In 1873, Margaret Birchall received the news that she had been placed 86th in the 1st Class in the results of the Queen’s Scholarship Examination.[1] After a five-year apprenticeship as a pupil-teacher at the Windsor Street Wesleyan and Sunday School, Toxteth, Liverpool, the results of this examination qualified her to take up a place at a teacher training college on a grant if her circumstances allowed.[2] They clearly did, as she was also informed that she should enter Southlands College on 7 February, where she studied between 1873 and 1874.
Born in 1852, Margaret was the daughter of James Birchall, who ended his time working for the London and North-Western Railway as Outdoor Superintendent of the Goods Station, Park Lane, Liverpool, and his second wife, Margaret, née Sayer. It is not known when the family had become members of the Methodist Church, but they had certainly done so by 1850, when the couple’s second-eldest daughter was baptised in the local Wesleyan Methodist Chapel.[3]
Therefore, it was probably only natural that Margaret should attend Southlands Training College, founded on 26 February 1872 only around a year before her entrance, as a Methodist teacher training college for women.[4] As the college was then in Battersea, it must have been a big step to travel from Liverpool to London to take up her place.
Nevertheless, it so happened that John Newton Hudson (1853-1933), a fellow pupil-teacher in Liverpool and her future husband, had been appointed Second Master at Kentish Town Wesleyan School in 1871. He was to stay there until 1874, so that the couple were in London at the same time while she was at college. Also, it is clear that her time at Southlands must have been very important to her, as she kept several items relating to her course and companions there.[5] These include her books of lecture notes on Theology; Domestic Economy, and Paraphrase, as well as books of maps relating to the British Isles and the world, extremely carefully produced, with accompanying details.
Besides these, she retained her ‘Friendship’ Album, containing many inscriptions and drawings by fellow students, including an entry by Rev. G. W. Olver, Principal of Southlands College. Besides a picture of Rev. Olver given to Margaret in 1874, her family photograph album contains many carte de visite-style photographs of young women, probably also dating from the 1870s. Since many were taken at the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company, which had studios in Regent Street and Cheapside, these images may prove to be portraits of some of those fellow students.
After finishing her training in London, Margaret returned to the north-west. By December 1874, she had passed her probation as a teacher at Mount Pleasant Wesleyan Infant School, Bacup, near Rochdale in Lancashire, and was headmistress there for more than two years.[6] Another family photograph album includes a picture of her, identified by her daughter, Marian Hudson (also a teacher), in a group portrait, perhaps dating from that her time.
While she was still teaching, Margaret kept a diary with entries dating between 1876 and 1877.[7] From these notes, we gain an impression of her life as a teacher, including her satisfaction that ‘all my girls got excellent again’ (entry for 4 February 1877) and her growing relationship with John. We can also see something of her spiritual development, showing perhaps how hard she was on herself in trying to live an upright, Christian life. Also mentioned in the diary are various family members, including her parents and all but one of her sisters: Sarah; Mary; Caroline (Carrie), and Alice, as well as John’s step-sister, Annie Reynolds.
However, a connection with Southlands College also appears, as the last note (entry for 5 February 1877) records receiving a postcard for her birthday (the previous October) from Rev. Olver, with a touching reference from the Bible to Numbers VI, 24; 26 (‘The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:’ and ‘The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.’).
The diary also notes that Margaret covenanted at Mount Pleasant Wesleyan Chapel in Bacup in 1877. After her marriage to John in April of that year, Bacup is where they made their first home, with John as Headmaster of Bacup Britannia Wesleyan School for the first eleven years of their time there.
On her marriage, Margaret did not entirely give up teaching, as she taught women in the Sunday School at Mount Pleasant, and was also at one time or another a Junior Class Leader; member of the Leaders’ Meeting; Bacup Circuit Stewardess, and member of the War Relief Committee during the First World War.[8] She may also have kept in touch with at least one friend from Southlands, as can be seen in a letter received from her in 1888.[9]
Except for a few years in Padiham, Margaret and John continued to live in Bacup with their growing family for a further period until John’s retirement in the early 1920s. They then moved to Manchester where they can been seen in a family photograph taken to celebrate their Golden Wedding Anniversary in 1927. They are surrounded by their five surviving children, three of whom were also teachers, and the remaining two, a Methodist Minister and a doctor respectively. Also present were their two daughters-in-law, one of whom had also been a teacher, and their four young grandchildren. Later, these children would include a Methodist Minister; a Methodist Missionary in China, and a piano teacher. Sadly, Margaret died of a stroke a few months after the anniversary. Although an enduring memory of her was that ‘her influence was always on the side of righteousness’, as Mrs Hudson, she was also remembered with respect and affection in the Bacup Circuit as well as in the town.[10]
Helen Watt, February 2022
[1] Now part of the Hudson Family Collection at the OCMCH.
[2] Jenny Keating, ‘Teacher training – up to the 1960s’, History in Education Project, Institute of Historical Research, University of London, December 2010, available via the website of the IHR web archives https://archives.history.ac.uk/history-in-education/ (accessed 19 Feb 2022).
[3] Baptism of Mary Birchall, 29 December 1850, in the records of Mount Pleasant Wesleyan Methodist Church/Pitt Street Wesleyan Methodist Church, available at https://www.findmypast.co.uk/transcript?id=PRS%2FLIVERPOOL%2FBAP%2F1062357 (accessed 19 Feb 2022).
[4] See the history of the college, available at https://www.roehampton.ac.uk/colleges/southlands-college/history/ (accessed 19 Feb 2022).
[5] Now part of the Hudson Family Collection at the OCMCH.
[6] Parchment certificate of Margaret Birchall in the Hudson Family Collection; Obituary, Mrs Hudson (née Maggie Birchall), 1873-74, from the dates, perhaps in a publication of Southlands College.
[7] Also preserved among the family papers, with later entries by Marian Hudson dating from 1966.
[8] Obituary.
[9] Now part of the Hudson Family Collection at the OCMCH.
[10] Ibid.
The Hudson Family Collection is currently being catalogued and at the Centre. Some items from this collection can be accessed online at OCMCH Digital Collections. For more information about International Women’s Day at Oxford Brookes University, click here.
Westminster College Oxford - Research 
Leave a comment