Frances Dove
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Dame Jane Frances Dove DBE (1847- ) was an English women's campaigner who founded Wycombe Abbey and other girl's schools.
Dove was the daughter of a Lincolnshire clergyman. Having acquired an education with some difficulty, she went to Girton College, Cambridge and became an Assistant Mistress at Cheltenham Ladies' College in 1877. From there she went on to become headmistress of St Leonards School, St Andrews, Scotland in 1882. She left there to found and become first headmistress of Wycombe Abbey in 1896 giving it her own family motto In Fide Vade. It is said she had her "first vision" of Wycombe Abbey when only seventeen years old and she worked all her life to promote girl's education. In 1900 she also founded Godstowe school.
Dove was a campaigner for the right of women to play a full part in the life of the community. Active in political life, she was elected as a councillor in High Wycombe in November 1907 and almost became Mayor the following year. She supported the suffragette campaign and kept the parents and girls fully informed of her political activities and community work. She also served as Justice of the Peace. On retirement from Wycombe Abbey in 1910, she endowed a scholarship at the school. In 1928 she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire and in 1933 presented the Frances Dove Window in All Saints church in High Wycombe.
Several of her old pupils were to become prominent in the fight for women's civil rights and one was to become one of the first women MPs. One of her Australian students was the prominent social reformer Jessie Street whom Dove referred to as 'Bushranger' (Coltheart 2004: 10-15).
[edit] References
- Alison L. Prentice, Marjorie R. Theobald Women Who Taught: Perspectives on the History of Women and Teaching (1991)
- Elsie Bowerman Stands there a School - Memories of Dame Frances Dove, D.B.E., Founder of Wycombe Abbey School 1965
- Jessie Street, ed Lenore Coltheart, Jessie Street, a revised autobiography, Federation Press, 2004. ISBN 1-86287-502-2
