Prometheus's Fire - Sample Chapter(s): Ch19 (4)

The Sequel

Instead, an immediate effort was made to return to the original aims of the committee that had first sponsored the Queen's Institute. A group of Dublin worthies held a meeting at the residence of a Mrs. Brown, 8 Merrion Square on November 18, 1882, "to consider the advisability of reviving the Queen's Institute, or of forming some similar institution for the industrial education of women." They included Professor Barrett, the Dean of the Chapel Royal, Miss La Touche, the Honorary Secretary of the Association for the Relief of Ladies in distress through non-payment of Rent in Ireland and Miss Meyrick. Mr. Thomas Cooke Trench moved, "That this meeting is of opinion that a Society for the employment of women in Ireland is desirable" and he added that he trusted the teaching would be of a practical and useful nature. The Rev. Dr. Haughton followed with a proposal to set up a provisional committee and then offered his own gloss on the social effects of employment for women. He had been told, he said, "that the employment of female clerks in the Post and telegraph office had the tendency to prevent matrimony, for the female clerks when they found that they could support themselves by their own earnings did not take the first young fellow that offered as they did formerly, but waited and looked round them until an eligible young man offered, and then married him, and thus they had as much choice in the selection of a husband as the husband had in the choice of a wife."(12)

Not long afterwards the committee decided to appeal to the Government for the funds required to carry through the programme of technical education they felt was so necessary. A four-person delegation consisting of Professor Barrett, the Dean of the Chapel Royal, Misss La Touche and Miss Meyrick was appointed to approach the Commissioners from the Department of Science and Art who were enquiring into the state of scientific education in the kingdom. Their specific brief was "to give evidence with reference to the movement for the technical education of women." Both Miss La Touche and Miss Meyrick had had earlier connections with the Queen's Institute.

It is quite clear from the evidence laid before the committee that any funds that could be raised would be channeled into an institution modelled closely on that of 1861,as Miss La Touche put it, "a more permanent institution for the technical education of women."(13) When quizzed by the interested committee on the fate of the now defunct Queen's Institute, the applicants were succinct, "We prefer being silent in the case, it is a rather personal matter."

The delegation giving testimony before the committee had very clear ideas on what constituted the best sort of technical education for women. They seemed vehemently opposed to introducing nursing, needlework or domestic science in the curriculum. Professor Barrett noted that Irish women felt a much greater desire to enter the professions proper than did their English counterparts who seemed content to learn the arts of the cook and housemaid. In plain terms what they intended was to, "restore the Queen's Institute upon a proper basis" because it, "had all the elements of success."

The institution that replaced the unique Queen's Institute was called the Irish (later Royal Irish) Association for the Training and Employment of Women and had rooms at 21 Kildare Street. Once again the great and the good lent their support . At the annual general meetings, sometimes held on the premises of the Royal Dublin Society, it was not unusual for the Provost of Trinity to take the chair and the names of those present reads like a register of the well-endowed Anglo-Irish bourgeoisie.

The skills taught included scrivenery, typewriting, printing, illuminating, photo-printing, wood-carving and wood engraving, lithography, plan tracing and bookkeeping. The ladies who joined the courses paid a fee but then were paid for any work they might execute for employers who used the college as a sort of agency. The only course not to generate much enthusiasm among the students was bookkeeping. It seems that women had difficulty finding employment as bookkeepers. The printing house, on the other hand, was a great success and women were being trained for work in other parts of the country.

It now emerged that a new problem had begun to dog the efforts of middle class women in search of technical training. They had fallen foul of the trades unions, particularly in the printing industry. However even this added complication was of less importance than the major and persistent problem of lack of funding. In each annual Report the Secretary, Miss Alice Croker noted dolefully that the institution's income was not adequate for its needs and that the teaching was suffering. Such was the financial pressure that eventually the ruling body took the only way out and decided to affiliate with the new technical college for artisans supported by Government money that was to be opened in Dublin.

By 1890 the Englishwoman's Review reported with some pride that in Dublin, once again a pioneer, "the classes of the Technical School were open alike to men and women, and among the first who entered their names for the plumbers' class were two lady teachers of cookery."(14) Miss Corlett might well have viewed this admixture of classes and the intrusion of manual labour as the very antithesis of what the Queen's Institute was designed to do. Mrs. Jellicoe would certainly have approved.

References

1. Thirteenth Annual Report of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women in connection with the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, (April 1872), p.6.

2. "A Year's Experience in Woman's Work" in Transactions of the National Science Association (1860), p.812.

3. Transactions of the National Association . . . Glasgow 1860 (1861), p.xx.

4. "Summary of Proceedings" in Transactions (Dublin, 1862), p.812.

5. Entry for 20 February, 1854 in the unpublished Diary of Lydia Goodbody, Portfolio 21 of Hugh Goodbody Collection, Society of Friends, Dublin.

6. A.B. Corlett, "Twenty Years' History of the Queen's Institute and College, Dublin" in Journal of the Women's Education Union (1881), pp.170-172.

7. "The Queen's Institute for the Training and Employment if Educated Women" in The Victoria Magazine (1864), p.463.

8. "Minutes of Evidence" in Report of the Science and Art (Ireland) Commission (1868), p.352.

9. "Minutes", p.356.

10. Journal of the Women's Education Union (November 15, 1880), p.xxx.

11. Journal of the Women's Education Union (15 June, 1881), pp.170-172.

12. Englishwoman's Review, 15 December, 1882, p.115.

13. "Minutes of Evidence" 7 June, 1883 Parliamentary Report 15 (1884), p.115.

14. January 15, pp.6-7.; 15 June 1881, pp170-172.

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