A Respectable Occupation: - University of Hertfordshire Research ...

policy of an occupation; they would need the benefit of an education, and
here another difficulty emerged.
Before 1850 no one considered that there was a need for state
education for middle and upper class children in England and Wales, as
private enterprise was providing that service. 48 Henry Brougham, an avid
reformer and intermittent Member of Parliament, had been interested in
improving education and making it universally available since 1810. 49 In
the 1850s he presented a petition to the House of Commons that sought to
improve middle class education, leading eventually to a Royal Commission
under Lord Taunton, set up by Palmerston‘s government in 1864. 50 The
government under Gladstone passed the Education Act in 1870, providing
nationwide education supported by money from the rates. 51 Elementary
education became compulsory for all children between 1870 and 1880. 52 But
there was still a difficulty for working class children, as their attendance at
school prevented them from working and contributing to the family‘s
income. 53 Consequently, it was only middle class children that could hope to
gain sufficient secondary education to become apothecaries or even
apothecaries‘ assistants.
Education for middle class boys, at the time, was available in
grammar schools, public schools and private boarding schools, but large
differences in standards existed amongst them; and the situation for girls
48
Sutherland, „Education‟ in Thompson, (ed.) The Cambridge Social History of Britain, p. 132.
49
M. Lobban, „Brougham, Henry Peter, first Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778-1868)‟, Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Sept. 2004); online edn., Jan 2008.
50
Sutherland, „Education‟ in Thompson, (ed.) The Cambridge Social History of Britain, pp. 146-147 and
McDonald, Clara Collet, p. 16.
51
Sutherland, „Education‟ in Thompson, (ed.) The Cambridge Social History of Britain, p. 142.
52
D. Vincent, Literacy and Popular Culture England 1750-1914 (Cambridge, 1989), p. 67.
53
Vincent, Literacy and Popular Culture, p. 72.
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