Maude Stanley

Maude Alethea Stanley (4 May 1833 –14 July 1915) was a British youth work pioneer and women's welfare activist.

Early life and family

Stanley was born at Alderley Park, Chelford in Cheshire, the fourth daughter and fifth of 12 children of the politician Edward Stanley and the women's education campaigner Henrietta Stanley (later Baron and Baroness Stanley of Alderley). In 1834, her paternal grandfather, John Stanley, 1st Baron Stanley of Alderley, wrote a manuscript on philosophy dedicated to his newborn granddaughter and called Alethea's Book.

Stanley shared her family's tolerant and liberal views towards religion – her parents were Anglicans, her eldest brother Henry a convert to Islam, her youngest brother Algernon a Roman Catholic bishop and her youngest sister Rosalind an agnostic. Stanley herself has been described as low church.

Youth work

A woman of Stanley's social position was expected to devote time to charity and social work, but her involvement exceeded expectations. She started out as visitor of Five Dials, a now-extinct London slum, where her younger brother Algernon served as a curate, which she considered "old-fashioned" but enabling her to "penetrate into houses where none other could enter".