Mary Adelaide Hare

Mary Adelaide Hare (3 November 1865 – 5 November 1945) was a teacher of Deaf children and a suffragist who founded the Mary Hare School.

Early life Mary Adelaide Hare was born on 3 November 1865 in Kentish Town, London, the sixth of eleven children of Adelaide, (née Rogers) and Thomas Hare, an engineering draughtsman.

Teaching career Mary Hare trained at the Ealing Training College for Teachers of the Deaf, and taught there as a teacher-trainee. She later became a full-time teacher there, and remained an examiner there after her departure. The school focused on the 'oral method,' teaching Deaf children to speak as well as sign, and attracted pupils from great distances away.

Suffragist While in Brighton, Mary Hare chaired meetings of the Women's Social and Political Union and hosted WSPU events in her house. By 1913, she had become the secretary of the Brighton branch of the Women's Freedom League. She spoiled her 1911 census record as part of a WFL protest.

Commemoration A blue plaque was erected in her memory in 2024 at St Michael's Place, Brighton, where she taught for six years at the end of the nineteenth century.