Mary Ann Barton, pioneering Kindergarten teacher, who signed the petition from her home and
school premises at 11 Lime Grove, Chorlton on Medlock, Manchester, was born in
Manchester in 1831. Her mother died
before she was twenty and in the 1851 census she is living with her father and
two siblings. Her father had a very
chequered business career, which meant that by 1861 she was the
breadwinner with a Kindergarten in the family home. John Wrigley Barton was at times a cotton
spinner and cotton waste dealer. With
his brother Horatio he went in and out of various partnerships. One was dissolved in 1830, another in
1837. In March 1840 he was declared bankrupt,
and in 1852 having been allowed to trade again, was declared insolvent
(Insolvent no 74,8720) Only months
before Marianne signed the petition, her father had died, leaving an inheritance
of under £20.
Around 1856, however, Marianne had been trained in the
Froebel system of education by Madame Ronge, at the Home and Colonial
Training School in Grays Inn Road.. Presumably
her father must have paid for this course, which shows more evidence of foresight
than his own career reveals. She set up
one of the earliest Kindergartens in Manchester in 1857 at 15 Cecil Street
Greenhays. Mr and Mrs Ronge came to Manchester to lecture
on Frobel’s methods in 1857 and as a result a Manchester Committee for the Extension
of the Kindergarten System was formed.
It would be interesting to find the list of members of this
committee. I imagine that Marianne must
have been involved. Mme Ronge set up a
training school at Whalley Grange shortly afterwards. (see Lawrence, Evelyn
(ed.) Friedrich Froebel and English
Education RKP 1952 p41 ) By 1861 Marianne
had a 15 year old assistant, Minnette Walker, and was running the nursery from her
father’s home at 11 Lime Grove. In 1867
she joined Manchester Board of Schoolmistresses. The 1871 census shows that she had expanded
her staff and had three assistant teachers living in, including Minnette and Anna
Snell from Dresden. Several Froebel
teachers came over to Manchester to help spread the Kindergarten methods, and Anna
may have been one of them. Minette Walker
went on to run her own school in Halifax for many years. By 1881 Marianne had one teacher
boarding with her and 2 servants and had moved to 171 High Street Chorlton on
Medlock It appears that by 1891, like many unmarried teachers, she had retired to a modest boarding
house – in her case in Penzance- and was living ‘on her own means’
As a single woman, with a modest business, it was particularly
admirable that she felt confident enough in 1868 to subscribe to the local
suffrage society The Manchester Society for Women's Suffrage, whilst continuing her pioneering teaching career. Several hundred teachers signed the petition,
but only a few went on, like Marianne, to publicly support the Suffrage Societies
formed following the petition. I suspect
that they had not imagined the opposition that the proposition would provoke
when they signed. Fired by the success
of the printing of the petition for University Local Examinations in 1865, it
must have seemed an excellent strategy to distribute the list to the press and
MP’s. But for many of the women, running
schools, shops and businesses, the publicity must have been problematic and
threatening to their livelihood. However the publicity does not appear to have
affected Marianne’s career.
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