November 28, 1870 — Meeting of working men and women, Cadogan Rooms, London, United Kingdom

Mr. CHAIRMAN, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN, —

May I not say friends, for from a very early period of my canvass, I have felt that it was among the workingmen and women that the principle of a woman’s candidature met with the readiest and most cordial acceptance. You, whose children are to be educated in the schools established by the Board, have felt that there should be women on that Board to represent the mothers of your children, and to look after the education of your girls. I do not know how far it may be possible to give technical education to boys in addition to the ordinary instruction. It would involve a very large expense for workshops and masters in the many different trades to be taught; but I am quite sure that girls ought to receive what I may call their technical education, which is the same for all, because all must be trained in the habits which make home healthy and happy. They ought to be taught, not only how to sew, but how to make and mend their clothes; what are the qualities of food and how to cook it, so as to get the most nourishment at least cost; the necessity of cleanliness and ventilation to preserve health, and those simple precautions in sickness which are like the “stitch in time that saves nine,” and which would save many a doctor’s bill, and many a day’s wages. They should learn, in short, as their proper business, all the arts by which the wife and home can compete with the public-house, and the mother be enabled to send her children to school prepared to get the most good from it. But how are girls to be taught these things if there are no women on the Board to choose the mistresses who are to teach them  I do not think gentlemen will be able to tell whether needlework is well or ill done; whether new clothes are economically cut out and old ones neatly darned, or only cobbled; nor will they be able to look into any of those details of health and habits, which are so important in training girls.

Now, as to the general education to be given to boys and girls alike, I would carry it as far as possible. We may not have time to give a large amount of actual knowledge, but we shall do much if we rouse the children’s intelligence, if we awaken their curiosity about the world we live in, and the laws which govern it, and which are as much God’s laws as the Ten Commandments. These laws must be obeyed if we are to have healthy minds in healthy bodies, and a healthy, prosperous community. The School Board will have great power, and I should like to see it establish three classes of schools in each school building; the lowest to take the place of what are called ragged schools, for the unhappy children picked up in the gutter whom no respectable workingman would like to see sitting on the same bench with his children, with all the dirt, moral and physical, of the gutter clinging to them. When they have been cleansed of the dirt, they should be drafted into the next class where the elements of education should be thoroughly given to all. The third and highest class should be for those who can afford to remain longer at school, and should give the knowledge and the habits of mind I spoke of just now, and which will help them to steer their course wisely through life. It has been objected that, if we educate the people so highly, we shall get no servants, no one to do the rough work of the world. Everybody will be above doing it.

If this were true, it would only prove that, instead of being over-educated, the people are not educated enough, or rather not really educated at all. For the very first principle of any education worthy of the name is this: that duty must come first and everything else afterwards; that whatever work it is our duty in life to do must be done and done as well as we can. There has been much talk of late years about rights, the right of landlords, the right of tenants, rights of men, and rights of women; but we hear very little of the duties attached to those rights. I should like never to hear of a right without hearing of the duty which follows from the right. The rights of men and women rest on their being persons not things, capable of understanding and voluntarily accepting the law by which they shall be governed; and the duty which belongs to that right is that they shall obey the law they have accepted, not as slaves from the fear of punishment, but as free agents because obedience is right. I have always thought that the noblest as well as the simplest appeal ever made to men going into battle was Nelson’s order of the day before the battle of Trafalgar: ” England expects every man to do his duty.” This life is a battle to us all, a battle between the great armies of good and evil, and I should like to see written up in every school-room as the standing order of the day to the children we send out thence to fight: God and the country expect all to do their duty.

And, friends, let me say a word on a different subject from that which has brought us here to-night, but one which may come very close home to us ere long. This country may be on the eve of a war. Before a week is over, we may have been forced to declare war in defence of the principle of honour between nations, the sacredness of national contracts. In this war with one of the greatest military powers of Europe, we may be beaten by superior numbers, we may be beaten by superior skill, but we shall never be shamefully, dishonourably beaten as the French were in the beginning of their war with Prussia; if all of us, everyman and every woman, we determine that whatever our duty is, we will do it and die rather than leave it undone.

After what I have said, you will not need to be told that I am in favour of religious education, for the real basis of duty is the the sense of responsibility to God. I am also in favour of the Bible being read and explained in the Schools. But I would restrict both reading and explanation to those practical portions which enforce the principles of love to God and love to man, excluding doctrines which could not be taught consistently with any honest interpretation of the Act. It is said that this is not religion. I say it is the religion which teaches men to live Christianity instead of only professing it. It is the religion which Christ himself taught when he said, “Not every one that saith unto me ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.”

I have only to add a few words on my personal qualifications for the post I ask for. I am, as you see, a woman no longer young. I have learnt something of human life and human nature through much experience and much suffering, and have written on education though for a different class; but the principles of education are the same because human nature is the same in every class whether in the palace or the cottage. I have time, strength, and independence to enable me to devote myself to the work. I have nothing to gain by this election and much to lose: I have already lost much in the privacy which all the habits of my life made most precious to me. This seat on the School Board will be the very reverse of a sinecure; — that is all pay and no work this will be all work and no pay. But I am willing to do hard work in such a cause and count it honour; for I count honour as Christ our Master counted it when He said: “Whosoever would be great among you, let him be your servant.” If you, workingmen and women of Chelsea, think me worthy to serve you, if you think me worthy to represent on this Board the mothers of your children, I will work for you to the utmost of m y strength and ability, and ask no other reward at the end of my three years of office than to be told by you: Well done, good and faithful servant.

Source: The School Board of London: Three Addresses of Mrs. William Grey, in the Borough of Chelsea, with a Speech by William Grove, Esq., Q.C., FRS (London: W. Ridgway, 1871), pp. 20-23.