o r.ì- -.tk) 'f' women's 'Life-work': Teachers in south Australia, L836-1906 Kay \ühitehead Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of l)octor of Philosophy June 1996 Departments of Education and women's studies - UniversitY of Adelaide Abstract the beginning of This thesis explores women's work as teachers in various contexts from drawing out white settlement in 1g36. [t also analyses the structure of the teaching family, social status of the ways in which \ryomen's teaching contributed to the economic and family, and to their owtr identity. their options mediated From the 185Os women colonised church and state school systems, The middle class not only by class but also by religion, ethnicity and geographic location. sex-segregated teaching family was co-opted as a social and economic unit to accommodate century state' schooling, and men's interests were protected by the mid-nineteenth in small However, women found niches as licensed teachers in single-sex schools and schools country schools. Catholic schools also utilised the teaching family, but Lutheran excluded women as teachers. men as sole Under the 1g75 Act the state individuated wages, institutionalised married Manied breadwinners and fostered the sexual division of labour in teaching families. became an women were marginalised as the state school system expanded and teaching women religious occupation for single women. From 1867 the Catholic church introduced too' By the end of as teachers, thereby making its schools the province of single women still colonised by the nineteenth century the ladies' academy was the only teaching context the traditional teaching familY. juxtaposing Women's agency in negotiating their teaching careers is revealed by document biographical sketches with the narrative of structural change. The sketches the changing women's lives as teachers, demonstrating ways in which they negotiated of school systems' I argue social and family circumstances that accompanied the expansion women's work' that when teaching became waged labour it was exposed publicly as participated in the Tensions between married men and single women escalated as both dominance in the construction of teaching as a profession. Women teachers contested male Many women workplace and by their increasing participation in social and political life. I conclude that' also opted to delay or reject marriage and to make teaching their life-work' a threat to the by the early twentieth century, their public and private challenges constituted gender order. Acknowledgments I thank my supervisors, Dr Gillian Weiss, Dr Margaret Allen and Professor Ian Davey for their support during the course of this thesis. Gitlian and Margaret have guided my reading and sharecl their own research with me. Ian's incisive feedback has redirected my thinking on a number of occasions. as a full- A scholarship from the University of Adelaide enabled me to complete the thesis me time student. The Department of Education and the Faculty of Arts have also provided with support to attend conferences. I would especially like to thank my sister Judy for the use of her computer, Kerett Wicks and Helen Reid for their ongoing support, and Brian Condon and Bob Petersen for reading my work and sharing their extensive knowledge of South Australian history. I have benefited greatly from discussions with Lynne Trethewey, craig campbell, Gina Maureen Dyer, Donna Dwyer and Jane Southcott. Dot Donnellan, Catherine George, Perrotta, Annette and Steve Condous, Anne Horgan' Mildred Mundy, Willi Cabot and Graeme Litster have kept me grounded in the world of twentieth century teachers. My family has patiently endured my absences and supported the project too. 1V Table of Contents Abstract.. 1l iii Declaration iv Acknowledgments. Introduction I in Early South Australia .34 Chapter 1 Teachers in Context: Women's Work Jane Hillier, Hannah Holbrook, Georgina Cawthorne' Mary Bull' Catherine Hart, Nora Young, Mary Jacob .68 Chapter 2 The NineteenthCentury Sheridan, 99 Chapter3 The Education Landscape in the 1850s and 18óOs Caroline Carleton' Mary Best' Ellen Liston, Matilda Evans' Catherine MacMahon, Josephine McMullen, Mathilde Piper Chapter4 Reconfìguring Women's Participationjn State Schooling" " " " 130 ¡unJsøn"*r, t_avinia Seabrooke (later Hyndman), Elizabeth Ann Bell, Augusta Catlow, Mary MackaY t62 Chapter 5 Professionat and Other Teachers in State Schools' Catherine Beaton, Catherine Francis (nee MacMahon)' Kate Catlow, Caroline Jacob, Annie Shaçley' Kate McEwen' Elsie Birks, Pauline Schach Women Teachers in church and Private Schools in the Late Nineteenth chapter 6 199 Century Cccile Nagelle, Alice l¿tham, iustelle Woods, Alma l-oessel' Giles Margaret Ëro*'n, Eliza Parke, Emma Geyer, Mary Giles' Eleanor 23Q Conclusion Blanche McNamara, Lizz-ie Hales 245 Bibliography .... Index of Women Teachers ... 26'.7 Introduction just three months after her arrival in Jane Hillier staked her claim in the education marketplace South Australia and made teaching her life-work' ol Adelaide that she has opened a MRS HILLIER begs to infbrm her Friends and the Public and from long crpericnce in the scHOOL lor a selãct and limited number ol YouNG LADIES, that hel system of instruction and arduous task of' E<lucation, Mrs Hillier flatters hersetf the Parents of these ladies unrcmitting attention to her pupils cannot tail to be approved b1' 'voung trusted to her ca¡e. Pavilion Cottage, near the Gillcs Arcadc' Currie Street' Januar¡' 20' 1838.l of a mention in education history Little did she know that this advertisement would assure her old and' although Jane's several times over.2 The colony was but thirteen months were already teaching in a variety of advertisement was the first for any school, other women the girls in a day school on contexts. Mrs Boots, 'an excellent young woman" taught taught the boys' Mrs Mcleod gave Kangaroo Island while her husband, a Methodist preacher, was one of her pupils'3 Women private tuition in piano and harp, and the governor's daughter members without remuneration' were also teaching their own children or those of family to organising an education Although South Australia's founding investors were committed colony's bankruptcy in l&tl - took system, other exigencies - not the least of them the was in private hands' Thereafter women precedence and for the first decade or so schooling were established. By the end of the teachers colonised state and church schools as they provider of elementary education in South nineteenth century the state had become the major separate school systems' Australia, and the Lutheran and Catholic churches had established as private teachers. This study Women also maintained niches in the education marketplace who taught during the nineteenth century explicates the experiences and perceptions of women homes to state schools of 1000 students' across the full range of contexts from their own p. l. Jane's teaching career will be SoulltAtutrolittnGa:etteandColonialRegisler'20Januaryl 838, a -1927, Ngby, A<lelaidc, 1927 , pp' 25-30; l¡.¡uisc t lhe First Htmclred lears, Rigb-v' Adelaide, 1936' arl' Schools ol South Australia: Their Gron'th téS:, p. l2; Christopher Nance, 'The South e Aspects of South Australia's E'arly' Social 7, p. 218. 3 them into the Women,s history began with the intention of making women visible, of writing women was historical record. In Australia, one of the early accounts of this kind of writing by eclectic commissioned in 1936 by the Women's Centenary Council of South Australia. This collection of articles celebrated women's achievements from the beginning of white settlement' this book' An Women teachers featured prominently as authors, editors and as subjects in article on early private schools in the colony highlighted several young ladies' schools families' including Jane Hillier's, and also demonstrated women's roles as teachers within termed There were also several pieces of fiction written by women teachers.+ Gerda Lemer out that even these projects of making women visible, 'compensatory'history. She pointed ideologies when women's activities are highlighted there is no discussion of the structures and which constrain or oPPress them.5 as teachers Both liberal and revisionist accounts of education history have introduced women around the with the advent of compulsory education and much discussion has coalesced 'feminisation of teaching'.6 [n revisionist literature this term invokes images of a mass accounts movement of women into subordinate positions in the occupation while in liberal of the male women's presence as teachers in state school systems is an unwelcome invasion schools and domain. Researchers claim the sexual division of labour was reproduced in state have characterised that teaching for women was preparation for motherhood. Some accounts generally passive while women teachers as'submissive to authority','lacking in ambition'and structures and others have identified ways in which women were oppressed by male dominated objects or victims of resisted their subordination.T ln much of the literature women were either the construction of men,s agendas. Furthermore, they reacted to, rather than participated in these agendas. Centcnary Council's Prcsidcnt, f Brown, A Book of Sotttlt Australia, pp. 66' 105- 108, I3g, 16f,,, 227. The on behatt'c¡l'women teachers in Adelaide Miethlie, and Secretary' Phebe Watson had been longtimc activists thc sccession of rvomcn lrom the state schtrcls. At the time of publication Phebe tr as quietll'plotting to the presence of femalc labour" Teachers' Union. See Kav Whitchead, "' Manv industrial trc¡u bles arc clue in Etlucation, r'ol. 8, no' 1, The Women Teachers Guild in South Australia' 1937- 194)" Hislori<'al Snulies in Histor-r': Reconstructing thc 1996. For further discussion ol this book, sec Patricia Grimshau'. 'Women Science and Public Polic.v' Allen Past' in Jacquclinc Goodnow' and Carole Patcman (ed)s, Wonten, Social and Unu'in, S1'dne¡', 1985, P. 48. ,Placing studies' no' 3, 1975' p' ) Gerda Lerner, women In Histor¡: Definitions and challenges" l'-eminisl 'ìencler itt Att.çlralia: I)otninaliott antl 5.