Queens College

In 1848 Frederick Denison Maurice and a small group of tutors at King's College, London established Queen's College in Harley Street. Funded by the Governesses' Benevolent Institution, the first group of students to attend this new training school for teachers included Dorothea Beale, Sophia Jex-Blake and Francis Mary Buss. Maurice, who was Professor of Theology at King's, became principal and the main lecturer at Queen's College.

Primary Sources

(1) Blanche Athena Clough, A Memoir of Anne Jemima Clough (1897)

Miss Clough became acquainted with Miss Emily Davies and Madame Bodichon. Before long, also, Miss Clough came to know Miss Buss, and she visited and warmly admired her school, already a large and successful one. The movement for obtaining improved education for girls had now been in progress for some years, and important steps had already been taken. Queen's College was founded by the Governesses' Benevolent Institution in 1848, with the help of F. D. Maurice (who became its first Principal) and of other professors of King's College.

(2) In 1848 Frederick Denison Maurice became the first head of Queen's College in Harley Street, a new training school for women teachers. The first group of students included Dorothea Beale, Sophia Jex-Blake and Frances Mary Buss. In his inaugural lecture he explained his ideas on teaching.

The vocation of a teacher is an awful one… she will do others unspeakable harm if she is not aware of its usefulness… How can you give a woman self-respect, how can you win for her the respect of others… Watch closely the first utterances of infancy, the first dawnings of intelligence; how thoughts spring into acts, how acts pass into habits. The study is not worth much if it is not busy about the roots of things.