On this day … 25 November 1876

The Preston Chronicle published its response to the new Elementary Education Act which introduced compulsory education. In Preston, a school attendance committee was appointed to make sure parents complied. The Chronicle welcomed the act because: ‘There are thousands of children in the town totally neglected, living like little savages, so far as education is concerned. It is time to put an end to this state of barbarism.’

It followed this with an attack on the culinary skills of the town’s working class women, arguing that it was more important to teach them how to cook than to read and write.

At this time, the owner and editor of the Preston Chronicle was Anthony Hewitson, the author of The History of Preston and several other books on the history of the town. It was probably he who penned the article, for his writing on other groups in the town, including Irish migrants and the poor, was similarly inflammatory.

If he was the author, the editorial shows that his views on education were on the far side of unenlightened when it came to lessons for girls. For them: ‘Learning the three R’s is a very important thing; but as a primary essential learning to cook is more important.’

The editorial recognised that cookery lessons did not come within the scope of the new act:

‘… but if there could be something brought into operation, of a compulsory character, in respect to the training of poor people’s daughters sufficiently old to take in cooking lessons, an immense benefit could result. The idea may be novel; but don’t smile at it on that account. Is there anything more important than cooking? Is there any civilised country in the world containing so many women who know so little about cooking as England?

‘As a nation we know how to work, but we do not know how to live. Learning the three R’s is a very important thing; but as a primary essential learning to cook is more important. Whatever we know or do not know, however wise or illiterate we may be , this is certain – we must have something to eat, and as that can only be provided by certain preparatory methods, it follows that cookery which embraces them should be taught.

‘Elaborate methods are not required. The desideratum is – a clear knowledge of plain, practical cooking. The bad systems of cooking, resulting through ignorance, which prevail in the land are productive – pre-eminently in the homes of the poor – of all kinds of waste, all sorts of wretched, unpalatable dishes – food under-done, over-done, spoiled, and often jumbled up in inextricable messes, giving neither the pleasure nor the nutriment which would be afforded, if sensible rules of preparation were observed.

‘The majority of females in the humbler walks of life, are, when of sufficient age, sent to work; and they have a right to work; but work should not be of so continuous and absolute a character as to exclude a sensible knowledge of the duties of domestic life – particularly those pertaining to cookery.

‘It, however, is, and this is the result – when they get married they have no more idea of decent practical cooking than North American squaws or African papoose carriers. It is not their fault; but they and their husbands, and their children, have to bear the consequences of it, in badly made meals, wastefulness, comfortless dishes, slip-slops, and the most incongruous of indigestible food.

If the blue-stockinged, strong minded females, who are clamouring for women’s rights – for political votes, and all that kind of abnormal, bewhiskered folly – would drop their chimera, and begin an agitation in favour of cookery schools, in favour of the establishment of a system which would give females an insight into the principles of practical cooking, they would do far more good to the nation.

‘In every town there ought to be a cookery school. Much domestic comfort would be the result, much waste would be avoided, and the family of every working man would be healthier and happier.’

It would be good to know what Mrs Hewitson’s reaction was to her husband’s pronouncements on women and cooking.

---

Source
Anyone with a Lancashire County Library card can read the Preston Chronicle and many more papers for free here: https://link.gale.com/apps/BNCN?u=lancs&aty=rpas