The education of girls and women in Nottingham between 1870 and 1914: with special reference to domestic ideology and middle class influence

The basis of the thesis is the education of working class girls, as seen against the background of the national educational pattern in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and includes the various educational agencies and opportunities on offer to girls, such as prizes and scholarships; higher, adult and private education; and careers in teaching. This inevitably involves examining the differences and similarities between the education of male and female scholars. and of working class and middle class girls. The central form of the study is the issue of domestic subjects tuition and the influence of middle class educators, especially at local level, who determined the actual content of education. The study also explores the various problems of access to education, such as attendance and absence from school, punishments, medicals and illness etc. Evidence from a variety of sources has been used, both recent and contemporary secondary sources including fiction of the era, manuscript and original sources, official reports and oral evidence taken from local residents. The thesis provides a coherent picture of the education of girls in Nottingham between 1870 and 1914.