Ursula's parents almost married!

Who would have thought it would take this long to get to the point in the story where Mrs Lillie and children have returned to England following the death of the Rev Dr John Lillie and now Richard Bethell is putting his affairs in order to also return to England, where he and Isabel Lillie were married in 1873?

Yes! I am gradually getting there - and, hopefully, as I become more disciplined in my study habits (one paper per semester by distance through Otago University) perhaps I will also become more disciplined regarding work on this biography!

Victorian England

Gradually coming to the end of the background information stuff I have, and now looking at the history of Britain and Ireland during the Victorian era. There is also some stuff here about women in Victorian England. Then, when this section is done, I can either put all the background stuff into one chronological sequence or get right into the data I have regarding Ursula Bethell's maternal and paternal ancestors in Christchurch.

So, after all this time, things are finally moving along a bit!

St Faith's House of Sacred Learning

I have actually worked my way through quite a bit of material since I last made an entry here, and I am now scanning in the material related to the Board of Women's Work of 1929 or so, in the Anglican Diocese of Christchurch, which eventually led to the St Faith's House of Sacred Learning being set up for the training and education of women workers (Deaconesses, Sunday School teachers, and lay workers of various kinds) for the Church of England in the New Zealand Province.

St Faith's finally failed around 1943 or so, but, in the meantime the Church Army had been established soon after the commencement of St Faith's House of Sacred Learning - this may have contributed in part to the failure of the Training College for Women here in Christchurch.

It seems odd, somehow, to be reading, at the same time, books about the lives of young English women from the 1870's up 'til about 1915 or 1917, when women still were not enfranchised, etc., etc. It interests me that the same concerns around social justice at the time have not yet been fully addressed and corrected, which makes me wonder if we may need to start thinking outside the square a bit more vis a vis the very close interconnections between economic wealth and political power!

Burnham, Earnley and education

Still some work to be done on Burnham history as recorded in the pages of the local newspaper of the times, but it will need to be done in between doing other stuff!  At the moment I am looking at education for girls and women in 19th century England - which undoubtedly had an influence on education for girls and women here in New Zealand as well.

I have also spent some time, albeit brief, looking at the history of Ven. Archdeacon Benjamin Woolley Dudley's house, Earnley in Rangiora, where Richard Bethell died in April 1886.  Ursula had a governess when the family lived at Earnley, so the two topics - Rangiora and the history of education for girls - sort of sit together and the latter helps me make sense of the former.