Few and far between: female dancing teachers in eighteenth century British cities

The most cursory look at eighteenth-century newspapers reveals a large number of school in British cities that offered dancing as an extra, taught by 'proper masters', 'able masters', 'eminent masters' and, by the end of the period, 'professors of dancing'. Many of these masters combined attendance at boarding schools with running their own establishments for the teaching of social dancing to both children and adults. It might be thought that principals of school for young ladies would have preferred female dance teachers, and that fathers might have seen male dance teachers as a threat to the virtue of their daughters, and so preferred lady teachers, but this was not the case. Indeed female dance teachers were very few and far between. 

This paper will explore why it was very difficult for women to support themselves by teaching dancing in British cities and towns, and why they managed to do so successfully in both Bath and Edinburgh. It will look in detail at the careers and personalities of the women who worked as teachers of dance in these two centres.