Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Rye, Maria Susan
RYE, MARIA SUSAN (1829–1903), social reformer, born at 2 Lower James Street, Golden Square, London, on 31 March 1829, was eldest of the nine children of Edward Rye, solicitor and bibliophile of Golden Square, London, by his wife Maria Tuppen of Brighton. Edward Rye of Baconsthorpe, Norfolk, was her grandfather. Of her brothers, Edward Caldwell Rye [q. v.] was an accomplished entomologist, and Walter, solicitor, antiquary, and athlete, has published many works on Norfolk history and topography and was mayor of Norwich in 1908–9.
Miss Rye received her education at home and read for herself in the large library of her father. Coming under the influence of Charles Kingsley's father, then vicar of St. Luke's, Chelsea, she devoted herself at the age of sixteen to parochial work in Chelsea. She was early impressed by the disabilities of her sex, and by their lack of opportunity of employment outside the teaching profession. In succession to Mary Howitt [q. v.], she soon became secretary of the association for promoting the married women's property bill, which was brought forward by Sir Thomas Erskine Perry [q. v.] in 1856 but was not fully passed till 1882. She joined the Women's Employment Society on its foundation, but, disapproving of the women's franchise movement which the leading members supported, soon left it. In 1859 she undertook a private law-stationer's business at 12 Portugal Street, Lincoln's Inn, in order to give employment to middle class girls. At the same time she helped to establish the Victoria printing press in association with her business in 1860 (under the charge of Miss Emily Faithfull), and the registry office and telegraph school in Great Coram St., with Miss Isa Craig [q. v. Suppl. II] as secretary. The telegraph school anticipated the employment of girls as telegraph clerks.
Miss Rye's law-stationer's business prospered, but the applications for employment were far in excess of the demands of the concern. With Miss Jane Lewin, Miss Rye consequently raised a fund for assisting middle class girls to emigrate, and to the question of emigration she devoted the rest of her life. She founded in 1861 the Female Middle Class Emigration Society (absorbed since 1884 in the United British Women's Emigration Association; cf. her Emigration of Educated Women, 1861). Between 1860 and 1868 she was instrumental in sending girls of the middle class and domestic servants to AustraUa, New Zealand, and Canada, and she visited these colonies to form committees for the protection of the emigrants.
From 1868, when she handed over her law business to Miss Lewin, Miss Rye devoted herself exclusively to the emigration of pauper children, or, in a phrase which she herself coined, 'gutter children.' After visiting in New York the Little Wanderers' Home for the training of derelict children for emigrant life which Mr. Van Meter, a baptist minister from Ohio, had founded, she resolved to give the system a trial in London. Encouraged by the earl of Shaftesbury and 'The Times' newspaper and with the financial support of William Rathbone, M.P. [q. v. Suppl. II], she purchased in 1869 Avenue House, High Street, Peckham, and with her two younger sisters, in spite of public opposition and prejudice, took there from the streets or the workhouses waifs and strays from the ages of three to sixteen. Fifty girls from Kirkdale industrial school, Liverpool, were soon put under her care; they were trained in domestic economy and went through courses of general and religious instruction. At Niagara, Canada, Miss Rye also acquired a building which she called 'Our Western Home.' It was opened on 1 Dec. 1869. To this house Miss Rye drafted the children from Peckham, and after further training they were distributed in Canada as domestic servants among respectable families. The first party left England in October 1869. Poor law children were subsequently received at Peckham from St. George's, Hanover Square, Wolverhampton, Bristol, Reading, and other towns. By 1891 Miss Rye had found homes in Canada for some five hundred children. She personally accompanied each batch of emigrants, and constantly visited the children already settled there. The work was continued with great success for over a quarter of a century, and did much to diminish the vicious habits and the stigma of pauperism. Lord Shaftesbury remained a consistent supporter, and in 1884 the duke of Argyll, then governor-general of Canada, warmly commended the results of Miss Rye's pioneer system, which Dr. Bamardo [q. v. Suppl. II] and others subsequently adopted and extended.
In 1895, owing to the continuous strain, Miss Rye transferred the two institutions in Peckham and Niagara with their funds to the Church of England Waifs and Strays Society. That society, which was founded in 1891, still carries on her work. In her farewell report of 1895 she stated that 4000 English and Scottish children then in Canada had been sent out from her home in England. She retired with her sister Elizabeth to 'Baconsthorpe,' Hemel Hempstead, where she spent the remainder of her life. There she died, after four years' suffering, of intestinal cancer on 12 Nov. 1903, and was buried in the churchyard. Of powerful physique and resolute character, Miss Rye cherished strong religious convictions, and her dislike of Roman Catholicism often led her into controversy. She received a civil list pension of 101. in 1871.
[The Times, 17 Nov. 1903; 1862, passim; Guardian, 25 Nov. 1903; Yorkshire Post, 18 Nov. 1903; Christian World, 19 Nov.; Norfolk Chronicle, 14 Nov. 1903; Our Waifs and Strays, Jan. 1904 (portrait), March and April 1910; Good Words, 1871, xii. 573–7 (art. by William Gilbert); Illustrated London News, 25 Aug. 1877; Englishwoman's Journal, 1858–63, passim; E. Hodder, Life of Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, popular edit. 1892, p. 711; private information.]