20 Facts About Ada Ballin

Ada Sarah Ballin was an English author, journalist, editor, and lecturer.

Ada Ballin was the editor and proprietor of the magazines Baby, Womanhood and Playtime, and published articles and books on health, child care, and dress reform.

Ada Ballin's father worked as a furrier and merchant in Bristol, before moving to London in 1859 or 1860.

Ada Ballin passed through a successful college career, gaining the prize in the senior Hebrew class, the Hollier Scholarship for Hebrew, Fielden Scholarships in French and German, the Heimann Silver Medal for German, an English composition prize, and distinctions in philosophy of mind and logic.

Ada Ballin was the first woman to receive the Hollier Scholarship.

At the recommendation of William Henry Corfield, Ada Ballin was invited to deliver a lecture on the subject at the International Health Exhibition, which was presented before a crowded audience on 14 July 1884.

The National Health Society afterward appointed Ada Ballin to be one of their regular lecturers.

Ada Ballin took over from Anna Kingsford as editor of the health and beauty section of the Lady's Pictorial magazine in July 1887.

Ada Ballin's work was part of an expanding market for child-care manuals which emphasized the potential dangers facing children, the ignorance of parents, and their need for parenting advice and instructions.

The regular and special contributors to Baby were often described as experts in their fields, and Ada Ballin herself emphasized her position as "Lecturer to the National Health Society".

Ada Ballin launched in December 1898 a monthly called Womanhood: The Magazine of Woman's Progress and Interests, Political, Legal, Social, and Intellectual, and of Health and Beauty Culture, aimed at the educated "New Woman," and in December 1900 the periodical Playtime: The Children's Magazine.

Besides her work in the above areas, from 1883 until the death of Richard Proctor in 1888, Ada Ballin contributed a series of articles on the evolution of languages to his paper Knowledge.

When interviewed in 1890, Ada Ballin worked at home in London.

Ada Ballin married Alfred Thompson, a solicitor of London, on 21 September 1891, and bore a daughter named Annie Isabella the following year.

Ada Ballin continued to use her maiden name for professional purposes.

Ada Ballin died on 14 May 1906, after falling from a first-floor window of her Portman Square home and becoming impaled on railings below.

Ada Ballin bequeathed the management of her periodicals to her brother; Playtime and Womanhood both ceased publication after a year, but Baby continued to be published monthly until 1915.

Ada Ballin railed against the use of poisonous dyes and tight lacing, though she did not denounce corsetry completely.

Ada Ballin favoured wool, not cotton or linen, and insisted that clothes for babies should cover every part of the body while leaving the arms free.

Ada Ballin advocated for the use of bifurcated skirts as women's underwear.