Geraldine Cadbury

Dame Geraldine Southall Cadbury, DBE (29 June 1864 – 30 January 1941) was a British Quaker, author, social and penal reformer. She was the wife of Barrow Cadbury, with whom she had three children, Dorothy Adlington, (1892-1987), Paul Strangman (1895-1984), and Geraldine Mary, (1900-1999).

Geraldine Southall was born in Birmingham, the daughter of Alfred Southall (1838-1931), a chemist by trade and a temperance worker who taught a working men's adult school class, whilst her Irish mother, Anna Strangman Grubb (1841-1912), was a supporter of women’s suffrage. Geraldine was educated at Edgbaston High School for Girls and briefly at the Quaker school, The Mount, York. She married Barrow Cadbury (1862–1958) in 1891.

Geraldine worked as a volunteer social worker in Birmingham’s pioneering Children’s Court and as a volunteer probation worker. The Greet Free Kindergarten in Birmingham was opened in a room supplied by Geraldine Cadbury in 1904 using staff from the Froebel college in Edgbaston. It was the initiative of Julia Lloyd, a Quaker, of the banking family who had studied in Germany at the Pestalozzi-Froebel Haus and then returned to work with Caroline Bishop.

In 1920, following the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919, Geraldine was one of the first women in Birmingham to become a magistrate. From 1923, she chaired the justices’ panel in the Children’s Court. In 1925, Geraldine was appointed to the Home Office Departmental Committee on the Treatment of Young OffendersHome Office Departmental Committee on the Treatment of Young Offenders; which paved the way for the Children and Young Persons Act 1933.

...
Wikipedia