The Idler in 1750 comments on female education as spoiling girls for service:
Scarcely a wench was to be got for all work, since education had made such numbers of fine ladies that nobody would now accept a lower title than that of waiting-maid, or something that might qualify her to wear laced shoes and long ruffles and to sit at work in the parlor window.
2. Charity Schools
In 1698 the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge started a movement for the establishment of charity schools. An organized propaganda for getting subscriptions was undertaken by the bishops and was so successful that between 1698 and 1715 more than one hundred of these schools were established in London and Westminster. In this scheme poor girls were considered as well as poor boys. They were, of course, in separate schools.[392] Each school had a prescribed uniform and the pupils marching in a body made a picturesque addition to many a civic festival. In 1714 Thoresby went to hear "the Bishop of London preach the charity sermon before an almost innumerable company of poor children, decently clad in various colours, which are Christianly educated and cared for in the several wards of the city, both for soul and body."[393] In 1723 he again records seeing the Lord Mayor in all his pomp going to St. Bride's Church with a great train of charity children, all decently habited, some with blue coats with yellow vests, others brown, most with blue caps, but some with white hats and mathematical instruments in their hands.[394] By 1753 the number of charity children that went to Christ Church to hear the Anniversary Sermon was five thousand. William Blake, in Songs of Innocence (1789) and in Songs of Experience (1799), gives the impression of great numbers. In the first of these commemorations Blake voices what was the general attitude, and that is a eulogy of London's magnificent generosity. The second one represents a much more modern tone, that of question as to a city's social and civic standards where the supply of helpless orphans was so large and so constant.
The word education is too pretentious for most of these schools. The purpose in the main was to train boys and girls for service. In the pictures drawn by Hogarth in 1741 in honor of Captain Coram's noble charity, The Foundling Hospital, the three little girls in the foreground are holding a spinning-wheel, a sampler, and a broom, indicating branches of industry to which they were destined.
There were also many privately endowed schools in various parts of England. In 1726 William Law, the author of The Serious Call, brought out a treatise on Christian Perfection. It is said that an anonymous stranger presented him with £1000 on reading it. The next year Law founded a school for fourteen girls at King's Cliffe, and the money is supposed to have come from this gift. When Archibald Hutcheson died in 1740 he expressed a wish that his widow should lead a retired and religious life under Law's guidance. Miss Hester Gibbon joined Mrs. Hutcheson. Their joint income was £2600 a year, most of which they planned to spend in charity. In 1744 they settled down in King's Cliffe in Law's house, formerly a royal manor house and known as "King John's Palace," where they continued the girls' school, and added to it a school for eighteen boys. The important schools in Yorkshire founded by Lady Elizabeth Hastings have already been mentioned.
Other more private and personal and less permanent educational ventures are occasionally recorded. A religious family school something after the fashion of Little Gidding was now and then attempted. One "religious retirement" is mentioned by Bishop Ken. Two dear friends whom he frequently visited were Mary and Anne Kemys of Cefn Mably, Glamorganshire. After the death of their mother in 1683 they went to reside at Naish Court, about a mile from Porteshead. There they established a kind of Anglican sisterhood where they lived a devout life and did charitable works. Bishop Ken was their spiritual adviser, and since he had known Nicholas Ferrar well, it is not unlikely that the ideals at Naish Court were somewhat like those at Little Gidding.[395] In 1698 Sir George Wheler brought out a tractate entitled A Protestant Monastery, or Christian Œconomics, containing Directions for the Religious Conduct of a Family. He founded and endowed a school for girls at Houghton-le-Springs, Durham, when he was rector there. Sir George Wheler was an intimate friend and a disciple of Dr. Hickes with whom he went abroad. It was evidently through the influence of Dr. Hickes that he became an advocate of higher education for women.
About the middle of the century Mrs. Montagu went to Bath-Easton to visit her sister, Mrs. Scott, and Lady Bab Montagu, who had chosen a life of retirement and good works. On her return to Sandleford, Mrs. Montagu wrote as follows to Mr. Gilbert West:
My sister rises early, and as soon as she has read prayers to their small family, she sits down to cut out and prepare work for 12 poor girls, whose schooling they pay for; to those whom she finds more than ordinarily capable, she teaches writing and arithmetic herself. The work these children are usually employed in is making child-bed linen and clothes for poor people in the neighborhood, which Lady Bab Montagu and she bestow as they see occasion. Very early on Sunday morning these girls, with 12 little boys whom they also send to school, come to my sisters and repeat their catechism, read some chapters, have the principal articles of their religion explained to them, and then are sent to the parish church. These good works are often performed by the Methodist ladies in the best of enthusiasm, but thank God, my sister's is a calm and rational piety. Her conversation is lively and easy, and she enters into all the reasonable pleasures of Society; goes frequently to the plays, and sometimes to balls, etc. They have a very pretty house at Bath for the winter, and one at Bath Easton for the summer; their houses are adorned by the ingenuity of the owners, but as their income is small, they deny themselves unnecessary expences. My sister seems very happy; it has pleased God to lead her to truth, by the road of affliction; but what draws the sting of death and triumphs over the grave, cannot fail to heal the wounds of disappointment. Lady Bab Montagu concurs with her in all these things, and their convent, for by its regularity it resembles one, is really a cheerful place.[396]