Frances Lupton

Early life

Lupton was born Frances Elizabeth Greenhow on 20 July 1821, into a medical family in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Her father, Thomas Michael Greenhow, co-founded the city's Eye Infirmary, with John Fife, and then Newcastle University Medical School. He worked at Newcastle Infirmary, renamed the Royal Victoria Infirmary, for many years and was instrumental in its expansion in the 1850s. One of Lupton's brothers was Henry Martineau Greenhow (1829–1912), who followed his father into medicine. He joined the Indian Medical Service and spent his career in British India, rising to surgeon major. He was a member of the garrison that withstood the Siege of Lucknow, a key part of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Edward Headlam Greenhow, Lupton's first cousin, was also a physician-educationalist, who made his mark in epidemiology and public health.

Her mother, Elizabeth Martineau, was from the political dynasty of that name. Many of the Martineaus were prosperous merchants in Birmingham, and nationally prominent as Unitarians, a branch of English Dissenters. (In the post-Blitz rebuilding of Essex Hall, the national headquarters for British Unitarians, the architect describes one of the main rooms to be named after the Martineaus.) Her mother's siblings included James, the religious philosopher and professor at Manchester New College, and Harriet, the social theorist and Whig writer, often cited as the first female sociologist. She was educated first at her aunt Rachel's school, but remained close to her aunt Harriet in adulthood. The Unitarian ethos of liberalism and service to society also stayed with her throughout her life.

Marriage and children

In 1847 Frances married Francis Lupton (1813–1884), a member of a prosperous and politically active cloth manufacturing family in Leeds. In addition to his business interests, he was one of the founders of the Yorkshire College of Science in 1874, which became part of the federal Victoria University, and from 1904 the University of Leeds. The Luptons were, like the Martineaus, a family of Unitarians. They worshipped at Mill Hill Chapel in Leeds City Square, where a stained glass window commemorates them.

Frances had married into a family of activists. Her husband's younger brother, Joseph, was president and later vice-president of Manchester New College, the training college for ministers where Frances's uncle taught. Joseph was a committed anti-slavery campaigner and a Liberal who sat on the executive of the National Reform Union. He also supported the campaign for votes for women, sitting on the committee for the National Society for Women's Suffrage. The brothers' cousin Jane married the minister at Mill Hill, Charles Wicksteed, an educational reformer in his own right. He co-founded the Leeds Education Society, a precursor to the National Education League.

Francis and Frances lived just outside the industrial city, first at Potternewton Hall, later moving to Beechwood, a Georgian country house in Roundhay, which was bought from politician Sir George Goodman. Beechwood stayed in the family until the 1990s. Francis had a farm at Beechwood and continued to work as a director of his wool manufacturing firm until he died suddenly at the age of 70 in 1884.

The Luptons had five sons, Francis Martineau, Arthur, Herbert (who died young), Charles, and Hugh. When her brother's wife died, she took in their young daughter Mabel Greenhow to raise at Beechwood alongside her own children; Mabel grew up to write prolifically as Mrs Murray Hickson. Her four surviving sons contributed to the eminence of Leeds; two of them became Lord Mayor of Leeds. Through Olive Middleton (1881–1936), the eldest child of her eldest child Francis Martineau (d.1921), Frances Lupton is the great-great-great-grandmother of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.

Context

Secular education of women had become a more pressing issue by the middle of the nineteenth century. Girls' schools, including small boarding establishments, had existed for generations (for example Mary Wollstonecraft's school in Newington Green in the 1780s, with ties to its nearby Unitarian chapel, or the Newington Academy for Girls, set up by Quakers in 1824), but a new impetus was given by the founding of colleges offering single-sex education to young women. One example, Queen's College, opened in London in 1848, originally to provide qualifications for governesses. The first girls' schools targeted at university entrance were North London Collegiate School (from 1850) and Cheltenham Ladies' College (from the appointment of Dorothea Beale in 1858). Emily Davies campaigned for women's higher education in the 1860s, and founded Girton in 1869, and Anne Clough founded Newnham in 1875 – both of these colleges were affiliated with but not entirely accepted by the University of Cambridge.

Lupton's aunt Harriet Martineau paid a long visit to the United States in 1834, one of her areas of interest being the emerging girls' schools. In Society in America (1837), the sociologist angrily criticised the state of female education:

"The intellect of women is confined by an unjustifiable restriction of ... education ... As women have none of the objects in life for which an enlarged education is considered requisite, the education is not given ... The choice is to either be ill-educated, passive, and subservient, or well-educated, vigorous, and free only upon sufferance."

Lupton's impact

Lupton's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes her pioneering work in expanding the opportunities for female education.

In 1871 Lupton became Honorary Secretary to the Ladies' Honorary Council of the Yorkshire Board of Education, which was then just six years old. She was "the powerful driving force of the organization" and also that of the Leeds Ladies' Educational Association. One of her first successes was setting up a students' library. Soon, the committees had arranged to superintend the first Cambridge Local Examination for women in Leeds.

However, the most pressing need was for better all-round education for girls, equivalent to what boys received at traditional academic grammar school. Established interests prevented the use of existing charitable funds, despite the passage of the Endowed Schools Act 1869, so Lupton led a meeting between the Leeds Association and the Ladies Council to create a new way forward – a joint stock company. Her business acumen led to the establishment of Leeds Girls' High School in 1876.

Lupton and the Ladies Council also saw the need for the dissemination of practical information on traditionally female subjects such as health and nursing. They launched a cookery school in 1874, having requested but not received help from civil servant Sir Henry Cole. In the following decade, the Yorkshire Training School of Cookery developed teacher training courses at the request of the school boards – eventually this formed a component of Leeds Metropolitan University.

Death

Lupton died at home on 9 March 1892 and is buried at St John's Church in Roundhay.