A Hundred Years of Women's Institutes

by Stella Roberts, past Editor of Scottish Home and Country Magazine
As featured in June 1997 SH&C

The SWRI shares its anniversary year with the WI of Canada, though they are 20 years our senior, and so are marking their centenary.

During the early 1890s, Adelaide Hoodless had been campaigning to have home economics taught in Hamilton Schools. She was concerned that farm girls had been finding jobs in factories, shops and offices, and felt that this trend diminished women's place in the home. Popular myth has it that her son had died from drinking contaminated milk and, grief stricken with remorse, felt that had she been better informed, he might have lived.

This is said to have been what set her off on her campaign to improve women's education through the teaching of home economics.

However, the story may not be strictly true. Although her second son did indeed die at the age of 18 months, the story was not mentioned in a tribute written by her daughter Edna. But true or not, the fact remains that she had a great impact on women's education.

The roots of the women's movement were planted when Adelaide addressed a meeting of the Agriculture and Experimental Union in Ontario in late 1896. She spoke about what she felt were the needs of rural women and her conviction that domestic science instruction was vital for farmers wives.

A farmer, Erland Lee, was so impressed by her talk that he and his wife Janet went around all the houses in Saltfleet Township and arranged a meeting on February 19th 1897 in the little village of Stoney Creek.

Adelaide had been invited to speak at this meeting and a discussion followed about forming an organisation to bring more knowledge about domestic science into the home.

The original suggestion for the name was rather long winded - The Women's Department of the Domestic Economy of the Farmer's Institute of South Wentworth!

At the next meeting this was mercifully changed to the Women's Institute of Saltfleet.

And it was with the help of the young Saltfleet WI that she eventually secured funding for what was to become Macdonald Institute, which would train teachers in home economics. That institute, now part of the university, is the other legacy left by this remarkable woman.