Carpenter, Mary (1807-1877)

1 Autographed letter, to unnamed correspondent, 9 th May 1877, agreeing to sign a memorial arguing for women to recieve medical degrees and relating this particularly to conditions in India. Written some five weeks before her death. (no.1)

1877

1 file ( 1 item)

Accession number not recorded (acc. 349438)

Online Archives and Manuscripts catalogue

Mary Carpenter (1807-1877), educationist and penal reformer, educated in Bristol in her father's school she was subject to a liberal education, which include lessons in science, history and Greek. She became a teaching assistant there before living home in 1827 to become a governess on the Isle of Wight. She returned two years later to Bristol to help her mother set up a girl's school. In 1833 she came under the influence of the Raja Rammohun Roy and the American philanthropist Joseph Tuckerman, who excited her interest in India and the ragged children of Bristol. Two years later she founded an association in the city which was named the Working and Visiting Society, based on Tuckerman's work in Boston. Aided by John Bishop Estlin, a local surgeon, she opened the first ragged school in the Lewin's Mead section of Bristol in 1846.

Many of Mary Carpenter's ragged charges were petty thieves and gang members, and over the next few years she developed a particular interest in the most hardened children. She took exception to the harshness of the penalties applied to children and preferred rehabilitation instead of retribution that was underlined in her influential book Reformatory Schools for the Children of the Perishing and Dangerous Classes, and for Juvenile Offenders (1851). The practical application of her principles would require the establishment of special residential institutions for young offenders but a shift in official policies towards juvenile delinquency.

Mary Carpenter's writings and discussions with other reformers prepared the ground for a conference in Birmingham in 1851. The conference recommended three different forms of schooling- ragged, industrial, and reformatory- for different children to be conducted by voluntary agencies but subject to state inspection. She began to put these theories into practice in Bristol by founding a school in Kingswood in 1852, and a separate reformatory school for girls at the Red Lodge in Park Row in 1854. Meanwhile she also gave evidence before a parliamentary enquiry on juvenile delinquency (1852) and wrote Juvenile Delinquents, their Condition and Treatment (1853). Her work put pressure on parliament to reform and the result was the Youthful Offenders Act of 1854, described as "the Magna Carta of the neglected child".

Mary Carpenter gained national recognition later in life for her visits and interest in female education on the subcontinent. She made her first trip to India in 1866 and wrote an account of her journey in Six Months in India (1868), a copy of which was sent to Queen Victoria who interviewed her about the subject in 1868. She attempted in 1868 to set up a school in Bombay but that proved unsuccessful but managed to set up two girl's schools at Bombay and Ahmadabad at her own expense in 1869-70. She returned to England to set up the National Indian Association which provided information on English education for Indian visitors.

Although her last years were mostly spent on the educational reform of India, she also managed to take a lecture tour in 1873 to the United States and Canada and became vice-president of the Ladies' National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. She also lobbied the senate of University of London to open degrees up for women.