Sophie (Willock) Bryant 1850 – 1922
Photograph of Sophie Bryant by Robert Tucker (1832–1905), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
(maiden name Willock); Mrs. W. Hicks Bryant (familiar name)
Educationalist, mathematician, suffragist, philosopher.
15 February 1850 – 14 August 1922
‘Sophie Bryant: Educationalist, suffragist, mathematician, psychologist, philosopher’:
A Tribute by Dr Sophia Connell
Dr Sophie Byrant received one of the first doctoral degrees ever awarded by the University of London in 1884 for a thesis on psychology and philosophy entitled: ‘Organized Character’. Best known as ‘educationalist and suffragist’ (https://london.ac.uk/sophie-bryant), many of Bryant’s activities centred around Bloomsbury where she influenced educational policy, while undertaking research into psychology, philosophy and mathematics.
Bryant began life as Sophie Willock in Sandymount, near Dublin, on 15 February 1850; her father was the Revd William Alexander Willock, fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. The family moved to London in 1863 when Revd Willock became Professor of geometry at University College London. Home educated Sophie won a scholarship in 1866 to Bedford College, then little more than a finishing school for ladies. It had just become possible to take the Senior Cambridge Local Examinations; 16 year-old Sophie was the only student to achieve a first. Being a girl, her scores were not made public. “Mrs. Bryant thought it very hard that she was thus deprived of the full measure of her success. She has herself said: ‘It had never been suggested to me in my life that I had not an equal birthright to knowledge with my brother.’” (Anon. 1922: 2).
In 1869 at the age of 19 she married a doctor, William Hicks Bryant, who died a year later. Bryant never remarried instead devoting herself to intellectual pursuits and social causes. By the 1870s she was teaching at the progressive North London Collegiate founded by the formidable Miss Frances Buss. The school was a novelty, providing girls a curriculum which prepared them for the ancient Universities, Oxford and Cambridge. She began teaching mathematics, a subject many thought girls were ‘not likely to advance far in’ (Rice 1996: 395). Her enthusiasm and successful teaching style would result in many of her students gaining entry to Girton College Cambridge and some beating the men in the mathematics tripos.
When in 1878, the University of London began to admit women to their degree courses, Bryant joined; she learnt Latin and Greek at speed in order to ‘matriculate’ and subsequently carried on her studies while working full time as a teacher and conducting early psychology experiments. One experiment recorded the differing responses of pupils when asked to recall the contents of a room; after considering the results carefully, Bryant was concerned not to draw any hasty conclusions:
More serious are the difficulties arising from the complex implication of mental qualities with one another, which makes it impossible to measure them separately as physical qualities are measured….The facts observed are complex facts, the evidence indirect evidence, and the observer, moreover, reads this evidence through the atmosphere of his own individuality (Bryant 1886: 343)
This is understandable, given that she was asked to produce this work by Francis Galton, who would later become notorious for his theories of inherited genius and imbecility which would fuel a vogue for eugenics. In 1881 Byrant gained a first class degree in the ‘Moral Sciences’, the phrase used in the late 19th century for philosophical topics. When she was awarded a doctorate in 1884, academic jobs for women were practically non-existent. Bryant had to continue her intellectual endeavours outside academia, publishing books and articles, teaching evening classes, serving on numerous learned societies, giving papers and conducting independent experiments.
Byrant was officially elected to the London Mathematical Society, which met in Gower Street in 1882. She would be the first woman to read a paper in 1885. Her “On the Geometrical Form of the Cell” related specifically to the shape of the honeycomb. She would have been a regular at the Aristotelian Society at that time which began life in the 1880s on Bloomsbury Square. Started by amateur philosopher, Shadworth H. Hodgson, it was to become one of the most important institutions for Philosophy in the United Kingdom. Bryant was personally acquainted with Hodgson, with whom she wrote a paper in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1901). She also collaborated with philosophers George Stout and J.H. Muirhead in the 1890s and founded the London School of Ethics and Social Philosophy with the ethicist Bernard Bosanquet (Anon. 1922: 22); under its auspices and the Centre for the Extension of University Teaching she lectured on Sunday evenings on ‘Mind and Life’ in 1891 (Editor 1891: 556). She was the only woman in the founder members of the Psychological Society (later renamed the British Psychology Society) which began meeting on 24th October 1901 at the university of London, Gower Street; other founders included James Sully and William McDougall. The society discussed new experimental methods which would later establish the discipline of modern psychology.
Bryant often travelled to Cambridge, a journey undertaken in those days by horse and carriage, where she concerned herself with intellectual questions and the advancement of education. She helped to found Cambridge Day Training College for Women, coming into contact with influential academics such as Henry Sidgwick and John Venn. One teacher recalls that on a trip to Cambridge, they ‘halted at another men’s College, where Mrs. Bryant wished to consult a certain Don of her acquaintance on some knotty point or other’ (Diehl 1919: 304). In 1881, she spent time working with mathematician Richard Charles Rowe (1853-84) and Sir Richard Grazebrook (1854-1935), physicist (Anon. 1922:18). In London she worked towards the professionalisation of teacher training, arguing for it as an academic discipline, run by Professors rather than administrators, which was the eventual fate of London Day Training College (later the Institute of Education) which she helped to found. Under her leadership, Goldsmith’s College, an institution devoted to teaching people from all walks of life, would become a part of the University of London. Bryant was the first woman to be elected to the Senate of the University of London.
F.Y. Edgeworth, Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, recalls many walks with Bryant and other thinkers around London neighbourhoods in imitations of Leslie Stephen’s ‘Tramps’. While Stephen assembled ‘a select and sympathetic company’ of men (Sully 1918: 303), the so-called ‘mixed tramps’ were inclusive of women. Bryant also organised her own tramps with female friends, going to North Wales, the Lake District in the UK and abroad to the Alps: ‘At a small mountain inn…Mrs. Bryant joined together a party of many nationalities with as much ease as if they had been her own countrymen. A sympathy as wide as hers reached some bedrock common to all’ (Anon. 1922: 64). Edgeworth talks of her friendship with James Sully, one of the founders of the philosophical journal, Mind: ‘When Mr. Sully and Mrs. Bryant came together you might be sure that conversation would not flag. The topics ranged from psychology over all human interests’ (Anon. 1922: 58). In mathematics, Bryant published on the probability theory; Edgeworth, influential in the development of neo-classical economics, calls her discoveries novel (Ibid.: 57). She co-edited three volumes of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry for schools (along with Charles Smith). In psychology, she would be one of the very first people in the UK to conduct timed word association experiments (Cattell and Bryant 1889). She was later involved in broader political causes, including suffrage and Irish rule. She was the president of the Hampstead Suffrage Society.
While her accomplishments were multidisciplinary, her heart was in philosophy. ‘Philosophy was so much a part of herself, of the very texture of her mind, and of the way she saw the world and life, that it is impossible to treat it as merely a part’ (Anon. 1922: 21). Bryant’s most comprehensive philosophical contribution was her 1887 book, On Educational Ends, or The Ideal of Personal Development. She developed a coherentist theory of knowledge which she combined with an early account of essential intellectual virtues. One of her main objectives was to argue that children need education in abstract subjects in order to develop autonomy and dignity.
Bryant believed, and put into practice, the importance of problem solving skills. One pupil explains that ‘she herself had not told us anything; it was not her part to solve our problems, but to guide us until we solved them for ourselves’ (Anon. 1922: 26). The need for an internal source of motivation for the quest for knowledge was central to the ‘ends’ of education. Education does not serve to increase productivity or as training for the tasks encountered in job or home life, but must aim to develop a democratic personality, that is, a good person. Bryant’s work on the Royal Commission on Education from 1894-5 provided opportunities to argue for the type of education she believed was best for all people, regardless of class or gender. Michael Sadler, who later had his own Royal Commission on Education, noted of Bryant’s influence on the then head of the Commission, James Bryce, that ‘none of us could manage him as Mrs Bryant did’ (Anon. 1922: 50). In consideration of girls’ lives after school, there was a push for ‘domestic science’ only to suit their later lives as wives and mothers. Bryant persistently opposed the view that girls should be taught different topics from boys.
Although her ideas were often radical, she was able to coax through her unthreatening demeanour, her ‘attractive personality’ and the ‘charm and vivacity of her conversation’ (Anon. 1922: 38). She had ‘a dignity and reserve…[which] seemed to belong to her widowed state’ (Anon. 1922: 13). Frances Buss is reported to have said of Bryant: ‘She is more learned than any man I know; more tender than any woman I have ever met’ (Diehl 1919: 302). Because she was a woman, who primarily taught girls, she had to be a living example of female intellectual. ‘All women should worship the very name of Sophie Bryant,’ wrote one of her teachers, ‘for she hoisted the flag of equality with envied man, in man’s hitherto unchallenged supremacy – that of the mind and brain!’ (Ibid.: 303).
Known for her outdoor pursuits including cycling, rowing, hiking and mountaineering (There are some nice photos here of her mountain climbing: High Times | Days gone by at Church High on Tankerville Terrace. | Page 2), Bryant spent her last weeks in the Alps. There she seems to have fallen and suffered an injury; reported lost, her body was eventually found on mountain path. A book of essays and tributes to her life was swiftly produced by North London Collegiate, which is where much of the information contained in this biographical sketch originates (Wayback Machine (archive.org)). A Service of Remembrance and thanksgiving for her life took place at St-Martin’s-in-the-Fields on 18th November 1922, the eulogy given by Michael Sadler, at that time Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds. In this address, Sadler quotes her own words:
Throughout the journey of her life, and part of it was hard and steep, she was never idle. She liked ‘the energetic workman who makes highways through the brushwood and penetrates everywhere.’ She ‘left play for work and grappled with the world.’ She did things with all her might. ‘Goodness,’ she said, ‘does not consist in being good simply but in becoming better.’
Dr Sophia Connell is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London. She is an expert on ancient philosophy and the history of women in philosophy from ancient to modern times. She co-edited Lost Voices: Women in Philosophy 1870-1970 (with Frederique Janssen-Lauret, Forthcoming, Routledge) and is currently researching for a book about Sophie Bryant’s philosophical thought.
References
Anon. 1922. Sophie Bryant 1850-1922, North London Collegiate private printing.
Bryant, Sophie. 1885. ‘On the Ideal Geometrical Form of Natural Cell Structures’, Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society XVI/252: 311-17.
Bryant, Sophie. 1886. ‘Experiments in Testing the Character of School Children’, The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 15: 338-351.
Bryant, Sophie. 1987. On Educational Ends; or, The Ideal of Personal Development. London: Longmans, Green and Co.
Byrant, Sophie. 1890. Curriculum of a Girls’ School. A Pamphlet.
Cattell, J. McK. And Sophie Bryant. 1889. ‘Mental Association Investigated by Experiment’, Mind IV.
Connell, Sophia. 2023. ‘Sophie Bryant in Mind: Psychology, Character and the Education of the Citizen’ in L. Verburgt (ed.) The Early Years of Mind: Making Contemporary Philosophy and Psychology.
Connell, Sophia and Frederique Janssen-Lauret. 2023. ‘Bad Philosophy and Derivative Philosophy: Labels That Keep Women Out of the Canon’, Metaphilosophy 54/2.
Diehl, Alice M. 1908. The True Story of My Life: An Autobiography. London: John Lane.
Goodman, Joyce. 1997. ‘Constructing Contradiction: the power and powerlessness of women in giving and taking of evidence in the Bryce Commission, 1895’, History of Education 26/3: 287-306.
Rice, A. 1996 ‘Mathematics in the Metropolis: A Survey of Victorian London’, Historia Mathematica 23: 376-417.
Stout, G.F., S. Bryant, J.H. Muirhead, ‘Symposium: In what sense, if any, is it true that psychical states are extended?’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 3/2 (1895-1896): 86-97.
Sully, James. 1918. My Life and Friends; A Psychologist’s Memories. London: Fisher Unwin.
Editor. 1891. ‘The Aristotelian Society for the Systematic Study of Philosophy’, Mind, XVI/64: 556. https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/os-XVI.64.556-b.
Listen to a recording of the talk and read a transcript here:
Education
Educated at home by father and governess.
1866 Studied at Bedford College, winning Arnott Scholarship for science.
Some Key Achievements and Interests
1875 Became a teacher of mathematics and German at North London Collegiate School.
1895 – 1918 Succeeded Miss Buss as headmistress.
1878 Attended University of London when it opened its degree courses to women (continuing to teach part-time).
1881 Obtained a BSc with First Class Honours in Mental and Moral Sciences (Philosophy) and Second Class Honours in Mathematics in the first year that a British university awarded degrees to women.
1885 The first woman to have a paper published in the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society.
1884 Awarded the degree of Doctor of Science in Mental and Moral Sciences, for a thesis entitled: ‘Organised Character’, the first woman to achieve a Doctorate in England.
1884-85 Amongst 3 women on the Royal (Bryce) Commission which considered national reforms to Secondary Education.
1897 With Charles Smith edited three volumes of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry for schools.
1901 The only woman amongst the founder members of The Psychological Society (later the British Psychological Society).
1904 Amongst the first women to be awarded an honorary DLitt from Trinity College Dublin.
Instrumental in setting up the Cambridge Training College for Women, now Hughes Hall, Cambridge.
Active member of the London Ethical Society, an early humanist community which advocated moral living independent of religion.
An ardent Irish nationalist, wrote books on Irish history and ancient Irish law.
1914 President of the Irish National Literary Society.
President of the Hampstead local committee of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage.
First woman to be elected to the Senate of the University of London.
Issues
Non-standard education had not studied Latin needed to be admitted to degree course so had to study independently to catch up.
Worked and studied at the same time.
Married Dr William Hicks Bryant 1869 but husband died 1870.
No higher academic position available to her as mathematician, psychologist and philosopher.
Dependent on the approval of male educators, mentors, editors etc.
Connection to Bloomsbury
University College, University of London
The Aristotelian Society
The Psychological Society
British Mathematical Society
London Day Training College
Female Networks
Frances Buss, Clara Collet, Mary Macrae, Alice Diehl, Sara Annie Burstall, Mary Hay Wood.
Colleagues from different societies associated with eg Lady Victoria Welby, Charlotte Scott, Christine Ladd-Franklin, Eleanor Sidgwick.
Selected Writing/Publications: Covered Irish history, religion, education, women’s rights, philosophy
including:
1884 ‘On the failure of the attempts to deduce inductive principles from the mathematical theory of probabilities’, Philosophical Magazine supplement.
1885 ‘On the Ideal Geometrical Form of Natural Cell Structures‘, Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society XVI/252:311-17
1886 ‘Experiments in Testing the Character of School Children‘, The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 15: 338-351
1887 On Educational Ends; or The Ideal of Personal Development. London: Longmans, Green and Co.
1888 ‘On the nature and function of a complete symbolic language’, Mind XIII/50.
1888. Moral Education.
1889. Celtic Ireland.
1889. [with J. McK. Cattell] ‘Mental Association Investigated by Experiment’, Mind 14/54: 230-250.
1890. Curriculum of a Girls’ School. A Pamphlet.
1893. ‘Self-Development and Self-Surrender’, International Journal of Ethics 3/3 (Apr. 1893): 308-323.
1893. ‘Lessons in ethics’, Educational Times.
1893. ‘An example in “Correlation in averages‘ for four variables, Philosophical Magazine.
1894. Short Studies in Character. London: Sonneschein and Co.
1895. ‘Sympathy and Antipathy’, Mind 4/15: 365-70.
1896. ‘Professor James on the Emotions’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 3/2 (1985-1896): 52-64.
1896. [with S.H. Hodgson and G.H. Stout] ‘Are psychical states extended’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.
1897 [with Charles Smith] Euclid’s Elements of Geometry, books I and II
1897. ‘Variety of Extent, Degree and Unity in Self-Consciousness’, Mind 6/21: 71-89.
1897 The teaching of morality in the family and the school
Bryant, S. 1898. ‘The curriculum of a girls’ school’, Special Reports on Educational Subjects, 1897-98, vol. 2. London: H.M.S.O
1899 Euclid’s Elements of Geometry, books III and IV.
1901 Euclid’s Elements of Geometry, books VI and IX.
1902 ‘The relation of mathematics to general formal logic’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.
1909. ‘The Platonic principle of aristocracy in the modern state’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.
1913 The Genius of the Gael: A study in Celtic psychology and its manifestations.
1918 How to read the Bible in the twentieth century.
1920 Moral and religious education.
1923 Liberty, order and law under native Irish rule: a study in the Book of the Ancient Laws of Ireland.
References:
Bassett, Troy J. “Author: Sophie Bryant.” At the Circulating Library: A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837—1901, 15 December 2022,
http://www.victorianresearch.org/atcl/show_author.php?aid=803. Accessed 30 December 2022
Sophie Bryant, D.Sc., Litt.D. 1850–1922 (PDF). North London Collegiate School. 1922
Wikipedia contributors. (2023, January 22). Sophie Bryant. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 10:37, January 25, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sophie_Bryant&oldid=1135061549
Edgell, Beatrice 1947 ‘British Psychological Society’ British Journal of Psychology 37/3: 113-32
Fletcher, Sheila 2004 ‘Bryant [nee Willock], Sophie’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Sophie Bryant | Mind | Oxford Academic (oup.com)
Some other websites:
Sophie Willock Bryant (1850 – 1922) – Biography – MacTutor History of Mathematics (st-andrews.ac.uk)