Jane Senior

Jane Nassau Senior (1828–1877) was Britain's first female civil servant, and a philanthropist.^[2] She was co-founder of the Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants (MABYS).

Jane Nassau Senior, in an 1859 painting by George Frederic Watts.^[1]

Life

 

The county of Surrey, most of the metropolitan part of which is shown here south of the Thames, as the zone stood when joining the inceptive County of London in 1889. It contained in the part shown and three parishes beyond, to the east, many poor streets. These are shaded blue and black, by Charles Booth (social reformer).

Senior was born Jane Elizabeth Hughes at Uffington on 10 December 1828, daughter of John Hughes and the only sister of the author Thomas Hughes and five other brothers.^[2]

Senior did relief work for material aid for the victims of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 as part of the inceptive National Society for Aid to Sick and Wounded in War, in 1905 reconstituted as the British Red Cross. She directed many practicalities for handling these donations.^[3]

Work with impoverished children in Surrey led to Senior's appointment in January 1873, as an assistant inspector of workhouses. This post was given to her by James Stansfeld, against civil service opposition.^[4] The goal of the post was a Civil Service Report, which she framed as covering both pauper girls as school children, and their histories after school.^[5] When the Report appeared in 1875, the 1874 general election having intervened, it bore heavy criticism by Royal Navy senior officer Carleton Tufnell, acting in concert with The Times.^[6]

A meeting called by the Reverend Thomas Vincent Fosbery (then chaplain to Bishop Samuel Wilberforce) in May 1874, at Lambeth Palace. It brought together Senior, Elizabeth, wife of the Very Reverend Harold Browne Bishop of Winchester, Catharine Tait, and Mary Elizabeth Townsend (1841–1918). They agreed to set up the Girls' Friendly Society, founded on 1 January 1875 so young, "wholly unblemished" servants could have a friend of a higher social class with whom to meet, read, sew, take refreshment.^[7]

Senior, with Caroline Emelia Stephen and her cousin founded instead, the rivalling Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants in 1876, to habilitate institutionalised and vulnerable girls in London. Senior had not found enough common ground with GFS's senior Anglicans who used the geographical units of the church and some of whom insisted on no hint a servant's impropriety. Instead her successful organisation sought to de-institutionalise recruits, from such places as workhouses into becoming reliable, skilled servants.^[8][9] Senior, with the support of Thomas John Barnardo, had lobbied for MABYS, and similar bodies, to be automatically made guardians until the age of 20 for any child who had been in Poor Law care for over five years.^[10]

She died of 'cancer of the womb' and exhaustion on 24 March 1877, aged 48; and is buried in Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey.^[11]

Associations

G. F. Watts the artist had become a confidant of Jane Senior by the mid-1850s; they corresponded, and most of the letters have been destroyed.^[12] Octavia Hill, governess for a time to the children of Thomas Hughes, became a close friend.^[13] Senior was a friend and correspondent of the novelist George Eliot.

In Clapham, Senior knew Marianne Thornton, figure of the Clapham Sect and daughter of Henry Thornton, and her niece Henrietta Synnot, both of whom were involved in local schooling. Synnot became her assistant. Caroline Stephen made a very positive impression, and was an influence for the future.^[14] In the aftermath of the "Eyre controversy", she made a point of inviting Emelia Russell Gurney, wife of Russell Gurney, to show her Jamaica sketches.^[15]

In the early 1870s Senior worked with Henrietta Rowland, teaching literacy in Whitechapel.^[16] Another associate of this period was Menella Bute Smedley, following up on girls who had left workhouse schools.^[17] For MABYS, Senior called on Bessie Belloc, Barbara Bodichon and Mrs. Knox for support.^[8]

Family

Jane married Nassau John Senior, son of Nassau William Senior, on 10 August 1848 at Shaw Church. Her husband was a barrister, but failed to make more than a desultory career in the law. From 1860 they lived in Elm House, a villa with a small wooded estate on Lavender Hill, near Clapham Junction in Battersea, south London, taking lodgers.^{[2][18][19][20]}

The marriage was unhappy. They had a son Walter Nassau (1850–1933).^[2] He married Mabel Barbara Hammersley, daughter of Hugh Hammersley and his mother's friend Dulcibella Eden, in 1888.^[21][22]

Dorothea Murray Hughes (1891–1952), daughter of Senior's brother Hastings Hughes, was a nurse and aid worker. She wrote Jane Elizabeth Senior: A Memoir (1915).^[23]

References

1. The painting was owned by her close friend, Octavia Hill — and has passed, by bequest, to the National Trust.
2. Jones. "Jane Elizabeth Senior". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/45504. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
3. Sybil Oldfield (2008). Jeanie, an 'army of One': Mrs. Nassau Senior, 1828–1877, the First Woman in Whitehall. Sussex Academic Press. pp. 153–4. ISBN 978-1-84519-254-9.
4. Ruston, Alan. "Stansfeld, Sir James". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/26288. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
5. Sybil Oldfield (2008). Jeanie, an 'army of One': Mrs. Nassau Senior, 1828–1877, the First Woman in Whitehall. Sussex Academic Press. pp. 182 and 188. ISBN 978-1-84519-254-9.
6. Sybil Oldfield (2008). Jeanie, an 'army of One': Mrs. Nassau Senior, 1828–1877, the First Woman in Whitehall. Sussex Academic Press. p. 238. ISBN 978-1-84519-254-9.
7. Harris, G. M. "Townsend, Mary Elizabeth". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/56691. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
8. Sybil Oldfield (2008). Jeanie, an 'army of One': Mrs. Nassau Senior, 1828–1877, the First Woman in Whitehall. Sussex Academic Press. p. 227. ISBN 978-1-84519-254-9.
9. Oscar Wilde; Russell Jackson; Joseph Bristow; Ian Small (2000). The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts. Oxford University Press. p. 375. ISBN 978-0-19-818772-1.
10. Murdoch, Lydia (2006), Imagined Orphans, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, ISBN 0-8135-3722-3, OCLC 60245383 p118
11. Oldfield, pp. 285
12. Sybil Oldfield (2008). Jeanie, an 'army of One': Mrs. Nassau Senior, 1828–1877, the First Woman in Whitehall. Sussex Academic Press. pp. 36–7. ISBN 978-1-84519-254-9.
13. Anne Digby; John Stewart (1998). Gender, Health and Welfare. Psychology Press. p. 100. ISBN 978-0-415-18700-8.
14. Sybil Oldfield (2008). Jeanie, an 'army of One': Mrs. Nassau Senior, 1828–1877, the First Woman in Whitehall. Sussex Academic Press. pp. 128–9. ISBN 978-1-84519-254-9.
15. Sybil Oldfield (2008). Jeanie, an 'army of One': Mrs. Nassau Senior, 1828–1877, the First Woman in Whitehall. Sussex Academic Press. pp. 98–9. ISBN 978-1-84519-254-9.
16. Sybil Oldfield (2008). Jeanie, an 'army of One': Mrs. Nassau Senior, 1828–1877, the First Woman in Whitehall. Sussex Academic Press. p. 168. ISBN 978-1-84519-254-9.
17. Sybil Oldfield (2008). Jeanie, an 'army of One': Mrs. Nassau Senior, 1828–1877, the First Woman in Whitehall. Sussex Academic Press. p. 196. ISBN 978-1-84519-254-9.
18. Saint 2013, p. 13.
19. Thom 2013, p. 22.
20. • "Lavender Hill" (PDF). Survey of London. University College London. 11 February 2013. Retrieved 16 November 2022.
    • "Battersea". Survey of London. Bartlett School of Architecture. 6 December 2016. Retrieved 16 November 2022.
21. Sybil Oldfield (2008). Jeanie, an 'army of One': Mrs. Nassau Senior, 1828–1877, the First Woman in Whitehall. Sussex Academic Press. p. 298. ISBN 978-1-84519-254-9.
22. Wm. H. Allen and Co. (1856). Allen's Indian Mail, and Register of Intelligence for British and Foreign India, China, and All Parts of the East. p. 83.
23. Sybil Oldfield (2008). Jeanie, an 'army of One': Mrs. Nassau Senior, 1828–1877, the First Woman in Whitehall. Sussex Academic Press. p. 301. ISBN 978-1-84519-254-9.

Sources

• Saint, Andrew, ed. (2013). "1. Public Buildings". Survey of London, Volume 49: Battersea: Public, Commercial and Cultural (PDF). Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300196160.
• Thom, Colin, ed. (2013). "10. Lavender Hill: Introduction". Survey of London, Volume 50: Battersea: Houses and Housing (PDF). Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300196160.
• Sybil Oldfield (2008). Jeanie, an 'army of One': Mrs. Nassau Senior, 1828–1877, the First Woman in Whitehall. Sussex Academic Press. ISBN 978-1-84519-254-9.

External links

• Recollections of the Hughes Family Walter Money, FSA