A Rousseau-inspired education turned into an experiment

Sabrina Sidney is a British orphan whose destiny was completely overturned by the writer Thomas Day. In 1769, this Enlightenment philosopher chose her along with another child to apply the educational principles of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in an extreme manner, as part of a personal project aimed at making her his ideal wife. After discovering the truth about this manipulation in 1783, she eventually married John Bicknell, Day's associate.