Borchardt. Miss Malvina Henrietta Julie, 29 Trafalgar Place, Devonport
Malvina Henrietta Julie Borchardt[1] (1848 – 1916) was the daughter of Louis and Julia Borchardt, born, like her siblings Rudolph, Matilda and Sophia, in Prussia. Malvina herself was born in Breslau. Louis, who was a physician, brought his family over to England in about 1856 and settled in Manchester, where he and Julia had two more children, Henry and Helena. Crawford suggests that the emigration from Prussia was prompted by the suppression of the reform movements of 1848.[2] Whatever the cause, Louis Borchardt settled into practice in Manchester and took on honorary appointments to the Working Men’s Dispensary and the Children’s Hospital.
Malvina was growing up just at the time that opportunities for women in higher education were opening up. Girton College Cambridge opened in 1869, and Malvina went up there in 1873 to read Mathematics. She sat her Tripos examinations in Mathematics and Moral Sciences in 1876 and 1877 and was awarded the certificate that, for women, was the equivalent of a degree for a man.[3]
Probably she spent the next couple of years gaining experience in teaching, although no trace of this has been found. In 1880, however, she was appointed as the Head Mistress of the Devonport, Stoke and Stonehouse High School for Girls. This new private foundation (a limited company) was part of the wave of schools springing up, principally in London and the south, under the aegis of the Girls’ Public Day School Company (later the GPDS Trust) founded in 1872. Its aim was to promote the establishment of schools open to girls whose educational needs were not met under the Education Act 1870 (which made provision for elementary education).
The Devonport, Stoke and Stonehouse High School for Girls had opened in 1875 under the headship of a Miss Anderson, described as having been on the staff of the Grand Ducal Institution (Educational) of Manheim in Germany. By the time Malvina Borchardt arrived as the third headmistress in the autumn of 1880 the school was established in purpose-built premises next to St Michael’s Church on Albert Road, Stoke.[4] Borchardt’s predecessor, Miss McCann, had been paid £250 per annum and it is likely that she was paid a similar amount.
The newspapers do not provide much evidence for Borchardt’s engagement in town activities, but she made a point of attending a meeting in Plymouth Guildhall in January 1883, convened at the request of the [Bristol] Women’s Suffrage Society’s Committee.[5] Malvina was a second-generation suffrage activist. Her father, Dr Louis Borchardt, had been a founder of the Manchester Suffrage Society and continued to be active on its committee and Malvina herself had been briefly a member before she went away to Cambridge.[6]
Following the meeting at the Guildhall, a Three Towns’ Women’s Liberal Association was formed early in 1884 which included among its objectives the enfranchisement of women by giving them the right of voting in Parliamentary elections on qualifications similar to those possessed by men. At an initial social gathering in 1884 at the Borough Arms Coffee Saloon Miss Borchardt addressed the meeting. Although it is not known precisely what she said there, the issue of women’s suffrage was very much on her mind at that time. A Reform Bill was being debated in the House of Commons and a group of 76 ‘representative women of the day’, following an exchange of letters with Prime Minister Gladstone, had signed a letter which they sent to all Members of Parliament, calling their attention to the ‘claims of women who are heads of households to be included’. The only other Devon women amongst the signatories were Deborah, Lady Bowring and the Countess of Portsmouth (qqv).[7]
In 1884, however, Borchardt left Devonport High School and Devonport. The detailed account of the speech she gave at the distribution of prizes in October 1883 reveals some of the difficulties she had found working at the school. The Council who managed the school on behalf of the shareholders naturally looked to her to build up the numbers of girls attending. Progress on this seemed slower than they would have liked, with 70 to 80 pupils attending and 20 in the kindergarten. Borchardt was able to point to greatly increased success in the Cambridge local examinations, but it is evident from her speech that she had found it sometimes difficult to get parents to treat their daughters’ education seriously. She refers at one point to the ‘fluctuating’ population of pupils, and although the council member responding understands this to refer to the many comings and goings amongst Devonport resident, it appears more likely to mean that parents sent and withdrew their daughters on a whim. Borchardt said: ‘I have so often felt almost powerless, when trying to inspire a girl with some higher aspirations, through the paralysing effects of a dull and unsympathetic home influence.’ She called for parents to ‘second us in our efforts to impress them with the idea that nothing makes a girl more truly charming than refinement and a ready sympathy for and interest in the great questions agitating men’s minds.’ [8]
Borchardt must have known that this was going to continue to be an extremely tough job. (The school was unable to make a profit and finally closed in 1895.) Her options may also have altered with her father’s death at the end of 1883. She left the school in Devonport in the summer of 1884 and moved to London. In 1886 she became a naturalized British subject, describing herself as ‘of independent means’. Her address at that point was 8 Fellowes Road in Hampstead, and she was to stay in that part of London for the rest of her life. In 1890 the Hampstead and Highgate Express, carried an advertisement for a ‘High Class private Day and Boarding School for Girls’, at The Ferns, Finchley New Road.[9] Listed as First Mistress is her sister Helene, who had taken the Natural Science Tripos at Cambridge four years earlier.[10] It is probable that a third sister, Sophie, was also involved in the enterprise as in 1891 she was sharing 153 Finchley Road with Malvina and Helen, then still a student. Sophie was described as a teacher of music.
No evidence has been uncovered for Malvina’s suffrage activism once she had moved to London. By 1911 the sisters had retired and moved to Fairholm, 184 Adelaide Road. Malvina died in November 1916, too soon to learn of the success of the suffrage movement. She is buried in Mancheter’s Southern Cemetery.
Entry created by Anne Corry and Julia Neville, January 2019
[1] Census and family information from www.ancestry.co.uk
[2] Elizabeth Crawford, Women’s Suffrage Movement: a Reference Guide, 1866-1928, London, UCL Press, 1999, 71.
[3] Manchester Evening News, 6 Feb 1877; Western Morning News, 24 Dec 1877.
[4] Brian Moseley, Old Devonport, article on the High School describing the scale of the classrooms and ancillary accommodation. Available on line at http://www.olddevonport.uk/Devonport%20Stoke%20and%20Stonehouise%20High%20School%20for%20Girls.htm (accessed 21 Jan 2019).
[5] Women’s Suffrage Review, January 1884, 8.
[6] Crawford, Women’s Suffrage Movement, 71.
[7] Helen Blackburn, Women’s Suffrage: A record of the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the British Isles, Oxford, Williams & Norgate, 1902, 275, Appendix G. As the letter was signed by women householders it is to be presumed that Borchardt had moved away from 29 Trafalgar Place, the boarding house where she was listed on the 1881 census, to set up her own establishment. Unfortunately there is no information about her address in 1883-4.
[8] Western Morning News IWMN), 8 Oct 1883.
[9] Hampstead and Highgate Express 21 Jun 1890,,
[10] Cambridge Independent Press, 22 June 1888.