6 - Lectures for ladies

Summary

King's College of Household and Social Science (KCHSS) in London, England, offered university degrees in household and social science for over 30 years, beginning in 1920. The King's College initiative is unique in the history of housework, not because it was the only institution to provide domestic science degrees – by 1920 there were many places doing that – but because of its independence as an institution from other university connections, its longevity, the sustained academic and political struggle that gave rise to it, the outstandingly comprehensive curriculum of research, teaching and policy work that went on there, and its legacy today in programmes of food and nutrition science that are known and respected around the globe. KCHSS has received little attention from historians of housework. This is a pity, as tracing its rise, development and influence has much to tell us about the domestic science movement, and about its tight interconnections with the movement for women's higher education. The scientisation of housework and the education of women are like conjoined twins: recognising, and at the same time disputing, the closeness of their relationship. By following the development of household science at KCHSS we can see how the argument for scientific education in housework meshed with, and at times contradicted, the drive to get women accepted as equal citizens in the professional academic world.

This chapter and the next are based on many weeks spent in the marvellous archives of KCHSS which are now held in the library of King's College, London. Carefully preserved by assiduous (and very helpful) archivists, some of these records throw up clouds of dust that would horrify the protagonists of the domestic science movement. Thus these two chapters are different in tone and purpose from the others in The Science of Housework because their concern is with the meticulous details of ideas and arrangements, negotiations and social networks that gave rise in one particular place to a university degree in household science. Our journey through this story will cause us to re- encounter many names we have already met in previous chapters: the resourceful British sanitary scientist, Alice Ravenhill, for example; domestic science lecturer Margaret McKillop and her co- author, economist Mabel Atkinson; Arthur Smithells, professor of chemistry and supporter of a thoroughly scientific education for women; Clementina Black, who railed against the domestic idiocies of much home design and had her own brilliant remedial ideas.