Nat Gould

Sophia Sarah Stothard

Sophia Sarah Stothard was born on 15 April 1826 at Somers Town in London, the daughter of Alfred Joseph Stothard 1794-1864 and his wife nee Sophia Pinheiro 1796-1850. She was baptised at St. Pancras Old Church on 17 November 1829.

Her father was a sculptor but pre-eminently an engraver (1). He became medal engraver to King George IV (2) and notably to Queen Victoria. He was the son of Thomas Stothard, the portrait painter, and his wife nee Rebecca Watkins (3).

When the Census was taken in 1841 and 1851 the family were living at 34 Upper Park Road, Finsbury in London.

According to Margaret Gould in Pilsbury Grange Letter 10 Sophia Stothard was the cousin of Richard Goodwin Gould 1822-1892, but the connection is unknown (4). She does mention in that letter, however, that Cousin Sophia was then living at the Home and Colonial School in “Kings Cross some where near Greys Inn”.

This school was in fact connected with the Home and Colonial Training College, situated in Paradise Street off the northern end of Gray’s Inn Road in London (5). It was the very first teacher training college, and was founded in 1836 based on the principles of the Swiss educationalist J.H. Pestalozzi. Reformers realised that young children in infant schools had to be taught in a special way suited to their age, rather than treating them like older pupils. The Home and Colonial School trained teachers to do that, and introduced the idea that the care and education of young children was a skill which should not be left to women prepared to work for very low wages or "motherly" girls who just looked after young children (6).

Sophia Sarah Stothard (7) was one of the earliest students to qualify there as teacher, and went on to become one of the most most famous woman to be connected with the Home and Colonial School and infant teaching reform. She is all but unknown in her native land but is rightly celebrated in her adopted country New Zealand.

After qualifying, Sophia Stothard went on to teach at Carmarthen Girls' School in Wales from 1850 to 1854, where she trained teachers for country schools, and then spent two years as Head of Christchurch Collegiate School at Brighton in Sussex. She organised schools for the Home and Colonial Infant School Society, which had founded the training school in Gray’s Inn Road. Then she was for two years Principal of the Female Training Institution at Bandon in Ireland.

In 1860 she arrived at Auckland in New Zealand with the Church Missionary Society, and was posted to a mission station, where her work was disrupted by the outbreak of war in 1863. She returned to Auckland where for ten years she devoted herself to women's education, teaching classes in science, arithmetic and perspective drawing. She fought to establish a state secondary school for girls in Auckland, but this campaign did not succeed until 1874. By then Sophia Stothard had moved to Christchurch, and later she taught in Nelson and Napier. On retirement she returned to Auckland, becoming an active supporter of the Anglican church and its missions. She died unmarried on 29 August 1901 (8).

(1) Her biographer states that she was the daughter of a sculptor, Thomas Stothard (1). However the London 1841 Census Return lists her father as Alfred Stothard. The 1851 Census Return records him as Alfred Joseph Stothard. He was a sculptor but pre-eminently a medallist, and a son of the portrait painter Thomas Stothard. Dictionary of New Zealand Biography : entry by Ruth Fry, which is a valuable and concise source of information. Available online at www.dnzb.govt.nz
(2) "Mr Alfred Stothard was appointed medallist to the late King George the Fourth, of whose head he executed a beautiful medal". Reminiscences of Stothard Part II in Blackwood's Magazine (1836) page 265.
(3) Life of Thomas Stothard, R.A. Anna Eliza Bray (1851) pages 21 and 42.
(4) Sophia Sarah Stothard does not seem to have been either a Gould or Peake first cousin. (Peake was the maiden surname of Margaret Gould.) But the warmth of the friendship, and the fact that she travelled all the way from her college in London to visit Margaret Gould at Pilsbury Grange indicates that the relationship was close.
(5) Victoria County History A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 1 (1969).
(6) Later it produced Charlotte Mason, best remembered for the former Charlotte Mason College that she founded at Ambleside in Cumbria, now part of the University of Lancaster.
(7) Sophia Sarah Stothard was also called Sarah Sophia Stothard, particularly during her later life in New Zealand..
(8) Dictionary of New Zealand Biography Ruth Fry www.dnzb.govt.nz A notice of her death appeared in the local paper: "Deaths - Stothard - On August 29 at Auckland Hospital, Sarah Sophia Stothard, first Principal of the Girls' High School. The funeral will leave the Hospital at 2 p.m. tomorrow (Saturday) 21 inst." The Auckland Star 30 August 1901.
For a reference to her work see also Ladies in the Laboratory III : South African, Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian Women in Science : Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries M.A.S. Creese and T.M. Creese (2010) page 116.