F. W. Sanderson

Frederick William Sanderson (13 May 1857 – 15 June 1922) was headmaster of Oundle School from 1892 until his death. He was an education reformer, and both at Oundle, and previously at Dulwich College where he had started as assistant master, he introduced innovative programs of education in engineering. Under his headmastership, Oundle saw a reversal of a decline from which it had been suffering in the middle of the 19th century, with school enrolment rising from 92 at the time of his appointment to 500 when he died.

Sanderson was the inspiration for the progressive headmaster character in H. G. Wells' novel Joan and Peter. Wells had sent his own sons to Oundle, and was friendly with Sanderson. After Sanderson's death, which occurred shortly after delivering an address to Wells and others, Wells initially worked on his official biography, entitled Sanderson of Oundle, but later abandoned it in favour of an unofficial biography, The Story of a Great Schoolmaster.

Sanderson was born on 13 May 1857, the youngest son of Thomas Sanderson (of Brancepeth) who worked on the estate of Viscount Boyne (Baron Brancepeth), and Margaret Andrews. He attended the village school at Brancepeth, and was later a pupil teacher at the national school in nearby Tudhoe. Starting in 1876, he attended Hatfield Hall in Durham University, where he was the Van Mildert Theological Scholar, received a first-class BA in mathematics and physical science in 1877, and in 1881 was elected a university fellow. In the meantime, he had won an open mathematical scholarship to Christ's College, Cambridge, to which he was admitted on 1878-12-05 and where in 1882 he received a B.A. bracketed the 11th wrangler. Until 1885, the year he received his MA at Cambridge, he was a lecturer at Girton College.

He married Jane Hodgson (of Broughton Hall, Cumberland) in 1885, and they had two sons and one daughter: Roy Broughton (1889–1918, killed in France), Thomas Stuart (born 1890) who became a barrister, and Mary Dorothea (born 1897). From 1893, she ran the boarding house for Oundle School's preparatory department.

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