Frances Dove
{{Short description|English women's campaigner}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2021}}
{{Use British English|date=August 2012}}
Dame Jane Frances Dove, DBE, JP (27 June 1847 – 21 June 1942) was an English women's campaigner, who founded the girls' schools, Wycombe Abbey and Godstowe.
Early life and education
Born in Bordeaux, France, the eldest of ten children of Revd. John Thomas Dove, vicar of Cowbit, Lincolnshire,[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-32880 Dove, Dame (Jane) Frances (1847–1942), founder of Wycombe Abbey School | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]. Retrieved 2018-02-14. Dove attended Girton College, Cambridge. The University of Cambridge did not then award women degrees; she received her MA degree {{lang|la|ad eundem}} from Trinity College Dublin in 1905 as one of the 'steamboat ladies'.{{cite news|url=http://trinitynews.ie/trinity-halls-steamboat-ladies/ |title=Trinity Hall's Steamboat Ladies |newspaper=Trinity News |date=2012-03-14 |access-date=2015-03-29}}
Career
She later became assistant mistress at Cheltenham Ladies' College in 1877. From there she went on to become headmistress of St Leonards School at St Andrews, Scotland, in 1882. She founded Wycombe Abbey in 1896, and was its first headmistress. In 1900 she also founded Godstowe Preparatory School. On retirement from Wycombe Abbey in 1910, she endowed a scholarship at the school.{{citation needed|date=December 2021}}
She was elected in 1907 to High Wycombe Borough Council.{{cite web|url=http://www.womeninlocalgovernment.org.uk/db/index.php?action=viewcouncillor&councillorid=8|title=Miss Frances Dove|work=Women's Local Government Society|access-date=21 June 2010|archive-date=2 October 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111002145953/http://www.womeninlocalgovernment.org.uk/db/index.php?action=viewcouncillor&councillorid=8|url-status=dead}} In the 1928 New Year Honours, she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.{{London Gazette
| issue = 33343
| date = 30 December 1927
| page = 6
| supp = y
}} She died in 1942, six days before her 95th birthday.{{citation needed|date=December 2021}}
Legacy
She presented the Frances Dove Window at All Saints' Church, High Wycombe, to pay tribute to the achievement of women through the ages.{{Cite web|url=https://www.allsaintshighwycombe.org/heritage.html|title=All Saints High Wycombe: Heritage|access-date=22 January 2021}} The window was dedicated on Ascension Day in 1933. The stained-glass was designed by Caroline Townshend, a former pupil at Wycombe Abbey.
It depicts famous women:
- In the left panel, Townshend depicted Charlotte Brontë, Emily Davies (the first principal of Girton), St Bridget, St Winifred, Elizabeth Fry (the prison reformer) and Florence Nightingale. They also listed the names of Maude Royden and Dame Millicent Fawcett, both suffragettes, Agnata Ramsay (the first woman to achieve a classics tripos at Cambridge), Mary Kingsley, Hannah More (anti-slavery writer and friend of Wilberforce) and Edith Cavell.
- In the centre panels are depictions of St Margaret, the Scottish Queen, Margaret Roper (daughter to Sir Thomas More), Margaret Beaufort (mother of Henry VII and benefactress of Oxford and Cambridge universities) and Anne Clough (the first principal of Newnham College). Also included are the names Josephine Butler (the social reformer), Octavia Hill (co-founder of the National Trust), Jenny Lind (opera singer), Sophia Jex-Blake (a pioneer of medical education for women), Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (first woman member of the British Medical Association) and Agnes Jones, the nurse praised by Florence Nightingale.
- In the right hand panel are depicted Grace Darling, Queen Victoria, Christina Rossetti and St Hilda together with the names St Frideswide, Mary Slessor (the Scottish missionary), Alice Marval (who died caring for plague victims in India), Amy Johnson and Elsie Inglis, a suffragette who took women’s medical units to serve on the Western Front in the Great War."Women Stained Glass Artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement Catalogue." London Borough of Waltham Forest Libraries & Arts Department, 1985. William Morris Gallery Exhibition and Brangwyn Gift in 1985. {{ISBN|0901974226}}.[http://www.bucksstainedglass.org.uk/Indices/pl0117.htm Windows in All Saints, High Wycombe, Bucks.] Buckinghamshire Stained Glass. Retrieved 19 August 2012.
References
{{Reflist}}
Sources
- 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}})
External links
- [http://www.reachinformation.com/define/Frances_Dove.aspx Reach Information.com]
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20120209142043/http://www.womeninlocalgovernment.org.uk/db/index.php Women in Local Government - includes pictures]
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Category:Alumni of Girton College, Cambridge
Category:English justices of the peace
Category:Schoolteachers from Buckinghamshire
Category:Councillors in Buckinghamshire
Category:Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Category:People from High Wycombe
Category:Founders of English schools and colleges
Category:People from South Holland (district)