The National Training School of Cookery
Money was raised, the school was granted permission to occupy the corrugated iron building used for the 1893 lectures, and it was loaned all the equipment used by the demonstrators.
She was succeeded in 1875 by one of the early pupils of the School, Miss Edith Nicholls, soon to be married and henceforth known as Mrs Charles Clarke.
Eventually the unsuitable corrugated iron buildings were abandoned and the school moved into purpose-built premises in Buckingham Palace Road in 1889.
[6] The objective of Plain Cookery teaching was, according to Mrs Clarke ′to insure for the working-man a wholesome meal nicely prepared, which will supply the nourishment he requires to enable him to do a hard day's work.
The lassitude produced by bad food and hard work is a constant source of the craving for stimulants which drives the working-man to the public-house.
This teaching will end to lessen this evil and improve the health of the people.′[7] One suspects that Mrs Clarke had little experience of the life led by ordinary Londoners at this time!
The emergence of a national cookery and domestic science school at this time is explainable by the changes in society in the late nineteenth century.
Industrialisation had produced a large urban working-class, many of whom had not been taught cookery by their mothers and some of whom had only rudimentary cooking facilities in their homes.
In contrast, the Executive Committee, responsible for major decisions on the future of the institution and its financial health, was long dominated by men.
[14] The woman credited by Charles Dickens, Jr. with devising the first curriculum of the School, Miss Mary Hooper, wrote at least 7 cookery books as well as a number of novels.
[15] To support the war effort, a book Thrift For Troubled Times was ′Compiled by the Staff of The National School of Cookery during the great war′.
SIR,—Will you allow me, as chairman of the Executive Committee of the National Training School of Cookery, to call the attention of the public to the work done by our institution and also its present position.
Under these circumstances we confidently appeal to the public for donations to clear off our debt and for subscriptions to carry on the work with proper efficiency.
At the close of the International Exhibition the commissioners granted to the executive committee of the National School of Cookery the temporary use, free of rent, of that portion of the building already occupied by it, together with some more space for an additional kitchen and offices.
The Crystal Palace classes for cookery and domestic economy were commenced in the Ladies’ Division of the School of Art, Science, and Literature in the year 1875.
On the removal of the school to its present position in the tropical department of the palace, Miss Mary Hooper was entrusted with the formation of a new series of classes for instruction in cookery and every branch of domestic economy.
