page_title: Sabrina Sidney
section_title: Return to England
hierarchical_section_title: Sabrina Sidney / Day's experiment / Return to England
caption_attribution_description: English: Stowe Pool in Lichfield
context_page_description: Sabrina Bicknell, better known as Sabrina Sidney, was a British woman abandoned at the Foundling Hospital in London as a baby, and taken in at the age of 12 by author Thomas Day, who tried to mould her into his perfect wife. She grew up to marry one of Day's friends, instead, and eventually became a school manager.
  Inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau's book Emile, or On Education, Day decided to educate two girls without any frivolities, using his own concepts, after being rejected by several women, and struggling to find a wife who shared his ideology. In 1769, Day and his barrister friend, John Bicknell, chose Sidney and another girl, Lucretia, from orphanages, and falsely declared they would be indentured to Day's friend Richard Lovell Edgeworth. Day took the girls to France to begin Rousseau's methods of education in isolation. After a short time, he returned to Lichfield with only Sidney, having deemed Lucretia inappropriate for his experiment.
context_section_description: While in France, Day struggled over which girl to choose to take forward with the experiment. Both were beautiful; Lucretia was more cheerful, Sidney more reserved and studious. The trio returned to England in spring 1770, by which time Day had finally decided that he would carry on with Sidney's training. Edgeworth explained that each of Day's projects with Sabrina had been successful, but he had come to the conclusion that Lucretia was "invincibly stupid". Day apprenticed Lucretia to a milliner in Ludgate Hill, and took Sidney to Stowe House in Lichfield, where her training could continue. The household would have had no more than a couple of servants, leaving Sidney to maintain the four floors of the house. Her tutoring continued at the same time, with one-on-one lessons from Day on a variety of subjects.
  Day extended his tutoring to fortify Sidney against hardship, again based upon his interpretation of Rousseau's Emile. The book explains the concept of "negative education", protecting a person from vices rather than teaching them virtues. Day interpreted this to mean that submitting Sidney to tests of endurance would help to create a woman with hardened nerves. One example given by Rousseau was helping Emile become accustomed to explosions such as fireworks by firing pistols with small amounts of powder near him, gradually increasing the amount of powder. Day, on the other hand, fired a pistol loaded with powder directly at Sidney's petticoat, not telling her that there was no shot in it.
  In an attempt to increase her resistance to pain he would drop hot sealing wax on her back and arms or stick pins in her, commanding her not to cry out. He would test her ability to keep secrets by telling her that his life was in danger and she should tell no one. To increase her resistance to the cold, Day instructed Sidney to wade into Stowe Pool until the water reached her neck, then lie in the nearby meadow until her clothes and hair had dried in the sun. Finally, to test her resistance to luxury, he gave her a big box of handmade silk clothes and had her throw them on a fire. Day had limited success with these techniques. Sidney became able to endure hot wax dripped on her arm without flinching, but she did tell others of his secret techniques, and could not help screaming whenever he fired his gun at her.
  During their time at Stowe House, Day introduced Sidney to members of the local intellectual circle, including the priest at Lichfield Cathedral, Thomas Seward. Seward and his wife hoped that Day might be a suitor for their daughter, Anna, and Anna's writings of the time show her interest in Day. Anna was also enchanted by Sidney, who became the link between Day and the Seward family. Anna took a keen interest in Sidney's story, as her father had taken in Honora Sneyd when Sneyd's mother had died.
caption: Stowe House, Day's Lichfield residence, viewed across Stowe Pool, the lake into which Sidney waded
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