The rise and fall of domestic chemistry in higher education in England during the early 20th century.

In Britain, during the 1880s and 1890s, there had been an increasing interest in the teaching of domestic subjects to girls (1). Initially, it was domestic economy—cooking, laundry work, and so on. Educators thought such mandatory instruction was important for two reasons: first, it was believed that the squalor and drunkenness that prevailed among the lower classes could be prevented by education in “home-thrift” and economic cookery; and second, there was a fear of a shortage of domestic servants for upper-middle-class homes. Two subsequent reports, the Interim Report on Housecraft in Girls’ Secondary Schools in 1911 and the Consultative Committee on Practical Work in Secondary Schools in 1913, both contended that, in the new “scientific age,” the teaching of domestic subjects should have a strong foundation in science and become domestic or household science. At the core of domestic science was chemistry—especially the chemistry of foodstuffs and household cleaners.