knowledge’ encouraged her own intellectual ambitions.¹⁰

Another regular visitor to the Beale household was the local vicar from St Helen’s, Reverend Charles Mackenzie. Charles was interested in literature and education, having previously worked as a Headmaster at St Olave’s boys’ school. He was also a scholarly and learned theologian who would eventually become an honorary canon at St Paul’s Cathedral. Obviously, Miles and Charles had a lot in common and they became very good friends.

Like Miles, Charles Mackenzie was a ‘High and Dry’ Anglican, to use the nickname of the time. ‘High’ denoted support for the political position of the Church