At the heart of a new profession: Margaret Stansfeld, a radical English educationalist

It is argued here that Margaret Stansfeld, as Principal of Bedford Physical Training College from 1903 to 1945, succeeded in developing a strong and distinctive 'female tradition' which was widely disseminated by her students. She was realistic in recognizing the strength of opposition from a male-dominated society to women's participation in sport and physical exercise, and steadily overcame it. She achieved this partly by insisting on acceptably 'ladylike' behaviour from her students in conventional social situations, and also by bringing the work of the college into the public arena, through displays of gymnastics, through the use of elementary schools for part of the student teaching experience, through the running of a physiotherapy clinic where treatment was given free of charge, and through the use of students in the outpatients ward of the local hospital. Stansfeld herself was PE organizer for Bedford from 1923. But she was not afraid to fight against prejudice which was demonstrably based on false premises, e.g. medical opposition to women taking part in strenuous physical exercise, or to insist on appropriate clothing for women, however indecorous some might have considered it. The college's long-term success resulted from a series of factors: its curriculum and ethos, the networking process it fostered, the quality of the teachers it produced, the strength of the Old Students' Association, Stansfeld's willingness to embrace new ideas, and the growing academic respectability of the subject. The pivot of the whole process was Stansfeld herself - autocratic, austere, but an inspirational teacher - feared and loved. Students who succeeded were empowered - 'She prepared us for LIFE!' The success of her Old Students was the most important feature, e.g. Phyllis Colson, originator and director of the Central Council of Physical Recreation. Hundreds of others, less well known, in schools all over Britain and abroad, gave their pupils pride in themselves, not only through the experience of games, gymnastics and dance, but through moral example - 'fair play' - and many brought the newest innovations into schools (e.g. Elizabeth Swallow was the first to introduce Laban into a maintained school in 1939). Stansfeld's indomitable spirit was always in evidence, even at the end of her life - she returned to the office of Principal in 1948 at age 88, three years before her own death, after the unexpected death of her successor. It was this strength of will and character above all else which empowered her students as women and as teachers, and which enabled them in their turn to empower their own pupils, and so to replace the myth that physical activities were damaging to women with the growing realization that sport and physical recreation are as beneficial to women as they are to men. Stansfeld was justifiably recognized in her time as a pioneer in the advancement of women's PE, e.g. by the McNair Report (1942), which argued that nothing comparable had been achieved for men. She was the last survivor of the originators of women's PE, and the most influential. It is ironic that the rise of feminism in the second half of the century coincided with the dissipation of the female tradition, epitomised by Stansfeld, as physical education for women, developed by women, in the first half of the century increasingly came to be controlled by men in the second half. It is perhaps the ultimate demonstration of the success of Stansfeld's work that, despite this, at the beginning of the twenty-first century women are free to participate in and enjoy sport and physical leisure in a way that would have seemed impossible at the beginning of the twentieth.