Who is Mary Carpenter?
The table below is succinct information taken from Mary Carpenter’s wikipedia page.
| Born | 03/04/1807, Exeter, United Kingdom |
| Died | 14/06/1877, Bristol, United Kingdom |
| Resting Place | Arnos Vale Cemetery, Bristol |
| Known for | Education, social reform, abolitionist |
| Social Reform | Established a ragged school (a place of free education for destitute children in the 19th century Britain) and reformatories (youth detention center or an adult correctional facility ) in Bristol. Visited schools and prisons and worked to improve female education Visited Europe and America, carrying on her campaigns of penal and educational reform. Supported women’s suffrage and female access to higher education. In 1835 she helped organise a “Working and Visiting Society”, in the slums around Lewin’s Mead, of which she remained secretary for nearly twenty years In 1846 she attended a meeting which was addressed by prominent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, who had escaped from slavery in 1838. She contributed to fund-raising efforts in the abolitionist cause and maintained an interest in this for the next twenty years In 1851 the return of a fugitive slave from Boston back to the southern states caused her to say of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 that the United States had “committed an atrocious act … against humanity, against itself, against God.” This event caused her to concentrate on her educational work. Carpenter started a ragged school in Lewin’s Mead, Bristol. A night school for adults soon followed In 1852 she published Juvenile Delinquents, their Condition and Treatment, which contributed to the passing of the Juvenile Offenders Act in 1854 Established a reformatory school at Bristol in 1852, in Kingswood in the premises of a school which had originally been set by John Wesley Carpenter was invited to give evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee on the Education of Destitute Children |
| Author | She was the first woman to have a paper published by the Statistical Society of London In 1851 by the publication of Reformatory Schools for the Children of the Perishing and Dangerous Classes, and for Juvenile Offenders. The book drew public attention to her work. |
| Abolitionist | Active in the anti-slavery movement |
| Travelled | Visited India in 1866, after being influenced by the Raja Ram Mohan Roy. She discovered most part girls were not educated past the age of twelve years, mainly due to a lack of educated female teachers |
| Liaisons | She was invited for an interview with Queen Victoria and Florence Nightingale at Windsor Castle in 1868 In 1873 she visited America, where she met abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass |
| Personal life | Carpenter never married, but she did adopt a five-year-old girl, Rosanna in 1858 Her funeral cortège was half a mile long |
| Legacy | The reformatory school in Kingswood was active until 1984 and the Red Lodge Girls’ Reformatory closed in 1918 Her writings, political activism and public addresses had a major influence on correctional education in Britain, Europe, India and America and helped bring about major reforms in the 19th and 20th century |