'Nervous Energy and Administrative Ability': The Early Lady Principals and Lady Superintendents in Ireland

At the turn of the twentieth century, middle-class educated gentlewomen in Ireland had established positions of authority and leadership in the relatively new professions of education and nursing. Acting in the roles of lady principals and lady superintendents, respectively, in education and nursing, many of these women had themselves participated in the social reform movements that led to the establishment of their new professions in the late nineteenth century. This paper critically analyses the roles played by these two distinct but socially related groups of Irish women, who were prominent in the early development of the social practices of education and nursing. The lady principals and lady superintendents entered the public domain as women with supervisory managerial roles, a fact that was in and of itself significant in late Victorian and early Edwardian society. In these roles, they expanded the boundaries of woman's role, provided role models for other women to follow, and forged networks of support for women. While the performance of their respective roles was mediated by public expectations and by extant gender relationships, they negotiated their way through the constraints of their new public space to achieve their aims of advancing their respective professions. (Contains 60 notes.)