Lucraft, Miss Ann, School House, Union Road, St Thomas, Exeter
Ann Martin Lucraft [1](1861 – 1934) was born in Broadclyst, Devon, in June 1861, the daughter of John Newton Lucraft and his wife Ann, née Martin. John Lucraft was a cooper, son of Joseph Lucraft, a Broadclyst dairyman. Ann had three sisters and two brothers; both her brothers died in childhood. The children were educated at the church school in Broadclyst, supported by local landlord Thomas Acland of Killerton, who was an influential educational reformer. There are references to Ann entering competitions at the Broadclyst Cottage Garden Society show in 1873 (wildflower arrangement) and at the Broadclyst Agricultural Association’s Industrial Exhibition in 1875 and 1876 (needlework).[2]
An exotic and possibly influential figure in Ann’s childhood was her father’s cousin, Benjamin Lucraft,[3] who lived in London and used to come to Broadclyst for his summer holidays each year.[4] Benjamin was a cabinet maker, a celebrated chair carver, who had moved first to Taunton and then to London where he became a supporter of Chartism and Teetotalism, and a key member of the International Workingmen’s Association. By the time Ann was growing up he had secured a seat on the London School Board, the first working-class man to be elected there and stood on two occasions as a Radical candidate at Parliamentary elections. His doings were frequently reported in the Exeter papers.
Lucraft trained as a teacher at the Diocesan Training College for Schoolmistresses at Truro, which usually required women to have worked as a pupil teacher for four to five years before admission, a role it seems that Ann had fulfilled at Broadclyst. She was listed at the College in Truro in the 1881 census as a Queen’s Scholar, a position she would have won in competitive examination. The course comprised a year at the college followed by two years in a supervised probationary position; Lucraft served this at the girls’ school at Silverton. She later moved to Oxfordshire, where she taught in Adderbury and Bloxham in the early 1890s.[5]
In 1895 Lucraft was appointed as head mistress of the Exeter School Board’s Exe Island Infants’ School at a salary of ‘£80 a year fixed plus a portion of the grant, the whole salary not to exceed £100 a year.’[6] The Exe Island School served much of Exeter’s slum district. She joined the Exeter and District Teachers’ Association, affiliated to the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and regularly attended their events and those of the Devon District Union of Teachers.[7] She lodged at 50 Holloway Street, and later at 57 Okehampton Road.[8] At the end of 1895 she was appointed as headmistress of St Thomas Infants’ School, a post she was to hold until she retired.[9] She was able to move in to the School House, where in 1911 she is shown living with a resident housekeeper, Lydia Martin, possibly a family connection of her mother’s.
Lucraft seems to have become involved in the women’s suffrage movement through her membership of the NUT. She was an active member of the Exeter NUT branch, being elected to the committee,[10] and forming part of a deputation to the School Board’s attendance sub-committee on the subject of truancy;[11] She joined the Exeter Head Teachers’ Association of which she became Secretary, Vice-President and President in 1913.[12] She was a member of the deputation that waited on the Exeter Education Committee in 1916 and led the presentation seeking greater restrictions on children attending cinematographic performances than the British Board of Film Classification, founded in 1912, had instituted.
The balance in favour of women’s suffrage within the Exeter NUT branch changed between 1912, when Edith Sanford (q.v.) proposed a motion asking the NUT national conference to express sympathy with their women members because they were debarred by law from voting. That motion was lost by one vote.[13] The following year, 1913, when it was proposed by Muriel Norrington (q.v.) Lucraft is specifically noted as having taken part in the discussion which resulted in the motion being passed.[14] 1913 was the year in which Lucraft was first elected (at the February Annual General Meeting) to the committee of the Exeter Branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). She remained a member of the committee until at least 1916.[15]
In March 1917 women teachers in Exeter gathered to hear an address about the objects of the National Federation of Women Teachers, such as equal pay and greater representation of women on Education Authorities. On the resolution of Miss Lucraft the meeting determined to form a branch for Exeter and District, signing thirty-two teachers up immediately. Miss Lucraft was elected President.[16]
Lucraft was a good churchwoman, supporting parish activities within St Thomas. She became a member of the Devon and Exeter Board of the Church Schoolmasters’ and Schoolmistresses’ Benevolent Institution.[17] She was also proposed as a lay representative at the Deanery of Christianity Conference in 1918, when women were first allowed to be elected, but declined the nomination as the conference met during the working day.[18] In September 1917 she invited Adelaide Baly, a fellow NUWSS member and former teacher (q.v.) to address the branch on ‘Women as Citizens’.[19]
Lucraft continued as headmistress at St Thomas Infants’ School until her retirement. She died on 13 Mar 1934, at 12 Waterloo Road, leaving effects worth approximately £2610.
Entry created by Julia Neville, November 2018
[1] Family and census references from www.ancestry.co.uk
[2] Exeter and Plymouth Gazette (EPG), 25 Jul 1873; Flying Post (FP) 31 Mar 1875; EPG, 19 Apr 1876.
[3] https://spartacus-educational.com/Benjamin_Lucraft.htm , accessed 14 Nov 2018.
[4] WT, 7 Sep 1875.
[5] 1891 census; obituary in Devon and Exeter Gazette (DEG), 23 Mar 1934.
[6] DEG, 5 Apr 1895.
[7] WT, 31 Mar 1896; 2 Jun 1896; 19 Feb 1900; DEG 29 Oct 1906 & 20 Oct 1909.
[8] 1891 census; DEG, 27 Jan 1906.
[9] DEG, 28 Dec 1905.
[10] Referred to as re-elected in DEG 25 Jan 1913.
[11] WT, 24 Feb 1910.
[12] DEG, 24 Jan 1912.; 2 Jun 1913.
[13] WT, 25 Nov 1912.
[14] WT, 4 Dec 1913.
[15] WT, 21 Feb 1913; 17 Apr 1916.
[16] Wt, 21 Mar 1917.
[17] WT, 21 Jul 1916 refers to her re-election.
[18] WT, 24 Mar 1918.
[19] WT, 25 Sep 1917.