ABSTRACT
This chapter assesses the recurring themes which dominate the record, using as a principal comparative source the analysis of working-class private teachers in the city of Bristol. The school-keeper might have had more extensive knowledge than the parent, and certainly had greater teaching experience and time to teach, but essentially, the educative roles of the two were harmonised. Teaching could be mystified as a secret preserve with special skills which were distinguished from those needed or generated in other areas of daily life. Analysis of Bristol's Population Census returns can shed a little more light on the categories of women most involved in teaching in that city, though there does not exist, as yet, evidence from other localities to allow comparative study. As well as differentiation by gender, the official evidence also stresses the business of school-keeping as the special preserve of a particular social category — the 'unfortunate' and the destitute.
