Even more widespread than these day-schools are the evening classes in the same subjects. These are found throughout the country, in towns at technical institutes, in villages in little classes taught by peripatetic teachers, who are sent from place to place by the county councils. In fact, ‘county council dressmaking’ has become such a feature, that it might be taken for a special system of cutting and fitting. The persons for whose benefit this instruction is given are young women who have left school, wives, and mothers of families. If experience has taught them their own deficiencies, they have now the opportunity of making up lost ground. Cookery, dressmaking, and nursing often attract large numbers. The teaching has no professional purpose. It is simply ‘for home use,’ as the Germans say, and has its place in a wide scheme of general education, which includes training the hand as well as the mind.
This village work must, to some extent, be desultory, while, in the large town institutes, it can be made more systematic. Its value is considerably affected by the construction of the board which controls it. A council which places experts on its technical education committee generally does better than one that simply adds education to its other manifold functions. Women are able to sit on these committees, and it is of great importance, for the more feminine side of the work, that they should be appointed in larger numbers than has hitherto been the case.
The female element is represented at some of the institutes by the appointment of a lady-superintendent of the women’s department. This is the case in the London Polytechnics, where the women’s work is very fully equipped. At Battersea, which may be taken as typical, the subjects taught in this department are: cookery, needlework, dress cutting and making, millinery, fancy needlework and embroidery, laundry work. In most of these subjects pupils can be prepared for the examinations of the City and Guilds of London Institute. The fees are low, and the courses carefully graduated. There is an interesting class in ‘homekeeping,’ intended for students whose occupation prevents them from getting the necessary knowledge of housekeeping during the day. This includes such items as spring cleaning, ordinary household duties and daily routine, and is probably of special use to that large class of housekeepers who, having learnt their own deficiencies from bitter experience, can value this opportunity of remedying them. Another useful course is elementary political economy, which includes value and distribution of wealth, rent, wages, and other similar problems. This instruction, to which both mistress and maid might listen with profit, can be had by Polytechnic members for 1s., and for 1s. 6d. by outsiders. Members may also join a reading circle and a first-aid class; they can use the beautiful gymnasium, and refresh their cramped limbs with musical drill. All this, with the social advantages which are manifold, is within reach of those girls and women who are lucky enough to live in the neighbourhood of a Polytechnic, and have some free evenings to spend there.