Cambray School, or, to give it its true title, Cheltenham Ladies’ College School, and Cambray boarding-house, which took pupils belonging to both the new school and the College, was not the only undertaking for which Miss Beale made herself personally responsible. She also started, and placed in a good financial position, two cheap boarding-houses, St. Helen’s and St. Austin’s, and in course of time presented them to the College. Her position in regard to all these institutions was surely very unusual, not to say unique. The foundation of a school of over one hundred pupils, and of houses containing the same number of boarders, would be a respectable life’s work for many a woman. This work appears to have been only one of the many occupations Miss Beale found for the little leisure left her by the cares of the great College and its ever-multiplying interests. It was perhaps primarily interest in young teachers which led Miss Beale to join a movement made in 1897 to induce ladies to take up work in elementary schools. Miss Beale was present at a large meeting held that year in Westminster Town Hall, when the need and importance of this work were set forth in speeches by the Bishop of Stepney,[66] Sir Joshua Fitch, and others. As a result a Government Training Department was at once formed at the Ladies’ College, and work began with seven students, who in the same year were encouraged by addresses from Sir H. E. Oakeley, H.M.I., and Sir Joshua Fitch. The field of practice for these students was found in All Saints’ Schools, where there were four departments all supplied with the best apparatus. Other schools in the town were also glad at different times to receive these teachers. Miss Beale became much interested in the work, and proposed to build a practising school of her own for the elementary department of the College, engaged a head-mistress, and bought land for building. Then in 1901 came the regulations for local education committees, which would have put Miss Beale’s school under local control. She therefore gave up the idea of building and sold her land. Later regulations made her find it impossible to continue the elementary work on the lines she wished. The Government demands proved a fetter to one who felt she should be free to work towards her ideal. To her mind the real progress of elementary education in the country depended, not on the ‘introduction of new subjects of instruction, which must impose new and burdensome labour on teachers and children. It should be gained by the better training of teachers, by the adoption of better methods, by a wiser economy of time, and by showing teachers how to put more knowledge, more skill, more thought, more love, and more enthusiasm into their work.’ The legislation of 1901 made her feel that ‘My Lords’ did not recognise these principles as all-important; that they undervalued such an effort as she was making at Cheltenham; that they were unjust to voluntary schools. She felt as if