Publisher's Synopsis
This book is the story of a school and a very unusual one, the Red MaidsÆ School at Bristol. Founded 350 years ago by a local merchant and with detailed records of its long history, its story is that of the education of girls throughout the past four centuries. The hospital school of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which taught only housework, sewing, spinning and occasionally reading gave place in 1791 to a more enlightened regime where the girls learned writing and arithmetic as well as singing and religious knowledge. The nineteenth century brought government commissions and the addition of history and geography to the curriculum but domestic service was still the destiny of the majority of the girls until the last quarter of the century, when new subjects and public examinations led to careers in business, nursing and teaching. The last eighty years have seen new buildings outside the city, a greater emphasis on scholarship and a wider choice of careers but more government influence until, in 1976, the school had once again to make its own way as an independent school. This it has done with notable success and still endeavours to help the disadvantaged in the spirit of its worthy founder.
