Mary Ann Bolam and her ‘Academic Antecedents’

The name Mary Bolam (1861-1949) has figured prominently in this blog thanks to her roles as Censor and Warden of St Andrew’s. She had moved from Cheltenham Ladies’ College to Reading in 1900 where her job description was ‘Assistant to the Vice-Principal, and Censor of Women Students in Licensed Lodgings.’ She held the position of Censor until 1911, but continued as Warden until her retirement in 1927.

In his memoir W. M. Childs wrote that:

‘Miss Bolam had passed through Somerville College, Oxford, and she had also come under the spell of Miss Beale at Cheltenham. But no one who knew her ever troubled about her academic antecedents, for Miss Bolam was a personality on her own account. She had strong organizing genius, strong will, clear purpose, north-country toughness under trial, and benevolence at heart.’ (Childs, 1933, p. 182)

Praise indeed! But is there a note of scepticism in the references to Miss Beale and to Miss Bolam’s ‘academic antecedents’?

Cheltenham Ladies’ College

Dorothea Beale (1831-1906) was a suffragist and pioneering educationalist who became head of Cheltenham Ladies’ College in 1858. Edith Morley described her and her colleague Frances Buss as having ‘revolutionised girls’ education’ (Morley, 2016, p. 43). It would therefore seem a laudable achievement that Miss Bolam had worked there as a teacher educator. The Ladies’ College Magazine recorded her appointment like this:

‘Miss Bolam, L.L.A. who passed the Honours History School from Somerville College, Oxford, and has since been Mistress of Method at the Durham Training College, joins the staff of the Training Department.’ (Cheltenham Ladies’ College Magazine, Autumn, 1897, p. 296).

 

Bolam salary letter
Letter from Cheltenham Ladies’ College to Mary Bolam about her salary, October 1897.

The above letter gives her salary as £65 per annum, although Council minutes for the same month state a figure of £150 plus board. A further letter of July 1899 shows that this was increased to £195 per annum plus a £2 capitation bonus for every student above 10 who was enrolled in the Government Training Department of which she was Head Mistress.

The College’s extensive archive has preserved past copies of the College Magazine, and several accounts of Bolam’s work at Cheltenham have been tracked down in them by Mrs Rachel Roberts, the College Archivist:

    • In the Kindergarten Training Department she gave lectures and model lessons (College Magazine, 1898, 37, p. 156).
    • Her first report on the work of the ‘Government Department’ appeared in the Magazine in 1898 (37, pp. 157-58): this was a new department but already had seven students in training. Bolam stated that ‘the Ladies’ College has now a recognised position under Government inspection’ (p. 157).
    • She wrote a report on the ‘Elementary Training Department’ that appeared in the Magazine In 1899 (39, p. 71): there were now eleven women trainees and they were able to use All Saints School for practical experience.
    • In the same issue, it was announced that a paper on ‘Story-telling to Little Children’ that she had delivered in Cardiff at a conference on Kindergarten Teaching had now been published. It was stated that ‘The little pamphlet will be found to contain many interesting observations on Child nature and child growth.’ (39, p. 92)
    • In spring 1900 the Magazine recorded that she had been assisting in the Secondary Training Department (41, p. 83).
    • In the same issue her final report on the Elementary Training Department appeared: the number of trainees was now up to nineteen. She noted that, ‘The weekly criticism lessons are greatly enjoyed by the children who consider themselves severely punished if they are excluded.’ (41, p.85) (see my earlier post for an account of the criticism lesson at Reading).
    • She left the College in 1900 (42, p. 299).
Reading College and Unversity College, Reading

Mary Bolam’s name doesn’t appear in the Reading College Calendars until 1901-2 when her membership of the Tutorial and Residence Committees is recorded. She is listed as Assistant Lecturer in Geography and her address given as St Andrew’s Hostel, Reading. Two years later she had been moved from Geography to Tutor in Preliminary Studies.

Given her previous experience training teachers it seems surprising that she hadn’t been recruited immediately into the Education Department. According to Holt (1977), it was why she had come to Reading, but I can find no evidence of this until 1911 when she appeared in the Calendar as Lecturer in Education (Primary Division).

There is, however, evidence from the Reading press that she was actively involved with schools and teacher education from the very beginning. The Reading Mercury, for example, recorded that in 1901 she gave a lecture on ‘Teachers and Teaching’ at a Pupil Teacher Centre in Basingstoke to managers and trainees from 14 schools in the district. She also presented a paper on ‘Telling Stories to Little Children’ at a meeting of the Parents’ National Education Union at Reading in 1903 (the report in the Reading Mercury referred to her as ‘Assistant Lecturer in History and Literature’). Similar reports of lectures on subjects such as child rearing, and speeches at prize-givings continued throughout her career.

By her retirement in 1927, Mary Bolam was a member of the University Court and the Senate, and had been a member of the Academic Board and Academic Governors of the University College. As Holt put it in his history of the University’s first 50 years, ‘… Miss Bolam in her last year had become a living legend.’ (Holt, 1977, p. 66).

Bolam edited
Mary Bolam (undated; University of Reading Special Collections)

My next post will give a brief summary of Bolam’s qualifications and career, followed by events after her retirement.

Thanks to:

Mrs Rachel Roberts, College Archivist, Cheltenham Ladies’ College, for searching College Magazines, Staff Indexes and Correspondence for references to Mary Bolam.

Dr Rhianedd Smith (University Museums and Special Collections Services) for passing on material about Mary Bolam from the British Newspaper Archive and for retrieving census data.

Sources

Cheltenham Ladies’ College. Letters to Mary Bolam, Letter Book, pages 119 &227.

Cheltenham Ladies’ College Magazines, 1897 to 1900.

Cheltenham Ladies’ College. Council Minutes, October 1897

Childs, W. M. (1933). Making a university: an account of the university movement at Reading. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

Holt, J. C. (1977). The University of Reading: the first fifty years. Reading: University of Reading Press.

Morley, E. J. (2016). Before and after: reminiscences of a working life (original text of 1944 edited by Barbara Morris). Reading: Two Rivers Press.

Parents’ National Education Union: Meeting at Reading. (1903, January 31). Reading Mercury, p. 7.

Pupil Teacher Centre. (1901, June 8). Reading Mercury, p. 6.

Pupil Teachers’ Gathering at Basingstoke. (1901, June 15). Reading Mercury, p. 6.

Reading College. Calendars, 1900-1902, 1925-6.

University College, Reading. Calendar, 1903-04, 1926-27.

Women Students, Social Work and Fears of Infection (1925)

In a post of 7 September 2021, I mentioned that the Covid crisis wasn’t the first time that the London Road Campus had been closed because of an epidemic –  in 1917 an outbreak of measles brought about a complete shutdown for two weeks at the end of the Lent Term.

The possibility of infection spreading across the campus and halls of residence continued to be a concern during the 1920s. This is illustrated by correspondence from February and March 1925 about students’ involvement in social work. The record of these is incomplete, but the gaps can be inferred from the five documents that remain.

It appears that a group of women students had been in contact with a Miss M. Maplesden, Secretary to the Reading Council of Social Welfare. They wished to carry out voluntary work in Coley, an area of social deprivation and overcrowding near the centre of Reading (see Ounsley, 2021). The students were advised to approach Professor Childs, Principal of the College, who requested that Miss Maplesden write to him formally. This she did on 24th February 1925.

Letter 1:  Miss Maplesden to Professor childs
Shows letter heading
University of Reading Special Collections

In her letter, Miss Maplesden made three main suggestions:

    • that the students should join Domestic Science students who would already be observing social work in the neighbourhood;
    • having found out what aspects of social work would be suitable, they would submit a plan for the following academic year to the Principal;
    • the students should take responsibility for Coley Hall which had recently been offered to the Council for use on weekdays;
    • in addition, she was in favour of the scheme being extended to include men students.
Letter 2:  Miss Maplesden to Professor childs

The following day she wrote again to Professor Childs. From the content we can infer that they had already met to discuss the proposal, and that Childs had warned her that Hall Wardens were likely to be concerned about students bringing back infection from the Coley area.

Apparently, she had already informed her Executive Committee of the risk, and in an attempt to forestall such objections, she includes the following, rather baffling, justification:

‘Members of the Committee drew attention to the fact that during a period of epidemic the schools in crowded areas such as Coley, Greyfriars and Silver Street are as a rule less open to epidemics than the schools in better neighbourhoods.’

Memo 1: Professor Childs to the Hall Wardens

On the 3rd March 1925, Childs sent out a memo. It isn’t clear whether it went to all the wardens of halls and members of the two Hall Management Committees; on the typed copy in the University’s Special Collections, just five names have been added by hand:

    • ‘bolam’ (Mary Bolam, Warden of St Andrews Hall – for women);
    • ‘britton’ (Winifred Britton, Wessex Hall – for women);
    • ‘Mrs. Childs’ (Emma Catherine Childs – wife of the Principal – Chair of the Committee for the Management of Women’s Halls of Residence);
    • ‘Little’ (Emily K. Little, St George’s Hall – for women);
    • ‘Cooke’ (H. S. Cooke, Cintra Lodge – for women: the only women’s hall with a male warden).

In the memo, he explained the situation and asked the wardens for their views. He warned that:

‘There are certain things which it is necessary to bear in mind, namely, the risk of infection and the general conditions under which the work is done.’

Childs received five replies; unfortunately only Letter 3 (see below) has survived.

Letter 3: Winifred Britton to Professor Childs

On 5th March 1925, Winifred Britton responded with a handwritten letter from Wessex Hall outlining her objections:

    • there was too little time for the volunteers to shadow the domestic science students who were studying social welfare;
    • ‘Coley is one of the poorest districts in Reading & the risk of infection would be great’;
    • Coley was a long way from the College and time would be wasted travelling;
    • ‘… it would entail students being absent from Hall dinner, a thing which is always discouraged.’
    • there might be a lack of organisation, supervision and leadership;
    • finally: ‘Also I do think that [the students] are inclined to forget the fact they are sent here to pursue a definite course of study which leaves very little time for outside activities.’

According to an interview conducted by J. C. Holt (1977), the relationship between Britton and Childs was a difficult one, and Britton resigned in 1929. I don’t know whether it was a factor in this case.

Letter 4:  Professor Childs to Miss Maplesden

On the 18th March 1925, Childs sent a diplomatically worded letter declining the proposal. In doing so, he drew on several of Winifed Britton’s arguments. Nevertheless, he denied that risk of infection was a factor – after all, Education students were already doing teaching practice in local elementary schools. Instead, he suggested that the students could help run a summer camp.

‘Coley Talking’

The social history of Coley has been documented by Margaret Ounsley in ‘Coley talking: realities of life in old Reading’. Her chapter, ‘Talking of health, medicine, illness and death’, presents details of epidemics of measles, influenza, tuberculosis and diphtheria. To avoid too negative a picture, however, it is worth quoting part of the conclusion to that chapter, especially as it refers to the year of the Maplesden/Childs correspondence:

‘It would be wrong to give the impression that the population of Coley was completely disease-ridden. Undoubtedly, the poorest children were undernourished in the first few decades but by 1925 attendances at the Southampton Street Feeding Centre had dropped to eight. Many infants and children died, but also many people couldn’t remember having a day’s illness in their lives. The children for the most part seem to have led a hardy outdoor life with basic but nourishing food. Coley School won boxing, football and swimming trophies year after year in the 1920s and 1930s. There is no doubt that standards of health improved dramatically at this time.’ (Ounsley, 2021, p. 87)

Sources

Holt, J. C. (1977). The University of Reading: the first fifty years.Reading: University of Reading Press.

Ounsley, M. (2021). Coley talking: realities of life in old Reading. Reading: Two Rivers Press.

University College, Reading. Calendar, 1924-5.

University of Reading Special Collections. Uncatalogued papers relating to women students. Reference UHC AA-SA 8.