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Margaret Stansfeld was aged 25 when she began her training. She was born in Islington, the third child of James and Mary. Her father was a master baker, who died when Margaret was young, leaving her mother to bring up the family. Young Margaret was remembered as serious, disciplined, and unselfish 3. She was also an avid reader, evidence perhaps of a good elementary education. The family were certainly not affluent and may have struggled financially.

 

Margaret and her elder sister Janet, copied those daughters of the financially insecure middle-class by going out to work. They began as pupil-teachers at a local Board school in Bloomsbury. Margaret expressed career aspirations by simultaneously attending evening classes in physical care at Birbeck College. In 1885 Margaret gave up her school work to study at Madame Bergman-Osterberg’s newly opened Hampstead College. She was able to enter the college, even though she was at the very lowest end of the social scale acceptable to Madame. She left the next year as one of the first qualified gymnastic teachers. 

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She was then recruited as an instructor for Hampstead Physical Training College. She taught gymnastics and games at girls' schools, including Bedford High School for Girls, and taught at the Froebel Institute in London and the Cambridge Training College for Women Teachers. This gave her the opportunity to take up a secure professional career guaranteeing her social status. Her motivation was perhaps driven by financial insecurity. Her individual character helped her succeed in one of the few areas of employment for middle-class women. 

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In 1903 Margaret purchased Wylam Lodge, 37 Lansdowne Road, Bedford, to start a physical education college for girls. Bedford was an ideal location due to its proximity to the prospective student market around London and Cambridge. Miss Stansfeld already had links with the high school and elementary schools in the area. 

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Miss Stansfeld was a pioneer in her field. Despite turn of the century changes in attitudes it was still daring in 1903 for girls to even think of going to college. She was determined not to upset conservative Bedford residents and her thirteen students were indoctrinated from the very beginning with the high standards of work and behaviour that would be expected of them. On the very first morning the students were told that “If we failed, college would fail” 4. Formality at all times was insisted on.  

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All female principals were dominated by the desire to avoid confrontation with the society they existed within. Miss Stansfeld may have been an autocrat within the college but “Miss Stansfeld, no more than Emily Davies could ignore the opinion of conventional society” 6. The physical training colleges of which Bedford was one, followed the same unwritten societal rules that other female or mixed educational establishments followed. The students at physical training colleges were involved in dangerously masculine sports and games; they had to make sure no accusations of impropriety or unlady-like behaviour could be brought against any one of them.   

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“The principal and staff were concerned above all else [my italics] to maintain the respectability of their institutions, and therefore to ensure that conditions were such that no breath of scandal could touch them" 7. Given the possibility of rumours of scandal imagined or real, the cost would be so great to the college as well as the individual, that it was considered best to exclude men from this area of influence. Students could go a whole term without meeting a man to talk to. This authority was rarely challenged. 

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Next: Prospective students and the interview process

Previous: Introduction to the development of physical education for women in Victorian and Edwardian Britain

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