History
The Froebel Society was founded on 4 November 1874 by a group of German and English women who met at the home of Miss Beata Doreck, 63 Kensington Gardens Square, “for the purpose of founding a Kinder Garten Association” (minutes of the Froebel Society; Peter Weston, The Froebel Educational Institute: The Origins and History of the College, 2002)
Among the founding members were Emily Shirreff and her sister Mrs Maria Grey, promoters of women’s rights and education and founders of the Girls’ Public Day School Company in 1872 (minutes of the Froebel Society; Peter Weston, The Froebel Educational Institute: The Origins and History of the College, 2002)
Emily Shirreff was elected President of the Froebel Society in June 1875 after the death of Miss Doreck, and Maria Grey became Vice-President (minutes of the Froebel Society; Peter Weston, The Froebel Educational Institute: The Origins and History of the College, 2002)
In 1875 the Society also started running classes to train young women to become children’s nurses (Minutes of the Froebel Society)
In 1877 the Society began to raise funds to establish a Kindergarten Training College in London; a house at 31 Tavistock Place was taken and the Training College opened on 3 May 1879 with ten students under the Principalship of Caroline Bishop, one of the founder members of the Froebel Society (The Times, 12 December 1879; Peter Weston, The Froebel Educational Institute: The Origins and History of the College, 2002)
The Society was entirely dependent on subscriptions, and did not survive in its original form beyond 1883, when the Training College closed
Maria Grey, who had opened the first teacher training college for women in 1878 on premises lent to her rent-free in Bishopsgate, now incorporated kindergarten training into her college, which moved to Fitzroy Street, Fitzroy Square, in 1883 (Maria Grey, letter to The Times, 19 July 1890)
The Froebel Society later became part of the National Froebel Union
In 1884 the Society resolved itself into a Council; its Secretary was Claude Goldsmid-Montefiore, grandson of Sir Isaac Goldsmid, one of the founders of University College London, who set about fund-raising and organising certification for trained kindergarten teachers
A Froebel Educational Institute for training teachers was founded in 1894 at West Kensington (Nanette Whitbread, The Evolution of the Nursery–Infant School: A History of Infant and Nursery Education in Britain, 1800–1970, 1972)
It opened in January 1875 and combined teacher training with the running of a kindergarten; this subsequently became Froebel College (Peter Weston, The Froebel Educational Institute: The Origins and History of the College, 2002)
Froebel College merged in 1975 with three other colleges to become Roehampton Institute of Higher Education, now Roehampton University London
The Froebel Society no longer exists, having been incorporated into the National Froebel Foundation in 1938; the NFF was dissolved in 1975
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What was reforming about it?
It followed the radical approach to the education of the very young devised by Friedrich Froebel, and seen as the key to social progress
Where in Bloomsbury
The Society’s training classes were held at the College for Men and Women at 29 Queen Square, ‘where rooms could be had at a small rent, as the College only requires them in the evening’ (Minutes of the Froebel Society)
The plan, outlined at a meeting of the Society in April 1875, was to ‘collect a few infants & young children from the neighbourhood’ of Queen Square for the young women to practise on (Minutes of the Froebel Society)
In 1876 and 1877 classes were being held at the nearby College of Preceptors, 42 Queen Square (Minutes of the Froebel Society)
The Society’s Training College was opened in 1879 at no. 31 Tavistock Place, almost next door to the house where the first kindergarten in England had opened in 1854, the Froebelian kindergarten run by Johannes and Bertha Ronge at no. 32 Tavistock Place (Minutes of the Froebel Society)
The convenience of the location, being “near Gower Street and King’s Cross Stations”, was pointed out in a printed notice advertising a set of evening meetings for teachers to begin in October 1879 (Minutes of the Froebel Society)
In 1883 the Treasurer of the training college shortly before it left 31 Tavistock Place was Miss Eve of 37 Gordon Square, the sister of Henry Weston Eve of the same address, who was Headmaster from 1876 to 1898 of University College School, then sharing its premises with University College London on Gower Street (Maria Grey, letter to The Times, 16 January 1883)
In the early 1880s a further Kindergarten was opened in Gower Street by the Froebel-trained teacher Esther Ella Lawrence to provide progressive education for young children (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
In 1900 the Froebel Society’s Registry for Kindergarten Teachers was at 4 Bloomsbury Square, next door to the College of Preceptors (Child Life, journal of the Froebel Society, vol. II, 1900)
Website of current institution
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Books about it
Peter Weston, The Froebel Educational Institute: The Origins and History of the College, 2002
For a history of the incorporation of Froebelian elements into state schooling, see Kevin J. Brehony, The Froebel Movement and State Schooling 1880-1940 (Open University PhD thesis, 1987)
A Froebel bibliography is also available online via the Froebel Web (opens in new window)
Archives
The records of the National Froebel Foundation are held at the successor institution of the Froebel Educational Institute, Froebel College (part of Roehampton University London); details are available via the Roehampton University website (opens in new window)
This includes the Minutes of the Froebel Society, and Child Life, the journal of the Froebel Society
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