Albert Mansbridge

Albert Mansbridge (10 January 1876 to 22 August 1952) was an English educator and one of the pioneers of adult education in Britain, best known for co-founding the Workers' Educational Association in England in 1903 and serving as its first secretary until 1915. Born in Gloucester, the son of a carpenter, he had to leave school at 14 and was largely self-educated, though he attended university extension courses at King's College London and later taught evening classes himself. Concerned that the extension courses begun in 1873 were aimed at the upper and middle classes, he and his wife Frances founded the association at a meeting in their home on 16 May 1903 under the name An Association to Promote the Higher Education of Working Men; it took its later name in 1905. He went on to found international branches of the association, starting with Australia in 1913, and to form the World Association for Adult Education in 1918, the Seafarers' Educational Service in 1919 and the British Institute of Adult Education in 1921.