Teaching at Morley College

This chapter describes Morley College’s origins in 1885 and its history, founders, location, and mission: to provide evening classes in subjects not directly related to trades or business to working men and women, to assist those needing elementary instruction, and to promote collegiality through social organizations. It offered humanistic courses, though no course of study or degrees, to adults in the Lambeth/Southwark area of London, ninety percent of whom were working-class, with half of that population under the poverty line. This chapter also discusses the occupationally diverse Morley students, who ranged from servants to artists, nurses to porters, milliners to journalists, teachers to engineers, and ranged from the labouring working class through the lower middle class. Two large Morley occupational groups, shop girls and clerks, and details of their working conditions, obstacles, aspirations, and depictions, provide insight into Morley, Virginia Stephen’s challenges, and students. Those students, without access to libraries and taught under the rigid Revised Code of 1862, needed more than knowledge. They needed context, the ability to acquire it, and skill in connecting new learning to that context. Virginia Stephen had to learn about the gap between her students’ educational background and hers and how to decrease it.