Mary Carpenter

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MC , one of the founders of the Ragged Schools movement, was indefatigable in giving papers and publishing articles about her favourite topics: the use of education as a force for positive change, especially in the lives of the poor and of those convicted of crime. Many of her short pieces had a later independent life as pamphlets. She began publishing with a book of religious devotion in 1845, and went on to memoirs of fellow philanthropists, directions for running schools and prisons, and polemic urging more positive action on the part of government.
Sepia photo of Mary Carpenter. She wears her grey hair in curls, under a head-band and cap with ear flaps. She has a dark, buttoned bodice with paler sleeves and white collar with a pendant in the centre.

Milestones

3 April 1807
MC was born at Exeter in Devon.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
6 April 1845
MC 's first published volume appeared anonymously: an ecumenical or inter-denominational little book of devotion entitled Morning and Evening Meditations for every day in a Month.
Carpenter, J. Estlin. The Life and Work of Mary Carpenter. MacMillan and Co., 1881.
66
OCLC WorldCat.
OCLC
1850
MC (as a Worker) published a volume entitled Ragged Schools: Their Principles and Modes of Operation at the insistence of Joseph Fletcher , an inspector with the national school inspection system, after he had read the original series of papers in The Inquirer: the Unitarian and Free Christian Paper, 1849.
Joseph Fletcher is named in MC 's Juvenile Delinquents.
Carpenter, J. Estlin. The Life and Work of Mary Carpenter. MacMillan and Co., 1881.
104-105, prelims
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online.
6 June 1877
MC spoke on Religious Aspects of India in a little chapel in Kingswood to an audience mostly composed of working people. Her talk lasted more than an hour.
Carpenter, J. Estlin. The Life and Work of Mary Carpenter. MacMillan and Co., 1881.
385
Night of 14-15 June 1877
MC died in her sleep at home at Red Lodge in Bristol at the age of seventy, having been well and active the day before.
Carpenter, J. Estlin. The Life and Work of Mary Carpenter. MacMillan and Co., 1881.
386, 388

Biography

Birth and Background

3 April 1807
MC was born at Exeter in Devon.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

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