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History
It was founded in 1859 by Jessie Boucherett and Adelaide Procter to help women gain financial independence through employment
They were prompted by reading Harriet Martineau’s influential article about “superfluous women” in the Edinburgh Review Book-keeping was taught by Sophia Jex-Blake (Ellen Jordan and Anne Bridger, ‘ “An Unexpected Recruit to Feminism”: Jessie Boucherett’s “Feminist Life” and the Importance of Being Wealthy’, Women’s History Review, vol. 15, no. 3, 2006)
One of the pupils taught here, Mary Harris Smith, eventually became the first female chartered accountant (Ellen Jordan and Anne Bridger, ‘ “An Unexpected Recruit to Feminism”: Jessie Boucherett’s “Feminist Life” and the Importance of Being Wealthy’, Women’s History Review, vol. 15, no. 3, 2006)
The Society continues to help women to help themselves; it lends money to women for professional training
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What was reforming about it?
It offered women interest-free loans for training
It also pioneered classes for women in book-keeping, which was previously an exclusively male profession
Where in Bloomsbury
The Society hired rooms for teaching book-keeping and law-copying in Queen Square in 1860 (Ellen Jordan and Anne Bridger, ‘ “An Unexpected Recruit to Feminism”: Jessie Boucherett’s “Feminist Life” and the Importance of Being Wealthy’, Women’s History Review, vol. 15, no. 3, 2006)
Website of current institution
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Books about it
'Timely Assistance. The Work of the Society for Promoting the Training of Women 1859-2009' by Anne Bridger & Ellen Jordan.
Privately published so copies obtainable from The Secretary, email: sec.sptw@btinternet.com ISBN 978 0 9562449 0 1
There is a short history on the Society’s website at www.sptw.org/text_hist.html (opens in new window)
Michelle Elizabeth Tuson, ‘ “Not the Ordinary Victorian Charity”: The Society for Promoting the Employment of Women Archive’, in History Workshop Journal, 49 (2000)
Anne Bridger, ‘A Century of Women’s Employment in Clerical Occupations: 1850–1950, with particular reference to the role of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, 2003)
Ellen Jordan and Anne Bridger, ‘ “An Unexpected Recruit to Feminism”: Jessie Boucherett’s “Feminist Life” and the Importance of Being Wealthy’, Women’s History Review, vol. 15, no. 3 (2006)
See also Ellen Jordan, The Women’s Movement and Women’s Employment in Nineteenth-century Britain (1999)
Archives
Its archives are held in Girton Colleg,e Cambridge, ref. GBR/0271/GCIP SPTW; a guide to the collection is available via Cambridge University’s union catalogue of archives, Janus (opens in new window)
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