Martina Bergman-Österberg

Martina Sofia Helena Bergman-Österberg (née Bergman; 7 October 1849 – 29 July 1915)[1] was a Swedish-born physical education instructor and women's suffrage advocate who spent most of her working life in Britain.

Bergman-Österberg pioneered teaching physical education as a full subject within the English school curriculum, with Swedish-style gymnastics (as opposed to the German model) at its core.

Her parents were Karl Bergman, a farmer, and Betty Lundgren; she also had two brothers who both died at a young age, and three sisters who eventually settled abroad.

Since no English teachers possessed sufficient qualifications at the time, its first appointee was a Swede named Concordia Löfving, who like Bergman-Österberg was trained at the Royal Central Gymnastics Institute in Stockholm.

[19] She taught anatomy, animal physiology, chemistry, physics, hygiene, theory of movement, dancing, deportment and Swedish gymnastics.

[20] Believing that the liberators of the female sex were to be found in the ranks of the middle class, she deliberately kept enrolment fees high and student numbers low.

She only admitted students with above-average intelligence and education, an aptitude for natural science, a sound constitution and character, a pleasing appearance, and considerable zeal and devotion.

She forbade students from visiting each other's rooms, enforced an early "lights out" rule, permitted only cold baths, refused weekend leave except in special circumstances and censored their mail.

[23] But after completing the course, graduates of the college were virtually guaranteed employment in girls schools throughout the country, with an ample yearly salary of £100.

[29] Substantial revisions were made during a visit in 1897 from another American teacher, Miss Porter, who introduced rules from women's basketball in the United States.

[31] With less space to accommodate increased enrolments, and with the imminent demolition of the Hampstead campus to make way for a railway, later in 1895 Bergman-Österberg purchased a large country house named Kingsfield on a 14-acre (57,000 m2) estate on Oakfield Lane in Dartford.

In 1897 one of her students, Mary Tait, invented the gymslip,[29] a dress that facilitated practical movement for women playing sport, replacing the ground-length skirts and mutton-arm blouses that were normally worn by contemporary sportswomen.

[38] She was in fact, alongside Lotten von Kræmer, one of the two most significant single financial supporters of the National Association for Women's Suffrage, in which her niece Signe Bergman was a leading figure and once chairman[39] Bergman-Österberg received a Litteris et Artibus medal in 1906 for her life's work.

[40] An English Heritage blue plaque also commemorates Bergman-Österberg's original physical training college campus at 1 Broadhurst Gardens (NW6) in South Hampstead, London.