Louisa Carbutt

Louisa Carbutt later Louisa Herford (25 September 1832 – 4 May 1907) was a British schoolmistress and educational pioneer. She ran her own school. After it closed she married another headteacher who ran Lady Barn House School. His first wife had died four years before.

Life Carbutt was born at Altona near Hamburg in 1832. Her parents were Louise Petronella and Francis Carbutt. Her father, a merchant and mayor of Leeds, had been a Quaker but he became a Unitarian. Her younger brother was Sir Edward Carbutt M.P. became an engineer.

Carbutt was asked if she would teach two children and she decided that she could use this as the basis of founding a school. The Brook House School opened in August 1860 with a small number of pupils. The school's approach was unusual in that the students were neither rewarded nor punished. Nevertheless, the students were allowed more freedom than was usually permitted in comparable schools.

Brook House school closed in 1870 as Carbutt had health problems and she went to live in Leeds again where she was elected a Poor Law Guardian. Herford's first wife had died in 1880.

Carbutt died in Paignton in 1907. Her husband died in the following year.