Administrative / Biographical History

Mary Dendy was the daughter of a Unitarian minister, who later went into business in Manchester. Dendy became a member of the Manchester School Board in 1896, where she became interested in the subject of mental deficiency, and in 1898 she presented a paper on 'Feeble-minded children' to Manchester Statistical Society. In 1898, she helped set up the Lancashire and Cheshire Society for the Permanent Care of the Feeble Minded, which promoted the institutionalisation of children deemed 'feeble-minded'. She worked with a local doctor, Henry Ashby, a specialist in children's diseases, on this subject.

Related Material

See also MMC/1/Dendy .