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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
The cultivation of the heart and the moulding of the will…’—these words symbolize the work of the Society for Promoting Female Education in China, India, and the East. This society existed from 1834 to 1899. It was run entirely by women, for educating and evangelizing girls and women in distant lands.
This paper has been based on research done in 1985 at die British Library, where an entire set of the Female Missionary Intelligencer is deposited (Printed Books, pp. 950B, vols 1-42, 1854-99) as well as some other publications of the Female Education Society, and at the archives of the Church Missionary Society in London, where the Minute Books and some of the Annual Reports of the Society were still lodged in 1985. In September 1985 these were sent, together with the rest of the CMS archives, to the University of Birmingham, where they are deposited in the Special Collections section of the University Library (FES, AM 1-6; F 1-7; and Z 1-4). Research at the Government Archives, Cape Town, has brought to light other material on the FES in South Africa. Access to the archives of the Female Education Society is gracefully acknowledged, together with permission to publish this paper.
1 Suter, E., History of the Society for Promoting Female Education in the East (London, 1847 Google Scholar), appendix, A, ‘Appeal from David Abeel to Christian Ladies in behalf of Female Education in China and the Adjacent Countries’, pp. 263’4 Google Scholar.
2 Our Work in Africa and the Peelton School by Miss Sturrock, Female Missionary Intelligencer (hereafter FMI), 1878, p. 87.
3 Minutes of the FES (hereafter Minutes), 25 July 1834.
4 Suter, History, appendix B, Appeal by the Hon. Revd B. Noel, p. 275.
5 Minutes, 20 Apr. 1838, para. 549.
6 Minutes, 15 Nov. 1856, para. 2762.
7 Paris Exhibition, Catalogue of Articles forwarded by the Society for Promoting Female Education in the East, FMI, February 1867,7, pp. 28-9.
8 Statement to the Missionaries, Friends and Supporters of the Female Education Society, Minutes, 8 June 1899.
9 In memoriam Note by H. E. Fox, FMI, 1899, ns, 19, p. 81.
10 Light through Eastern Lattices: a Plea for Zenana Captives by the Society for Promoting Female Education in the East on the Occasion of its Jubilee, 1884 (London, 1884), p. 2.
11 Light through Eastern Lattices: a Plea for Zenana Captives by the Society for Promoting Female Education in the East on the Occasion of its Jubilee, 1884 (London, 1884), p. 11.
12 Dr John Philip (1771–1851), Independent minister; Superintendent of London Missionary work in South Africa, 1819-48.
13 Hon. Revd Baptist Noel (1798-1873), evangelical priest, became a Baptist in 1848; Rector of St John’s Chapel, Bedford Row, 1821-48; Minister of John Street Baptist Church, 1848-69.
14 Minutes, 27 Apr. 1835, para. 100.
15 Minutes, 2 July 1836, para. 328.
16 Quoted in Suter, History, p. 14.
17 Questions for Candidates, FMI, 1854, 1, p. 7.
18 Minutes, 9 Dec. 1869; 10 Mar. 1870, para. 5249.
19 Minutes, 8 Dec. 1853, para. 2372; FMI, 1854, 1, pp. 9-10.
20 Minutes, 12 Oct. 1871, para. 5529.
21 Minutes, 24 Nov. 1837, para. 478.
22 Minutes, 23 Oct. 1840, para. 889.
23 Minutes, 14 Feb. 1850, para. 1983.
24 FMI, 1896, ns, 16, pp. 134-8.
25 Minutes, 10 Oct. 1872, paras 5728–9.
26 Minutes, 9 Mar. 1871, para. 5435.
27 Minutes, 19 June 1884, paras 8263-4.
28 Surer, , History, p. 10 Google Scholar.
29 FES, Annual Report, 1859, pp. 1, 12 Google Scholar.
30 FES Annual Report, 1869, pp. 22-3.
31 Hood, E. Paxton, The Day, the Book and the Teacher (London, 1880), p. 28 Google Scholar.
32 Platts, A. and Hainton, G. H., Education in Gloucestershire: A Short History (Gloucester, 1954), p. 56 Google Scholar.
33 Ibid., p. 61.
34 Dunn, Henry, Popular Education or the Normal School Manual Containing Practical Suggestions for Daily and Sunday School Teachers (London, 1837), p. 12 Google Scholar.
35 Report of Miss Asten on the day school at Street, Barrack, Annual Report of Union Congregational Church, Cape Town (Cape Town, 1866), p. 7 Google Scholar. Cape Archives, A1697, 5/2/1, 1866.
36 FES Annual Report, 1864.
37 Letter from Miss Asten, 19 Dec. 1859, FMI, 1860, pp. 91-2.
38 Editorial note from Imvo Zabantsundu, FMI, 1885, pp. 147-8.
19 Personal information from Miss Madge Stormont, Grahamstown, South Africa.
40 Letter from the girls of Shaftesbury Home, FMI, 1881, ns, 1, p. 84.
41 FES Annual Report, 1869, p. 23.
42 See my paper, ‘The invisible factor: nineteenth-century feminist evangelical concern for human rights’. The Journal for the Study of Religion, 2 (2 Sept. 1989).
