‘Health is the first consideration for effective study’ : physical training, health education and girlhood at schools and colleges in Britain 1870-1910s

Abstract

This thesis is the first to provide an in-depth exploration of how health practices at school contributed to changing ideas of girls and girlhood between approximately 1870 and 1914. It analyses how a small group of academically ambitious schools for middle-class girls introduced physical training, health and hygiene education and medical inspections as well as the ways schools were part of debates about healthy dress and hygienic furniture. There are two main arguments to this thesis. Firstly that health practices played a major role in how schools and colleges became centres of new constructions of girlhood. Secondly, this thesis argues that ideas drawn from the wider hygiene reform movement influenced schools, particularly ideas about the material environment of the school. These schools became centres of expertise about girls’ health through the efforts and writings of schoolmistresses, medical superintendents and gymnastic teachers. It focuses upon a small group of six schools and colleges, primarily in England (one in Scotland): the North London Collegiate School, Manchester High School for Girls, St Leonards, Wycombe Abbey, Roedean and the Bergman Österberg Physical Training College. The thesis expands on Hilary Marland’s 2013 study of health and girlhood, where she argues that healthy motherhood was not the only purposes of health practices at school. The thesis provides further evidence for this claim by arguing that a ‘reformist atmosphere’ existed at schools, which enlarged girls' potential to have careers or go to university. Through analysis of medical and educational texts, archival material, and sources from girls themselves (including unexplored material from the Bergman Österberg Collection), the thesis demonstrates shifting and relational concepts of agency between schools, schoolmistresses and girls, to show how these schools were not static but self-reflexive. The thesis unites a disparate range of historical fields including the histories of education, sport and medicine, and the histories of girlhood, family and gender.