Frances Buss

Frances Mary Buss (16 August 1827 – 24 December 1894) was a headmistress and an English pioneer of women's education. The daughter of Robert William Buss, a painter and etcher, and his wife, Frances Fleetwood, Buss was one of six of their ten children to survive into adulthood. Her grandparents, whom she was visiting in Aldersgate, sent her to a private school housed in the most basic accommodation "...to get me out of the way". Next she was sent... more

Frances Mary Buss (16 August 1827 – 24 December 1894) was a headmistress and an English pioneer of women's education. The daughter of Robert William Buss, a painter and etcher, and his wife, Frances Fleetwood, Buss was one of six of their ten children to survive into adulthood. Her grandparents, whom she was visiting in Aldersgate, sent her to a private school housed in the most basic accommodation "...to get me out of the way". Next she was sent to a similar school in Kentish Town which she remembered as simply consisting of children learning Murray's Grammar. Aged 10 she attended a more advanced school in Hampstead; by the age of fourteen she herself was teaching there and by sixteen she was occasionally left in charge of the school. Her father's career as an artist being at times unsuccessful, to help the family finances her mother set up a private school in Clarence Road, Kentish Town, in 1845, at which Frances assisted, and which was based on the ideas of Johann Heinrich... less