Priscilla Wakefield: Empowering Women Through Financial Literacy

What if one of the most radical mathematicians of the industrial revolution wasn't a professor didn't publish equations and wasn't even allowed into most academic spaces?

What if she was a woman who taught families how to budget showed workers how to ensure themselves against hardship and quietly built financial systems that empowered people the economy had left behind?

That is the brilliant mind of Priscilla Wakefield at work. Welcome to this four-part miniseries spotlighting women from history who used maths to solve real world problems, transforming the fields of medicine, banking, accountancy, and economics from women's history month on breaking math.

I'm Doctor Victoria Bateman. Throughout time, women's contributions have often been underappreciated, yet they've shaped policy, theory, and practice in profound ways.

Here, we honour their stories, highlight their ideas, and celebrate the impact they've had on shaping our world. Let's begin.

Today, we're talking about Priscilla Wakefield, a woman who didn't just believe numbers mattered. She proved that understanding them could change your life. So, Victoria, why is she one of your most favourite women from history?

Well, Priscilla Wakefield might be one of the most quietly revolutionary mathematicians that you've never heard of, not because she proved theorems, but because she taught ordinary people how to use numbers in their everyday lives to survive, to plan, and to gain financial power.

She was an English writer, educator, and reformer who lived in Georgian Britain, so I want you to think bonnets and Bridgerton. And while this was, in many ways a revolutionary period, most people and especially women had almost no access to formal mathematical education.

Now, she herself published 17 books, and many of them were aimed at the home schooling market, which would have been particularly important for educating girls, because girls were much less likely to be sent to school than boys.

But she also believed that women needed more than an education, that they also needed access to their own money and the ability to plan their future in a financial sense. So, in 1798, she set up a community insurance scheme for women.

And through that scheme, women could make small regular contributions in return for certain benefits, things like pensions, funeral expenses, and access to loans, including business loans, and she then took it a step further, ultimately establishing England's first savings bank for women and children.

It became known as the penny bank, because it allowed you to save with as little as a penny with the view that those pennies eventually turn into pounds.

And am I right that her bank proofs so popular that men asked her to open her services for them as well?

That's correct. And she, beautifully, obliged.

Okay, that is fascinating. Now, when I'm also thinking about this period in British history, the late 1700s, it seems like a pretty pivotal time. Is that right?

That is right. Wakefield lived during the start of the British Industrial Revolution.

So, this was a time when the economy was expanding fast, but poverty was still widespread. And without state welfare systems, illness or job loss could be financially devastating.

So, ordinary people really needed to take financial charge of their lives, you know, to have a means by which they could save regular small amounts in the good times, so that they could then look after themselves in the bad times.

So, numerical literacy wasn't just academic, you know, it was survival, but banks at the time weren't really interested in ordinary people.

So, it was Wakefield who recognized this big gap in financial markets and worked to close it.

And you can imagine that that required a lot of mathematical skill on her part. You know, she had to keep track of all the deposits made into her bank, calculate interest, predict and plan for withdrawals.

And for her insurance scheme, she had to work out what monthly contributions people needed to pay to make sure that there was enough money in the pot to then pay out their pensions down the line.

So, what makes her remarkable is that she treated mathematics not as abstract theory, but as a practical tool for independence, financial stability and ultimately social mobility.

But autumn, I mean, you know as much about this period as me. So, you know, tell us more about the challenges that women face in this field at that time.

So, this was a time where the finance industry, as almost always, was dominated by men by the people who wore these smart suits and top hats and carried their briefcases throughout the streets and the lanes of the city of London.

Now, working in finance, of course, requires having a good grasp of numbers, but women were rarely formally trained in mathematics. And they were often excluded from big financial decisions, even within their own households.

Now, I'm curious what was groundbreaking about her work.

But I would say by setting up that first savings bank for ordinary people, we should see her as the mother of modern day consumer banking, but also as the pioneer of what economists like to call microfinance.

So, loans aimed at the poorest members of society that give people a chance to help themselves out of poverty.

But perhaps Wakefield's most radical contribution was her insistence that mathematical reasoning belonged in everyday life, you know, not just in university halls and scientific societies.

She embedded arithmetic directly into real decisions, budgeting, saving, comparing prices, planning for the future, effectively arguing that numeracy is the infrastructure for autonomy.

She demonstrated that mathematics could reshape society when ordinary people, not just scholars, had access to it.

But this is all getting rather deep, so let's lighten it a little bit.

Autumn, tell me, is there a particularly fun fact that you have about Priscilla Wakefield?

Actually, I do. When she opened up her savings bank, the very first depositor was a 14 year old orphan girl who saved two pounds.

And this small moment captures Wakefield's philosophy perfectly.

She wasn't trying to impress the elites. She was trying to empower individuals, simply but ordinary people.

And she believed that even the smallest saver armed with numerical understanding could bring a more secure future.

And she was a champion to helping people empower themselves.

Now, I know you have another factor too for us.

Well, did you know that Wakefield also published one of Britain's first feminist books?

Tell us more.

So it was titled Reflections on the Present Condition of the Female Sex.

It anticipated many of the developments in modern day feminist economics and highlighted things like the gender pay gap.

And all of that in the late 1700s.

Now, Priscilla Wakefield lived during the Industrial Revolution.

A time where economies expanded rapidly, but women's financial power did not.

She wrote books that taught ordinary households how to understand money.

And she even founded a savings bank for women and children in 1796.

She built systems of mutual support.

She treated arithmetic not as abstraction, but as autonomy.

And that's why she feels so modern because she understood something we're still learning.

Financial literacy is not about numbers.

It's about dignity, a choice, and who gets to plan the future.

And as always, stay curious because you might just change history.