Mary Dendy (1855–1933) and Pedagogies of Care

Abstract

Visiting board schools as a member of the Manchester School Board from 1896, Mary Dendy was struck by the ‘outcast’ children in the school playgrounds and those unable to make use of the education on offer. After personally inspecting nearly 40,000 children, she pressed the board for day special schools and became a driving force in the establishment of the residential Sandlebridge Schools for the Permanent Care of the Feeble-minded. Opened in 1902 under the aegis of the Lancashire and Cheshire Society for the Permanent Care of the Feeble-minded [LCSPCFM] (Cruikshank, 1976; Jackson, 1996, 1997, 2000), Sandlebridge was the first institution of importance to be certified under the Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act, 1899 (Board of Education, 1910).²

This chapter draws on records of the Mary Dendy Hospital, Great Warford, Alderley Edge, Cheshire, 1902–86, NHM11/3837, Cheshire Record Office. I am grateful to the East Cheshire National Health Care Trust for granting me access to the closed records in this archive.