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Juliet White’s Boarding School (Number 33) ran from 1820 until 1840. While boys’ schools were focused on academic achievement, the curriculums of the private schools that many Albany Street daughters would have attended, were focused on developing young women’s social skills. Competition between private schools was fierce and there were many adverts detailed the advantages of the location, curriculum, fees and the school’s reputation. Usually the schools began as small establishments and, if successful, moved on to larger premises. Miss Lee’s school later located to Royal Circus. With some, there may have been a disparity between the advertised benefits and the reality, as this account from the early 1800s by Mary Fairfax of her time at a private school in Musselburgh implies: ‘A few days after my arrival, although perfectly straight and well-made, I was enclosed in stiff stays with a steel busk in front, while above my frock, bands drew my shoulders back till the shoulder-blades met. Then a steel rod with a semi-circle which went under my chin, was clasped to the steel busk in my stays. In this constrained state I, and most of the young girls, had to prepare our lessons. The chief thing I had to do was to learn by heart a page of Johnson's Dictionary, not only to spell the words, give their parts of speech and meaning, but as an exercise of memory to remember their order of succession. Besides I had to learn the first principles of writing, and the rudiments of French and English grammar. The method of teaching was extremely tedious and inefficient. In our play-hours we amused ourselves with playing at ball, marbles, and especially at "Scotch and English," a game which represented a raid on the debatable land, or Border between Scotland and England, in which each party tried to rob the other of their playthings. The little ones were always compelled to be English, for the bigger girls thought it too degrading.’
Dancing skills were essential and Miss Reynolds (Number 2) advertised that her ‘Fashionable dancing and exercises classes will re-commence on 3 March.’ Mary Fairfax also recounts her dancing lessons: ‘(I was sent to) Strange's dancing school. Strange himself was exactly like a figure on the stage; tall and thin, he wore a powdered wig, with cannons at the ears, and a pigtail. Ruffles at the breast and wrists, white waistcoat, black silk or velvet shorts, white silk stockings, large silver buckles, and a pale blue coat completed his costume. He had a little fiddle on which he played, called a kit. My first lesson was how to walk and make a curtsey. "Young lady, if you visit the queen you must make three curtsies, lower and lower and lower as you approach her”. Every Saturday afternoon all the scholars, both boys and girls, met to practise in the public assembly rooms in George's Street. It was a handsome large hall with benches rising like an amphitheatre. Some of the elder girls were very pretty, and danced well, so these practicings became a lounge for officers from the Castle, and other young men. We used always to go in full evening dress. We learnt the minuet de la cour, reels and country dances. Our partners used to give us gingerbread and oranges. Dancing before so many people was quite an exhibition, and I was greatly mortified one day when ready to begin a minuet, by the dancing-master shaking me roughly and making me hold out my frock properly.’
As the century went on the subjects offered at girls’ schools also began to increase. Textbooks such as The Young Ladies' Guide to Arithmetic appeared (addition exercise from the book), although these were still orientated towards a domestic future: ‘besides the common and necessary Rules, the Application of each Rule, by a Variety of practical Questions, chiefly domestic Affairs; together with the Method of making out Bills of Parcels, Book Debts, Receipts, etc.’ This addition exercise also provides a sample of the books that would have been expected to have been bought by a young lady.
Yet for any woman who wished to expand their knowledge into such areas as science or higher mathematics, self-study or individual tuition was the only way. As well as her dancing lessons Mary Fairfax was determined to develop her knowledge, and eventually under her married name, Mary Sommerville, became a renowned science writer and one of the first two women admitted to the Royal Astronomical Society. ‘I had now read a good deal on the higher branches of mathematics and physical astronomy, but as I never had been taught, I was afraid that I might imagine that I understood the subjects when I really did not. Professor Playfair knew that I was reading the Mécanique Céleste [by Pierre-Simon Laplace, an outstanding French mathematician] and asked me how I got on? I told him that I was stopped short by a difficulty now and then, but I persevered till I got over it. He said, "You would do better to read on for a few pages and return to it again, it will then no longer seem so difficult." I invariably followed his advice and with much success….It gave me confidence in myself and consequently courage to persevere.’ This in spite of women's participation in science, medicine, law, etc. being discouraged. Since women did not usually have careers as such, and were not ‘citizens’ in the sense of being directly involved in politics, there was little generally-perceived need for them to have a formal education.
Following the 1872 Education Act, Edinburgh Schools Boards were established, with members elected every three years by owners or occupiers of property. Although women were eligible to vote and to stand for election, in the first election only 17 women were elected to the 5,650 places, and these were almost solely to oversee girls’ schools. James Wallace (Number 8) attended a Schools Board meeting that discussed the issue: ‘There is no doubt that out of fifteen members, two should be ladies (hear, hear), if not more, for there are many departments of education to which gentlemen do not naturally divert attention.’ Eventually, the board agreed to appoint Flora Stevenson, an active social and education reformer (Robert Louis Stevenson’s cousin) and Mrs McBride who had ‘shown her competency in her care of the sewing department and also the domestic economy department.’ Helen Masson (Number 57) attended Edinburgh Ladies College in the early 1870s. This girls’ school was founded for the daughters of Edinburgh burgesses in 1694 by Mary Erskine, who had begun life as a shopkeeper and progressed to becoming a successful businesswoman, including acting as a moneylender to businessmen and to some women, usually widows continuing their husbands’ business or starting their own. In 1870, it became a day school and had 1,200 female pupils. After a number of name changes it became today’s Mary Erskine School.
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