Elizabeth Garrett Anderson - Early Education

Early Education

There was no school in Aldeburgh so Elizabeth learned the three Rs from her mother. Later, when she was 10 years old, a governess, Miss Edgeworth, a poor gentlewoman, was employed to educate Elizabeth and her sister. Mornings were spent in the schoolroom; there were regimental afternoon walks; educating the young ladies continued at mealtimes when Miss Edgeworth ate with the family; at night, the governess slept in a curtained off area in the girls’ bedroom. Elizabeth despised her governess and sought to outwit the teacher in the classroom. Newson wanted to give his children the best education possible so when Elizabeth was 13 and her sister 15, they were sent to a private school, the Boarding School for Ladies in Blackheath, London, which was run by the step aunts of the poet, Robert Browning. There, English literature, French, Italian and German, as well as deportment, were taught. Later in life, Elizabeth recalled the stupidity of her teachers there, though her schooling there did help establish a love of reading. Her reading matter included Tennyson, Wordsworth, Milton, Coleridge, Trollope, Thackeray and George Eliot. Elizabeth and Louie were known as “the bathing Garretts”, as their father had insisted they be allowed a hot bath once a week. However, they made what were to be lifelong friends there. When they finished in 1851, they were sent on a short tour abroad, ending with a memorable visit to the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, London. After this formal education, Elizabeth spent the next nine years tending to domestic duties, but with her lively mind, energy and vigour, the prospect of a solely domestic existence would not satisfy her, so she continued to study Latin and arithmetic in the mornings and also read widely. Her sister Millicent recalled Elizabeth’s weekly lectures, “Talks on Things in General”, when her younger siblings would gather her while she discussed politics and current affairs from Garibaldi to Macauley’s History of England. In 1854, when she was eighteen, Elizabeth and her sister went on a long visit to their school friends, Jane and Anne Crow, in Gateshead. There, she met Emily Davis, the early feminist and future co-founder of Girton College, Cambridge. Davis was to be a lifelong friend and confidante, always ready to give sound advice during the important decisions of Elizabeth’s career. It may have been in The Englishwoman’s Journal, first issued in 1858, that Elizabeth first read of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, who had become the first female doctor in the United States in 1849. When Dr Blackwell visited London in 1859, Elizabeth travelled to the capital. By then, her sister Louie was married and living in London. Elizabeth joined the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women, which organized Blackwell’s lectures on “Medicine as a Profession for Ladies” and set up a private meeting between Elizabeth and the doctor. It is said that during a visit to Alde House around 1860, one evening while sitting by the fireside, Elizabeth and Emily Davies selected careers for advancing the frontiers of women's rights; Elizabeth was to open the medical profession to women, Emily the doors to a university education for women, while 13-year-old Millicent was allocated politics and votes for women. At first Newson was opposed to the radical idea of his daughter becoming a doctor but eventually came round and agreed to do all in his power, both financially and otherwise, to support Elizabeth in the long uphill battle.