The candidate contrrms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been ...

317 Pages·2010·12.43 MB·English

THE DEVELOPMENT OF NURSERY SCHOOLS
AND CHILD WELFARE POLICIES AND PRACTICES
IN BRADFORD FROM THE 1890s TO THE 1950s
WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE WORK OF
MIRIAM LORD
RUTH MURRAY
S
SUBMITTED IN FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
THE UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS
SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
JUNE 1993
The candidate contrrms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate
credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others
ABSTRACT
This thesis analyses the life and work of Miriam Lord in Bradford, West
Yorkshire between 1885 and the 1950s. The main investigative research for the thesis
was carried out at the Bradford Archives where the voluminous collection of private
papers, documents and other records which she bequeathed to the Margaret McMillan
Memorial College on her death in 1968 are now domiciled and which have been ordered
and collated by the archivist there.
Throughout her working life Miriam Lord campaigned for nursery education:
from her position as a nursery school Superintendent, through her involvement with the
N ursery School Association and the Bradford branch of the Froebel Society, and not
least, via the publication of written articles and the delivery of numerous public lectures.
She also gained an international reputation by both working and travelling abroad, and
by receiving many visiting foreign education experts at her Bradford nursery school.
Principally due to parental influence Miriam Lord was a disciple of Margaret
McMillan from an early age. She utilised much of Margaret McMillan's methodology
in her nursery school work and imitated many of her innovations in child care. Like
Margaret McMillan she was a socialist, but not a paid-up party member. She did,
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however, have close connections witft the Independent Labour Party, a legacy handed
,
down by her father, Hird Lord. She also inherited from him the stamina and
determination to work tffelessly for the poor and deprived of Bradford's slums,
advocating the expansion of nursery education and introducing the concept of
community centres as an antidote to the social and physical deprivation caused by those
slums. Her final project was the establishment in Bradford of a college for the training
of nursery school teachers - this was dedicated to the memory of her mentor, Margaret
McMillan.
Proceeding on a chronological basis and examining the background to these
many activities, this thesis analyses the interaction between Miriam Lord and the
developments, both in Bradford and at a national level, ·in the fields of nursery education
and child welfare during the latter years of the nineteenth century and during the first
half of the twentieth century.
CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
1
CHAPTER ONE: Her Formative Years - Birth to 1906 5
CHAPTER TWO: Early Professional Development 1901-1914 22
CHAPTER THREE: Further Development and Training 1914-1921 48
CHAPTER FOUR: Early Years at Lilycroft 1921-1925 78
CHAPTER FIVE: International Recognition 101
CHAPTER SIX: Return to Lilycroft 115
CHAPTER SEVEN: The Fall from Grace 147
CHAPTER EIGHT: The Immediate Aftermath 164
CHAPTER NINE: Humiliation 185
CHAPTER TEN: The 1930s - A Change of Direction 202
CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Bradford Community Centre 220
CHAPTER TWELVE: The War Years 239
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The Margaret McMillan Memorial College 258
CONCLUSION 282
BIBLIOGRAPHY 301
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I should like to express my thanks to the following people:-
Dr Paul Sharp and Mrs Angela Anning for their supervision and helpful guidance
throughout the period during which this study was undertaken.
The staff of the Brotherton and Parkinson Libraries at the University of Leeds.
Miss E Wilmott and the staff of the Bradford Reference Library.
Mr Ian Mason and the staff of the Bradford Archives.
Mrs June Wood, Secretary, Lilycroft First School, Bradford.
The staff of the Archives of Labor History and Urban Affairs, Wayne State
University, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A.
Mrs Jane Read, Archivist, Froebel Institute College, London.
Mr Graham Williamson, Lecturer, Bradford and Illdey Community College,
Bradford.
Mrs Jacky Atkinson, Librarian, Margaret McMillan Library, Bradford and Ilkley
Community College, Bradford.
Miss Christine Royle, General Inspector, Department of Education, Birkenhead,
Wirral, Merseyside.
Mrs Christine Backhouse for typing this thesis.
Finally, I want to thank Sue Bailey for all the help and support, especially on the
I
word processor, that sh6 gave me during this study.
1
INTRODUCTION
This study is concerned with the development of nursery schools and child
welfare policies and practices in Bradford from the late nineteenth century to the mid
twentieth century, focusing on the work of Miriam Lord in particular. Therefore,
central to the study is Miriam Lord herself.
Consequently, it will frrstly be necessary to analyse the formation of her
character from her earliest years, and to consider the extent and nature of her
professional training prior to her appointment as the first Superintendent of a purpose
built nursery school in 1921. In this section of the thesis, which will have a
chronological structure, those people who played a dominant role in her early life will
be identified and their importance assessed. They will commence with her father, Hird
Lord, who as well as being a successful businessman was a founding member of the
Independent Labour Party in Bradford in 1893, and will go on to include Margaret
McMillan, whose work in Deptford was pivotal in the development of nursery education
in this country and who was a colleague of Hird Lord in the early days of the
Independent Labour Party. Later, among the influences on Miriam during this period,
the roles of her headmistress at Belle Vue Higher Grade School, Sarah Beszant, and the
headmistress under whom she worked for eight years at Whetley Lane Infants' School,
Alice Lister, will be examined. Likewise, the scope and content of the training provided
by Saffron Walden College between 1906 and 1908 and by Manchester University in
1918/1919 will also come under scrutiny.
2
Having identified and considered the personal contacts and relationships which
were crucial in the development of her character, it will then be possible to place
Miriam in her social and political context. Indeed, throughout the study, the interaction
between her and, in particular, the political framework, both nationally and locally in
Bradford, within which she had to operate will be of ongoing interest and importance.
The economic, social and political factors at work in Bradford in the late Victorian and
the Edwardian period which made the city pre-eminent among other provincial industrial
centres in terms of social and educational reform will be highlighted, as will the social
welfare changes taking place at national level.
Although by the beginning of the twentieth century Victorian reformers had
achieved a great deal in terms of improving the condition of the average citizen - every
male householder had been enfranchised; elementary education was available for all
children; wages had increased even though working hours were. tewe.r and working
conditions better; advances had been made in medicine and in public health - much still
remained to be done, especially in alleviating poverty caused by ill-health, old age or
unemployment. The election of a Liberal government with a large majority in 1906
ushered in a period of social reform leading up to the First Wodd War. Old age
pensions and labour exchanges were introduced and insurance schemes covering sickness
and unemployment for some workers were provided under the National Insurance Act of
1911. Especially relevant to this thesis was the high priority taken by the welfare of
children - legislation was passed to facilitate school meals, school medical inspections
3
and infant welfare clinics. De~'Pite opposition from the Conservative Party which led
directly to a reduction in the power of the House of Lords under the terms of the
Parliament Act of 1911, a climate was established in which a continuing expansion of
public spending on the welfare of the working classes was possible.
This then was the backdrop to the time when Miriam Lord, a native of a city
which was already renowned for its progressive attitude in matters of public welfare,
began her professional training for a teaching career. By the time that she embarked on
a second period of training in 1918 the need for ongoing improvement in state-provided
social welfare services had been more firmly established. This made possible the
provision of nursery education in the 1918 Education Act, albeit on a permissive,
discretionary basis. The momentum which led to the provision of a Welfare State after
the Second World War had been created, but was consistently hindered by fmancial
constraints throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The role which these constraints played in
the evolution of social welfare policies during those years and the impact which they
had, both on Bradford and on Miriam Lord herself, will be the theme of the major part
of this study. It will begin with Miriam Lord's appointment as Superintendent of
Lilycroft Open Air Nursery School and will end with the onset of World War Two by
which time she had marginalised herself from mainstream education in favour of
working in the voluntary sector in the wider field of social welfare.
It will explore the issues which brought her into conflict with Bradford Education
Committee and which transformed her from a rather naive paragon of virtue, held out
4
as an exemplary practitioner of nursery education to visiting dignitaries, into a pariah at
the age of forty eight, worthy only of demotion and a probationary period of three
months at a time when she had been teaching for over thirty years. Miriam Lord's own
contribution to this outcome will be examined in detail, as will her subsequent reaction
and resultant later career.
The later chapters of the thesis will deal with her personal and public
rehabilitation, starting with the war years and ending with her leading role in the
building of a national memorial to Margaret McMillan in Bradford. They will
demonstrate how she absorbed the lessons of her misfortune at Lilycroft to build a more
effective strategy for achieving her objectives. Again, the interaction between her
activities and events at local and national level will be appraised with particular
reference to the impact of the expansion of the social services made necessary by the
conditions of war. The widening of her network of contacts brought about by her
involvement in community work, which in tum led her to work closely with national
political figures such as Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood, will be outlined and her
later achievements analysed against this background.
Finally, the impact of all her tireless crusading during a period of over fifty years
stretching from 1912 to her death in 1968 will be examined to establish whether the fact
of her existence did anything to alter the way in which nursery schools and child welfare
practices developed in Bradford.
5
CHAPTER ONE: HER FORMATIVE YEARS - BIRTH TO 1906
Miriam Lord was born in Bradford in 1885, the eldest of three daughters born to
Hird and Joanna Lord. During the century preceding her birth Bradford had been
transformed by the Industrial Revolution from "a pleasant market town, with green
meadows and swift gleaming streams" (1) into an industrial city of almost 200,000
inhabitants. During the fITst half of the nineteenth century it was the fastest growing
industrial town in the British Isles, and although growth slackened after 1850, it still
continued to expand. This migration into the city had originated principally from two
distinct sources, from the outlying villages around Bradford and from Northern
Germany. Both categories of immigrants had a particular impact on the life of the city.
Those who had moved in from the surrounding villages constituted the work
force for the increasing number of woollen textile mills. They lived in narrow streets of
back-to-back houses, consisting of one room downstairs and another upstairs and lacking
hot water, bathrooms or sanitation, which had been built in the vicinity of the mills.
Families tended to be large, and the insanitary living conditions which encouraged the
spread of disease and infection, combined with the harsh working environment of the
mills, gave rise to social unrest, political strife and, ultimately, the formation in
Bradford in 1893 of the Independent Labour Party.
The immigrants from Northern Germany were Jewish textile merchants who saw
the opportunity to ally their entrepreneurial skills with the craftsmanship available in the
Yorkshire mills, and by so doing, to capture an important part of world trade. The fITst