Remembering Anne Jellicoe, pioneer in women’s education and founder of Alexandra College

Anne Jellicoe, who was born 200 years ago on March 26th, is well known as a pioneer in girls’ and women’s education in Ireland but she also did important and valuable work in the areas of women’s working conditions and women prisoners’ rights.

She was born in Mountmellick, Co Laois (then Queen’s County), to William Mullin, a Quaker schoolmaster, and Margaret Thompson, and had one brother, John William. Her father ran his own school for boys and there was a great emphasis on education in the home. Anne was most likely educated by a governess at home. In October 1846, she married John Jellicoe, a Quaker miller from Mountmellick; they had no children.

They moved to Clara, Co Offaly (then King’s County) in 1848 where, inspired by Johanna Carter, a girls’ schoolteacher from Mountmellick who had set up Mountmellick Embroidery, Anne, along with the Quaker Goodbody family, established a lace and embroidery factory to provide work for women.

As a result of this, she developed a great interest in women’s working conditions. She and her husband moved to Harold’s Cross in Dublin in 1858, where she continued her quest to improve their working circumstances for women.

‘Worst morning of my life’ – Alison Healy on tricky tourists

---

Custer’s Last Tune – Frank McNally on the dubious history of the ballad Garryowen

---

Drama and spirituality – Desmond O’Neill on Rossini’s Petite messe solennelle

---

Dutch gold – Frank McNally on a weekend in idyllic Amsterdam

---

Following her husband’s death in 1862, she immersed herself further in social work, assisting especially the Cole Alley Infant School on Meath Street which the Quakers ran for poor children of all religions in the Liberties.

Arising from her research on women’s working conditions in factories, she produced a significant paper that was read before the first meeting in Dublin of the English-based National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (NAPSS) in 1861. The paper was afterwards published in the Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science and the following year, another of her papers, “Woman’s supervision of women’s industry”, was published in the Englishwoman’s Review. She presented her next paper, “Visit to the female convict prison at Mountjoy, Dublin”, to the Social Science Congress in London in 1862, and it too was published by the NAPSS.

In 1861, she co-founded, with Barbara Corlett, another pioneering Irish women’s educationist, the Irish Society for Promoting the Training and Employment of Educated Women (which later became the Queen’s Institute).

This provided courses to promote the employment of women, courses which concentrated on practical acquirements such as bookkeeping, secretarial and craft skills.

By this time, Jellicoe seems to have become more concerned with developing the education of middle-class women than with factory or prison conditions. Many middle-class women worked as governesses but lacked formal education and in 1866, she established Alexandra College (named in honour of the then Princess of Wales) to promote women’s higher education. The Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, Richard Chenevix Trench, greatly assisted her in this enterprise. It was “the first university-style institution for women in Ireland; the broad curriculum included English language and literature, mathematics, history, natural science, geography, Latin, mental and moral philosophy, music, drawing and callisthenics,” according to Susan M Parkes, who wrote the entry on Jellicoe in the Dictionary of Irish Biography.

Jellicoe was “lady superintendent” of Alexandra College from 1866 to 1880, and it grew and prospered under her supervision, but she had to work with a college council comprising clerical and academic men (as a woman, she couldn’t be a member). The staff of Trinity College Dublin (TCD), who provided many lectures, were very supportive and Jellicoe, having founded the Governess Association of Ireland in 1869, came up with the idea of providing studentships to Alexandra for women looking to work as governesses. That same year, TCD agreed to begin examinations for women, thereby enabling them to acquire full university qualifications.

Alexandra School was founded as a feeder secondary school for girls in 1873. It grew substantially under Isabella Mulvany, principal from 1880 to 1926, herself a graduate of Alexandra College and one of the first women to graduate from the Royal University of Ireland.

In her final years, Anne Jellicoe campaigned successfully to have the Intermediate Education Act 1878 extended to girls’ schools. Pupils from both Alexandra School and College proved very successful in the Intermediate Board’s examinations at junior, middle and senior grades, greatly facilitating female admission to third-level education.

While visiting her brother in Birmingham, she died suddenly on October 18th, 1880, at the age of 57 and was buried in the Quakers’ cemetery at Rosenallis, Co Laois.

Susan M Parkes described her as “a woman of determination and great humility”, who regarded the success of Alexandra College as her ample reward.

There are two portraits of her in the college, a memorial tablet to her and her husband in the chapel of Mount Jerome Cemetery and a plaque dedicated to her at the site of the Queen’s Institute, which is now Buswells Hotel on Molesworth Street in Dublin.