Alice Cooper (4 August 1846 – 17 June 1917) was a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

headmistress. She was the first head at the

Edgbaston High School for Girls Edgbaston High School for Girls is a private day school for girls aged to 18 in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham, England. History In 1846, Elizabeth Brady founded a school in Edgbaston for the daughters of Quakers in 1846 and this ran for 21 ...

. This was the first girls' secondary school open to the public in Birmingham. Cooper encouraged

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

and science for her students. Cooper then worked to improve the education and to train secondary teachers in Oxford.

Life

Cooper was born in

Doncaster Doncaster (, ) is a city in South Yorkshire, England. Named after the River Don, it is the administrative centre of the larger City of Doncaster. It is the second largest settlement in South Yorkshire after Sheffield. Doncaster is situated in ...

in 1846. She was the first daughter of the Reverend John Thomas Cooper and his wife Ann. She was a Unitarian like her parents and she took Cambridge higher exams and became second mistress at the

Girls' Day School Trust The Girls' Day School Trust (GDST) is a group of 25 independent schools, including two academies, in England and Wales, catering for girls aged 3 to 18. It is the largest group of independent schools in the UK, and educates 20,000 girls each ye ...

's Notting Hill High School for Girls in 1875. Cooper then became the first headmistress of Edgbaston High School for Girls. The school was founded in 1876 by liberals that included Unitarians and

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

s. It was the first girls' secondary school open to the public in Birmingham.Ruth Watts, ‘Cooper, Alice Jane (1846–1917)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, October 200
accessed 22 January 2017
/ref> Cooper strongly encouraged the teaching of science, sensible clothing and physical exercise. In 1881, the school staged a

match against another school, to which a local newspaper reacted with hostility. It produced a cartoon and wrote a passage of its opinions towards the match. The paper argued that girls should be taught modesty and not science or competition. Cooper exchanged letters with

Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequel ...

(aka Charles Dodgson) and when the school arranged a performance of his play he agreed to attend. In his letter he said that he hoped to "kiss the Alice of the play" but this "should not be permitted on any account!". Cooper resigned her position in 1895, but not to retire. Since 1891, she had been on the council of the emerging

Somerville College Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, Ir ...

. Cooper was to be the first female academic to be employed in Oxford where she gave private lessons to aspiring students who wished to teach in secondary schools. Cooper died her home in

Beaconsfield Beaconsfield ( ) is a market town and civil parish within the unitary authority of Buckinghamshire, England, west-northwest of central London and south-southeast of Aylesbury. Three other towns are within : Gerrards Cross, Amersham and High W ...

in 1917.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cooper, Alice 1846 births 1917 deaths People from Doncaster Women school principals and headteachers Heads of schools in England People associated with Somerville College, Oxford