Mary Adelaide Hare (1865–1945) was a teacher of Deaf children and a suffragist who founded the Mary Hare School.

She was born on 3 November 1865 in Kentish Town, London, the sixth of eleven children of engineering draughtsman Thomas Hare and his wife Adelaide, née Rogers.[1]

Teaching career

Trained at the Ealing Training College for Teachers of the Deaf, she taught there as a teacher-trainee and as a full-time teacher, and remained an examiner there after her departure.[1]

In January 1885, she opened her own school for Deaf pupils within a private girls’ school run by three of her sisters in Upper Norwood. She took in a handful of students, some of them boarders, including one child from a poor family whom she taught for free.[1] The school moved premises to Brighton in 1894, eventually settling at Burgess Hill, in 1916, where it was known as the Dene Hollow School for the Deaf.[2] The school focused on the 'oral method,' teaching Deaf children to speak as well as sign, and attracted pupils from great distances away.[3]

Suffragist

While in Brighton, Mary Hare chaired meetings of the WSPU and hosted WSPU events in her house. By 1913, she had become the secretary of the Brighton branch of the Women's Freedom League.[4] She spoiled her 1911 census record as part of a WFL protest.[1]

Later positions and death

During World War I she held a leadership role in the Brighton branch of the Women's Police Volunteers. She was the first woman to serve on the Burgess Hill Urban District Council (1919–1938) and the first woman chair of the National College of Teachers of the Deaf (1928).[1]

She died at her home in Dene Hollow on 5 November 1945. In 1946 the school was redesignated the Mary Hare Grammar School for the Deaf.[5]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Hare, Mary Adelaide (1865–1945), teacher of the deaf and campaigner for women's suffrage". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. doi:10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-369185. Retrieved 2023-12-28.
  2. ↑ Archives, The National (2022-11-16). "The National Archives - Mary Hare's Pioneering Establishment: The Dene Hollow Oral School for the Deaf". The National Archives blog. Retrieved 2023-12-28.
  3. ↑ ‘Unique Establishment at Burgess Hill’, Mid Sussex Times, 22 September 1925, p. 5.
  4. ↑ Crawford, Elizabeth (2006). The Women's Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland: a Regional Survey. p. 196.
  5. ↑ "History of Mary Hare". Mary Hare School. 2017-09-05. Retrieved 2023-12-28.
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