Louisa Hope

Louisa Octavia Augusta Hope (1814 – 23 October 1893) was a British promoter of household science teaching. Life She was the eighth and youngest daughter of Charles Hope, Lord President of the Court of Session, and Lady Charlotte Hope. She was born in 1814 and her elder siblings included the Scottish judge John Hope, Lord Hope and the lawyer James Hope. In 1852 Hope and others created the Scottish Ladies Association for Promoting Female Industrial Education. The intention was to ensure that females would learn sewing and it time other domestic subjects in separate gender based education. The Church of Scotland had decided in 1849 that it wanted female "schools of industry". Women were seen as centres of moral and religious values for families and the middle and upper class ladies in the new association saw it as their role to provide it. In 1853 she published her book, The Female Teacher: Ideas Suggestive of Her Qualifications and Duties where she notes that women should be "keepers at home" and men should see to his "labour and his work until the evening". Education of females would elevate the "lower classes" and this was the "aim of the Scottish Ladies Association for Promoting Female Industrial Education".