Amy Badley
Mary Amy Garrett, the eldest of four children of Mary Gray Garrett and Reverend John Fisher Garrett, the Rector of All Saints Church, Elton, was born on 27th May 1862. (1)
John Garrett had been married to Elizabeth Pillcock Garrett. Rhoda Garrett had been born in 1841. It has been claimed by Ethel Smyth that his second wife "practically turned her predecessor's children out of the house to fend for themselves" and Rhoda had a "terrible struggle" to support herself and her younger brothers and sisters, and was "dogged by ill-health as well as poverty". (2)
In 1871 Reverend John Fisher Garrett,was living with his second wife and four children at The Rectory, Well Street, Elton, Derbyshire. Mary Amy Garrett was 8-years-old, her brother Fydell Edmund was 5 and her twin younger siblings, Elsie and John Herbert Garrett were one-year olds. (3)
Her mother, Mary Gray Garrett, died aged 40 in 1872. Her father, John Fisher Garrett, died aged 75, on 21st November 1878. When the 1881 Census was taken, two of Mary Amy Garrett's siblings, Fydell and Elsie, were away at different boarding schools and her younger brother John Herbert Garrett was living in London at 2 Gower Street under the care of his half-sister, Rhoda Garrett, a house decorator and interior designer who was in an interior decorating business partnership with her cousin Agnes Garrett. (4)
When the 1891 Census was carried out, Amy Garrett was living in Gateshead, County Durham, boarding at 13 Bloomfield Terrace, the home of Miss Elizabeth Hindmarsh. Now aged 28-year-old Mary Amy Garrett was recorded as a "High School Mistress (Music)". Boarding at the same house was a 27-year-old Scottish woman named Jeanie Coulter, described on the census return as a "High School Mistress (Classics)". (5)
Marriage to John Haden Garrett
Amy Garrett met John Haden Badley, a teacher at Abbotsholme School, near the village of Rocester, who had been to university with her brother, Fydell Edmund Garrett. Abbotsholme was a progressive school run by Cecil Reddie, who had been inspired by the socialist ideas of John Ruskin. "He did not intend to modify or ameliorate the existing pattern of public school, but to being a new order. Abbotsholme was... a place from which boys would go forth to revitalise a country that was sliding into decline, displaced by the martial, manly vigor, order and energetic self-confidence of Bismarckian Germany." (6)
John Badley was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge University, where he gained a first class in part one of the classical tripos in 1887. He wrote later that his Cambridge years, during which he was exposed to the ideas of Edward Carpenter and William Morris, had exerted a major influence on his later life. (7)
Amy Garrett married John Haden Badley on 8th November 1892, at Gengenbach, Baden, Germany. (8) Amy and John began talking about setting up their own progressive school. Badley found Cecil Reddie a difficult man to work with. Although he shared Reddie's educational philosophy, that included "dismissing the classics, arguing for the study of modern societies, envisaging inter-disciplinary links between history and geography" as well as being "a firm believer in craft education and manual work", he disagreed with his autocratic style of leadership. Edward Carpenter, who had helped fund the venture, shared Badley's concerns. (9) So did fellow member of staff, Robert Franklin Muirhead, who told John Bruce Glasier that Reddie's manner had "turned the whole project sour for him." (10)
Badley commented that: "Reddie taught me everything I needed to do and what not to do". Although he admitted that it was "Reddie who helped him to discover what he wanted to do in education. He spoke later of having been apprenticed to a master craftsman." (11) Reddie, who was an homosexual "disliked the company of women" and "women were seen as servants in the kitchens". He also disapproved of Badley's marriage and so he felt he had to leave Abbotsholme School. (12)
Bedales School
Amy and John Badley wanted to create a school that would turn an "educational ideal into a way of life". (13) They made plans for the new school while they were on holiday in Norway with Fydell Edmund Garrett. They produced a pamphlet setting out the aims and ideals of the new school. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson also gave advice on this new venture. Garret designed the school badge: the rose stood for England and the bee for hard work. (14)
Garrett was working as a journalist with the Pall Mall Gazette and managed to persuade the editor, William Stead, to give the proposed school some publicity. Badley gave an interview to the newspaper where he made it clear that he objected to the idea that without a thorough classical schooling and passing a lot of exams would not have much of a future career in the world: "If the parent's wish or necessity is that the boy should carry off these prizes at all hazards, I would rather not have him."
Badley went on to argue: "A lad who can handle an axe as well as a bat, slice a broken trace, mend his own clothes like a sailor, swim a swollen ford, level a road, knock together a box or a table, graft an apple-tree: a lad who has learnt that these and other things which are useful to men are not unworthy of a gentleman... A boy who would be nonplussed by half the small contretemps of life if he happened not to be at the end of a bell-pull with a servant at the other - such a boy may get along through that world in a good enough black coat, but... well, he's a poor product, surely, of this world of ours!" (15)
Amy and John Badley opened the school in a rented house called Bedales at Lindfield, near Haywards Heath, in January 1893.in partnership with fellow teacher Oswald Byrom Powell (1867-1967), and his wife Winifred Cobb Powell (1861-1937). John later wrote to Oswald: "People ought always to speak of it as our work (yours and Winifred's as much as Amy's and mine)." (16)
Growth at first was slow, though Bedales School soon became known in other countries through the writings of the French social theorist Edmond Demolins, who sent his own son to Bedales School. (17) On 3rd October 1894, Amy Badley gave birth to John Edmund Badley, the couple's only child. (18)
In November 1893 William Stead gave Bedales more publicity in his Review of Reviews and this was picked up by the local newspaper, Mid Sussex Times: "Mr. Ruskin with his road-making and weaving, Edward Carpenter with his market gardening, and Mr. Gladstone with his tree felling, should highly approve the way in which at these schools gardening and carpentry and the like are put into the regular day's programme…. The idea is that the varied day with its alternations of manual and brain work and games, and social recreations in the evening, is so interesting that the youngsters need less driving during the brief hours at the desk… Both Abbotsholme and Bedales disavow any wish to be a wheel in the great "competition mill", the pivots of which are scholarships and money prizes. Marks and prizes are dispensed with at both schools, and it is stated their absence is not missed. Both assert strongly the schoolmaster's duty to look after character equally with mind and body." (19)
John Badley and his wife and his wife's sister, Elsie Garrett, on his left (1893)
In January 1898 Amy and John Badley decided to admit girls to the school. John told a friend: "There are not many, I think, who will seriously contest the gain for both sexes, though all will feel the grave difficulties that will prove fatal to any ill-considered or unwisely made attempt... The hunt is up, and the chorus of execration and contempt has begun... We shall lose boys, of course, but I shan't mind this (it will blow away the chaff) if we can only get the real plan started. If you do anything to make it known in likely quarters I know you won't fail Bedales now that it stands on the razor's edge." (20)
As a result of this decision Bedales became the first boarding-school in the country to which boys and girls were admitted on a fully equal basis. (21) Some parents were upset by this decision: "On the whole the idea has been better received than I expected... and so far only one boy has been actually withdrawn: but we shall lose four more when the change takes place... if only we get our six girls we shall do." (22)
At the time the main arguments against co-education included "premature development of sex feelings, weakening of sex characteristics, and overstrain of girls competing with boys." The Badleys saw their school "as a family, boys and girls as in effect brothers and sisters; therefore warm affection and comradeship were natural, and sexual feelings unnatural." (23)
One of his main critics was Cecil Reddie, his former colleague, the headmaster of Abbotsholme School. "We feel bound... to put an end, once and for all, to the widespread and misleading notion that Bedales is on similar lines and that, therefore, the views of Mr Badley and his associates, male and female, are a safe guide to the earnest enquirer about Abbotsholme. We have always stood for the rights of boys and men in Education, whereas, to us, Bedales has always appeared to lean towards the feminine view of what boys and men should do and think and be... Some years ago Bedales went the whole hog and adopted co-education... even during the unstable period of adolescence... which we have always considered fundamentally unsound in theory and pernicious in practice, between the ages of eleven and eighteen." (24)
Badley, influenced by the writings of Sigmund Freud, started a new course for the students: "Sex, Marriage and Parenthood". He believed that "co-education would lead to more balanced relationships, no lop-sided preoccupation with sex, happier marriages". Basil Gimson, who was both a student and teacher at the school, did his own research into the impact of co-education, discovered that 11% of Bedalians married each other. (25)
Stories emerged that boys and girls did not use bathing costumes when swimming at the school. One prep school teacher wrote a letter on behalf of a prospective parent: "Mrs Luker... is somewhat disturbed about certain aspects of co-education due, apparently to the influence of various friends... What are the bathing conditions at Bedales? Are the usual costumes worn? Are there love-affairs between girls and boys? Have there been any regrettable occurrences in this direction." (26) Esmond Romilly, who went to Bedales found the school puritanical, especially in its attitude to sex. He claimed that relationships with girls as there were seemed to consist of "social sex of a lemonadish variety". (27)
By this time the accommodation at old Bedales had become too small and in 1899 John Haden Badley purchased Church Farm at Steep, near Petersfield, for £8,000. "In the move from Haywards Heath the school brought their possessions by horse-drawn wagons and by train. There was one substantial house and a scattering of farm buildings and cottages, no mains water, limited access roads; everything had to be made." (28)
Women's Suffrage
Amy Badley was a teacher at the school who was in charge of music education. Ada Badley was a strong supporter of women's rights and was secretary of the Petersfield Suffragist group and only poor health stopped her from being more active in the militant campaign to gain votes for women. (29) Amy's family were active in the campaign for women's suffrage. This included her half-sister, Rhoda Garrett, and her cousins, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Agnes Garrett. Amy said she "was proud to be a member of a family many of whose members had worked for the same great cause, and she would have been ashamed if she had not tried to follow in their footsteps". (30)
Amy Badley was a teacher at the school who was in charge of music education. As well as advocating female pupils she also arranged the employment "of several women among the staff of trained teachers in daily contact with the boys." (31) Millicent Garrett Fawcett, the leader of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, welcomed Amy's achievements: "Bedales does indeed seem to be more flourishing than ever. I am very glad that the girls' side is beginning to go ahead." (32)
Encouraged by Amy "students (especially in 1907 and 1908) held heated debates, usually carried by an overwhelming majority of boys as well as girls, demanding votes for women." Girls from the school took part in the famous marches which took place in February 1907 and July 1908. Garden parties were held at Bedales where leading suffragettes were invited to talk to the students. (33)
Ada also influenced her pupils on the subject. Bertha Brewster went to Bedales and later joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and went to prison several times for her beliefs. (34) Her younger brother, Philip Brewster, also a pupil at Bedales, joined the Men's Union for Women's Enfranchisement. Its leader, Victor Duval explained that "The society was formed as a result of a growing conviction among men, as well as women, that the delay in removal of the sex disqualification from the Parliamentary franchise was due to the determined indifference of the Government rather than to any considerable opposition in the country." (35) Philip Brewster eventually married the militant suffragette, Clara Giveen. (36)
In 1910 Amy Badley made a £10 donation to the militant Women's Social and Political Union. (37) The following year she took part in the boycott of the 1911 Census. Filling in the return for the female staff house she conspired to hide Dora Hooper, the wife of the Art Master, from the Enumerator. She wrote across the form "No Vote, No Census. Government must rest upon the consent of the Governed." John Haden Badley, who had become concerned about his wife support for the WSPU added to the form: "Amy Garrett Badley, wife, 47 married 18 years, 1 child, still living in 1911". (38)
It would seem that Amy Badley became disillusioned with the WSPU, probably because of its arson campaign. In 1914 she was giving money to the non-militant National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. (39) As a pacifist she would have been unhappy with the WSPU support for the First World War and its decision to disband after the passing of the 1918 Qualification of Women Act. The Act extended the franchise in parliamentary elections, to men aged over 21, whether or not they owned property, and to women aged over 30 who resided in the constituency or occupied land or premises with a rateable value above £5, or whose husbands did. (40)
Retirement
After the war Amy Badley continued her struggle for women's rights and was an active member of the Petersfield Association for Equal Citizenship. Amy and John were both pacifists who had been influenced by the writings of Norman Angell, who was a frequent visitor to Bedales. In his book, The Great Illusion (1909), Angell argued that a European war would be economically disadvantageous for victor as well as vanquished. The book had a tremendous impact on the intellectual community and study centres based on the book were established at universities and in industrial centres. (41)
Another regular visitor was Ramsay MacDonald, whose sons were educated at Bedales. Malcolm MacDonald was at the school between 1911 to 1920. He was Head Boy and played an important role in developing democracy at the school. A fellow pupil pointed out that at one meeting he asked "what is the school for?". He argued that "the school is the best possible development of each one who comes to it, and not the individuals for some body of traditions or pile of bricks and mortar known as the school." (42)
Amy Badley's relatives, Rhoda Garrett and Agnes Garrett owned a cottage in Rustington which they lent to the Bedalians for sleeping and cooking. One year, wit the help of a boarding house at Rustington, they took sixty boys and girls. John Badley later recalled that "most of the holiday was spent in one long round of bathing, boating, meals and games on the beach or in our field". (43)
In May 1927 the HMI carried out an inspection of the school: "The position of the present Head is one of absolute authority... Bedales is an interesting school, with, as far as the Inspectors could judge in such a short time, a strong life of its own. Its establishment and continuance has been a striking example of courage and enterprise and stout honesty of purpose. Its main purpose is to make its pupils self-reliant and mutually helpful. This it achieves." (44)
Beadle School remained small, in 1935 there were 136 pupils, a decline from a high point of 194 in 1922. According to his biographer, John Roach: "Badley believed in and practised democratic management, but there was no doubt that he was the leader - a quiet, rather withdrawn figure to many people, though not to the children. After the First World War a school council was set up, although its role was entirely advisory. Towards the end of his life he defined his objectives as three-fold: a healthy environment, a wide range of work with considerable emphasis on the arts and on manual training, and a community structured on family lines. Academic work was taken seriously, and Bedalians had a good record at the universities. There were experiments in the curriculum. During the 1920s there were extensive trials of the Dalton plan of assignment work, and the Montessori method was followed in the junior house." (45)
With the onset of the Great Depression public schools faced the problem of falling pupil numbers. To survive, Badley reduced fees, delayed or suspended salaries and staff redundancies. At the same time Amy and John Badley set up a productive scheme for the unemployed in Petersfield in a field owned by the school. Pupils also joined work camps for the unemployed in different parts of the country. (46)
Amy Badley carried on working until she was seventy-two. It was not until 1935 that both of them decided to retire. The school was taken over by Frederick Alfred Meiers who wrote before he took up the post: "How I wish I could at once throw all my energies into the new life. At the moment I feel like a greyhound straining at the leash - which unfortunately allows me far less liberty than I should like. There is so much to do and learn before next September and, even though it seems a long time hence, I know the months will pass in a flash." (47)
The General Register of 1939 records Amy and John Badley living at 'The Old Vicarage', Cholesbury, Buckinghamshire. John H. Badley is listed as a "Retired Schoolmaster" and his wife, entered as Amy Garrett Badley, is described as a "Retired Music Mistress". (48)
Mary Amy Badley of The Old Vicarage, Cholesbury, Buckinghamshire, wife of John Haden Badley, died on 30th October 1956, aged 94. She left effects valued at £246. 5s. 9d. (49)
Primary Sources
(1) John Haden Badley, Pall Mall Gazette (5th October 1892)
A lad who can handle an axe as well as a bat, slice a broken trace, mend his own clothes like a sailor, swim a swollen ford, level a road, knock together a box or a table, graft an apple-tree: a lad who has learnt that these and other things which are useful to men are not unworthy of a gentleman... A boy who would be nonplussed by half the small contretemps of life if he happened not to be at the end of a bell-pull with a servant at the other - such a boy may get along through that world in a good enough black coat, but... well, he's a poor product, surely, of this world of ours!
(2) Mid Sussex Times (21st November 1893)
Mr. W. T. Stead's well-known Review of Reviews is especially interesting to local leaders this month, in that it contains a most appreciative notice of Mr. J. H. Badley's school at Bedales, Linfield…. The article says that Bedales was founded last year by Mr. J. H. Badley, formerly assistant master to Dr. Cecil Reddie the headmaster and founder of Abbotsholme, near Rocester, Derbyshire, and apparently promises well…
Mr. Ruskin with his road-making and weaving, Edward Carpenter with his market gardening, and Mr. Gladstone with his tree felling, should highly approve the way in which at these schools gardening and carpentry and the like are put into the regular day's programme…. The idea is that the varied day with its alternations of manual and brain work and games, and social recreations in the evening, is so interesting that the youngsters need less driving during the brief hours at the desk… Both Abbotsholme and Bedales disavow any wish to be a wheel in the great "competition mill", the pivots of which are scholarships and money prizes. Marks and prizes are dispensed with at both schools, and it is stated their absence is not missed. Both assert strongly the schoolmaster's duty to look after character equally with mind and body, and there is a refreshingly healthy tone about the pronouncements of Abbotsholme and Bedales on the subject – the latter school, by the way making a special point of the inclusion of several women among the staff of trained teachers in daily contact with the boys.
(3) Cecil Reddie, The Abbotsholmian (July, 1908)
We feel bound... to put an end, once and for all, to the widespread and misleading notion that Bedales is on similar lines and that, therefore, the views of Mr Badley and his associates, male and female, are a safe guide to the earnest enquirer about Abbotsholme. We have always stood for the rights of boys and men in Education, whereas, to us, Bedales has always appeared to lean towards the feminine view of what boys and men should do and think and be... Some years ago Bedales went the whole hog and adopted co-education... even during the unstable period of adolescence... which we have always considered fundamentally unsound in theory and pernicious in practice, between the ages of eleven and eighteen. Consequently it is misleading to suppose that Abbotsholme and Bedales are similar schools. We have never been there (Bedales), never troubled our heads about it... we wish Mr Badley a prosperous voyage on his own peculiar course.
(4) Report of Inspection of Bedales School (27th May, 1927)
The position of the present Head is one of absolute authority. He is specifically mentioned as the first Governor of the Company and the first Chairman of the Governors...
Bedales is an interesting school, with, as far as the Inspectors could judge in such a short time, a strong life of its own. Its establishment and continuance has been a striking example of courage and enterprise and stout honesty of purpose. Its main purpose is to make its pupils self-reliant and mutually helpful. This it achieves.
(5) Sara Paulley, Bertha Brewster (14th December, 2020)
Bertha Brewster was born in 1887 to George and Bertha who lived in the village of Henfield, near Horsham in West Sussex. Two years after Bertha was born, the family was completed with the arrival of a brother, Philip. Brother and sister attended the progressive boarding school, Bedales, presumably as day pupils as the 1901 census records the family living in Steep, Hampshire, the village location of the school. Founded in 1898 by John Haden Badley, its foundation was in part at the urging of his wife, Amy a suffragette and cousin of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Millicent Fawcett. Bertha was academic and in 1905 was one of the first two girls to leave school to attend London University although no record has been located of her graduating.
(6) Ruth Whiting, Royal Assent to the Representation of The People Act (1st February, 2018)
On this day, I believe, Amy Garrett Badley was torn in two directions. On the one hand she was delighted that, after years of struggle, she and other women of her age and status would have full voting rights in the election due to take place in 1919. On the downside, however, she was determined to continue the fight so that all women would gain the rights granted by the Act to men of 21 years and over.
In 1935, receiving the testimonial book from "The Petersfield Society for Woman Suffrage and Equal Citizenship", she herself said that she "was proud to be a member of a family many of whose members had worked for the same great cause, and she would have been ashamed if she had not tried to follow in their footsteps". She was referring to Elizabeth Garrett, in 1865 the first woman to gain medical qualifications in Britain, her own half-sister Rhoda and cousin Agnes who had been, in 1875, the first women to found and run an interior decorating business (A & R Garrett of 2 Gower Street) and, perhaps most of all, Elizabeth’s and Agnes’s youngest sister, Millicent, who for about 40 years had been the leader of the suffragists, the NUWSS.
Bedales, not just Amy, had played its part in advocating the cause of equal rights for women. Students (especially in 1907 and 1908) held heated debates, usually carried by an overwhelming majority of boys as well as girls, demanding votes for women. Girls from Bedales took part in the famous marches which traversed London, (February 1907, the “Mud” March, and July 1908, which gained greater support from the crowds).
Garden Parties were held in Bedales grounds where speeches were delivered by luminaries who supported the movement, the most celebrated being in 1911 and 1913. In 1914 in the sitting room in The Wing, talks were given to "working women of Steep and Petersfield, many of whom themselves (or their husbands) worked for the school. They started the series with 13 members and by July, when Amy wrote about if The Bedales Chronicle, there were 40 attenders, including some of the husbands!
The more I look at Amy's support for the cause the more complicated it becomes: certainly by 1912 she had developed quite a lot of support for the militants which was causing The Chief some concern. On census day 1911, filling in the return for the female staff house (Foxcot) she conspired to hide Dora Hooper, the wife of the Art Master, from the Enumerator. Boldly across the form she wrote "No Vote, No Census. "Government must rest upon the consent of the Governed.": it was signed Amy Garrett Badley, Dora Hooper. Someone betrayed them and Dora's name was added to the form, in red ink, "by Registrar General's authority". I believe she had asked her husband not to include her in the school return. It starts with JHB and their son, then servants, teaching staff and all the students still at school that night (term had ended on Saturday) At the end in Mr Badley's handwriting, was added, "Amy Garrett Badley, wife, 47 married 18 years, 1 child, still living in 1911" precisely the information she had intended to deny the Registrar General.
(7) David Simkin, Family History Research (5th July, 2023)
Mary Amy Garrett (1862-1956) later known as Mrs Amy Garrett Badley (Born on 27th May 1862, Elton, Derbyshire - Died on 30th October 1956, Cholesbury, Bucks.)
Mary Amy Garrett was born in Elton, Derbyshire, on 27th May 1862, the daughter of Mary Gray and Reverend John Fisher Garrett, the Rector of All Saints Church, Elton.
At the time of the 1871 Census, Reverend John Fisher Garrett, Rector of All Saints Church, Elton, was living with his second wife and four children at The Rectory, Well Street, Elton, Derbyshire. Mary Amy Garrett was 8-years-old, her brother Fydell Edmund was 5 and her twin younger siblings, Elsie and John Herbert Garrett were one-year olds.
Mary Amy Garrett's father, Reverend John Fisher Garrett, died on 21st November 1878 at the age of 75. There is no trace of Mary Amy Garrett's mother, Mrs Mary Garrett, in the 1881 Census and so she might have predeceased her husband. Some Garrett Family Trees indicate that John Fisher Garrett's wife Mary died in Lincolnshire in 1872 at the age of 40. When the 1881 Census was taken, two of Mary Amy Garrett's siblings, Fydell and Elsie, were away at different boarding schools and her younger brother John Herbert Garrett was living in London at 2 Gower Street under the care of his half-sister, Rhoda Garrett (1841-1882), a house decorator and interior designer who was in an interior decorating business partnership with her cousin Agnes Garrett (1845-1935). I cannot trace 18-year-old Mary Amy Garrett in the 1881 Census - perhaps she was studying abroad.
When the 1891 Census was carried out, Mary Amy Garrett was living in Gateshead, County Durham, boarding at 13 Bloomfield Terrace, the home of Miss Elizabeth Hindmarsh. On the 1891 census return, 28-year-old Mary Amy Garrett is recorded as a "High School Mistress (Music)". Boarding at the same house was a 27-year-old Scottish woman named Jeanie Coulter, described on the census return as a "High School Mistress (Classics)".
On 8th November 1892, at Gengenbach, Baden, Germany, Mary Amy Garrett married John Haden Badley (1865-1967), a school teacher who had recently been an 'Assistant Master' at The New School, Abbotsholme, Derbyshire, a progressive private boys' school founded in 1889.
John Haden Badley had been born in Dudley, Worcestershire, on 21st February, 1865, the youngest of three children born to Laura Elizabeth Best and James Payton Badley (1822–1901), a surgeon. John Haden Badley was educated at Rugby School and attended Trinity College, Cambridge University, securing a B,A. degree in 1887 and a M.A in 1892.
1n 1893, John Haden Badley in partnership with fellow teacher Oswald Byrom Powell (1867-1967), and with the assistance of their respective wives, Mary Amy Badley and Winifred Marion Powell (1861-1937), established Bedales School in the village of Steep, near Petersfield,
A private, progressive school, Bedales School has been described as "a humane alternative to the authoritarian regimes typical of late-Victorian public schools".
Originally a boys' boarding school, Bedales School became co-educational in 1898.
On 3rd October 1894, at St Pancras, London, Mrs Mary Amy Badley gave birth to John Edmund Badley, the couple's only child.
The 1901 Census records John Haden Badley, his wife Mary Amy Badley and their 6-year-old son at Bedales School, "a private secondary school for boys & girls", in the village of Steep, near the market town of Petersfield in Hampshire. On the 1901 Census return, John Haden Badley is described as a 36-year-old "School Master (Employer)" and his wife 38-year-old Mary Amy Badley is recorded as a "music teacher". Although officially known as Mary Amy Badley, John Badley's wife preferred to be known as "Amy Badley".
The 1921 Census records John and Amy Badley residing at Bedales School, Steep, Hampshire. John Haden Badley, aged 56 years 4 months, is recorded as a "School Master", while his wife gives her name as Amy Garrett Badley and is described as "Music Teacher", aged 59 years, 1 month.
The General Register of 1939 records the couple at 'The Old Vicarage', Cholesbury, Buckinghamshire. John H. Badley is listed as a "Retired Schoolmaster" and his wife, entered as Amy Garrett Badley, is described as a "Retired Music Mistress".
Mary Amy Badley of The Old Vicarage, Cholesbury, Buckinghamshire, wife of John Haden Badley, died on 30th October 1956, aged 94. Her death was registered under the name of Amy G. Badley. Her son, John Edmund Badley, farmer, was named as the executor of her will. She left effects valued at £246. 5s. 9d.
Head Master of Bedales School, Petersfield, Hants, 1893-1935. President of the Froebel Society, 1905.
John Haden Badley of Fairhaven, Steep, Hampshire, died on 6th March 1967, aged 102. Effects valued at £5,531.
First World War . Served in The London Regiment (Artists Rifles). Poultry Farmer and Beekeeper. In 1922, John Edmund Badley married Marie Ferrars MacTaggart (1902–1987). By 1939, living at "Redcraft", Spencers Green, Tring, Hertfordshire, working as poultry farmer and beekeeper.