10. A proud graduate, probably of Birmingham University, c. 1890.
11. Chinese student Pao Swen Tseng on her graduation from Queen Mary College, London, 1916.
12. Sarah Mason (Mrs Tebbutt) and her children. Sarah was at Girton from 1878 to 1882.
13. A student cocoa party at Royal Holloway College, London, c. 1890.
14. Oxford ‘Home Students’ (whose college became St Anne’s in 1952) take a break from tennis, cycling, rowing and reading, 1899.
15. Durham University’s first female graduates, 1898.
16. The Principal and students of St Hilda’s, Oxford, 1907. Note the college kitten.
17. Girton’s ‘College Five’: its very first students, photographed at Hitchin, 1869.
18. A portable fire-escape in use during a fire drill at Westfield College, London, c. 1890.
19. The Girton student fire brigade, formed because of the college’s remoteness from Cambridge.
20. A third-year student performance of The Princess at Girton, 1891, based on Tennyson’s poem about ‘sweet girl graduates’.
21. A group of Girton Classicists in 1891 counter the traditional image of the dowdy bluestocking.
22. Vera Brittain of Somerville College, Oxford, 1913.
23. Open-air revision in June, 1919.
24. The first women entitled to wear academic dress at Oxford University, at their matriculation ceremony in 1921.
25. Sisters Grace, Julie and Daphne Fredericks, who all became students at Oxford or Cambridge in the late 1920s and visited each other by bicycle.
26. Students of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, prepare for punting, c. 1890.
27. The Oxford University ladies’ hockey team, c. 1900.
28. St Hilda’s Boat Club members under instruction in the 1920s.
29. Exeter University’s tennis team, 1929.
30. The entire student and staff population of Leicester University on its opening in 1922. The ratio of men to women is 2 to 10.
31. A student chemist at Leeds University, 1908.
32. Physics research in a temporary laboratory, Queen Mary College, London, c. 1930.
33. A practical lesson in anatomy. Human bodies under dissection, 1911.
34. Medical students at Bedford College perilously demonstrate ‘why weak hearts fail’, c. 1915.
35. A drawing class in the art studio, Bedford College, in the 1890s.
36. Trixie Pearson’s Class of 1932, St Hilda’s College, Oxford.
Notes
For full details of sources quoted, please see the Select Bibliography.
INTRODUCTION
1. Rule, extant until the 1920s, from a London University hall of residence.
2. Dyhouse, Students, 4. See also Boyd, St Mary’s College, 4, and Bremner, Education of Girls, 7.
3. Samuel Heywood, quoted in Turner, Equality for Some, 46.
4. I have come across another meaning of ‘Bluestocking’ in the course of my research. It’s a cocktail, invented by the Roberts family to celebrate their daughter gaining a place at university: one tablespoon of gin, one of blue curaçao, three of clear apple juice, and a fat blue cherry.
1. INGENIOUS AND LEARNED LADIES
1. Makin, An Essay to Revive the Antient Education, 3.
2. Beatrice Walsh, Reminiscences (1932–6), St Hilda’s College Archives. I have inferred certain characteristics of Mrs Pearson’s personality and past history from her affectionate daughter’s papers.
3. Hester Thrale (1741–1821) – at this stage still a brewer’s wife – was ambivalent about what she called ‘the Blues’, and joined those who ridiculed them when it suited her. Later, after her marriage to the Italian musician Gabriel Piozzi in 1784, she was happy to relax into London’s intellectual life.
4. Westminster Magazine, July 1773 (copy not seen), quoted in Myers, The Bluestocking Circle, 271.
5. From ‘The Letters of Mrs Elizabeth Montagu’, a review attributed to Sir Walter Scott in the Quarterly Review, October 1813, 38.
6. Wollstonecraft, Vindication, 296. Wollstonecraft’s argument in the Vindication expanded a theme first published in her essay Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787), in which she argued that organized learning for girls was the only way for them to achieve rationality and mental independence.
7. Wortley Montagu, Works, vol. 4, 185.
8. Walter Map, The Letter of Valerius to Ruffinus (c. 1180), ch. 9, quoted in Blamires, Woman Defamed, 105.
9. Simon D’Ewes, quoted in Teague, Bathsua Makin, 31.
10. Makin, op. cit., 3, 23.
11. Ibid., 22.
12. Woolley, Gentlewoman’s Companion, 67.
13. ‘Elegy’, Letters and Poems in Honour of… Margaret, Dutchess of Newcastle, 166.
14. Astell, Serious Proposal, part 1, 10.
15. Defoe, An Essay Upon Projects, 113, 114.
16. Ibid., 114.
2. WORKING IN HOPE
1. Frances Buss, quoted in Kamm, How Diff erent from Us, 104.
2. Lloyd, Memoir, 57.
3. The Princess was published in 1847. Tennyson was inspired by taking part in a Mechanics’ Institute (later Birkbeck College) summer outing to Maidstone, where students enjoyed a garden fête and debated the accessibility of education to working men. Lectures at the institute were open to women at the time, too. In the poem, Tennyson’s heroine dreams of an isolated, inviolable college for ladies where bluestockings like her might be immersed in the pursuit of learning. The scheme turns out to be impractical, of course: the heroine marries a prince who has managed to break in, and the college is promptly disbanded and turned into a hospital – much more useful.
4. Firth, Constance Louisa Maynard, 102–3.
5. Nightingale, ‘Cassandra’, Suggestions for Thought, vol. 2, 402.
6. Firth, op. cit., 43.
7. See Turner, Equality for Some, 58.
8. Weeton, Journal of a Governess, 13–14, quoted in Turner, op. cit., 68.
9. Turner, op. cit., 68.
10. Firth, op. cit., 22.
11. Marshall, What I Remember, 6.
12. From Helena Wells, Letters on Subjects of Importance to the Happiness of Young Females (1799), quoted in Broughton and Symes (eds.), The Governess, 63.
13. Maurice, Queen’s College, 1, 5.
14. Cobbe, Female Education, 4.
15. Charlotte Yonge to Emily Davies, ‘Davies Family Chronicle’ (1830–1921), 622 (GCPP Davies 1), Girton College Archives.
16. Sewell, Principles of Education, vol. II, 219–20.
17. Martin, Queen Victoria, 69–70.
18. The English Woman’s Journal was launched, with Bodichon as its editor, in 1858. In 1864, it continued as the Alexandra Magazine.
19. The University Extension Movement was developed in the late 1860s as a network matching willing lecturers from the few established universities at the time with Educational Associations around the country.
20. Firth, op. cit., 55.
21. Quoted in Bradbrook, ‘That Infidel Place’, 10–11.
22. Firth, op. cit., 105–6.
23. The college was not called Girton until 1872; it moved to Girton village a year later. For a full and entertaining history, see Bradbrook, op. cit.
3. INVADING ACADEMIA
1. From the trio ‘Gently Gently’, Act II of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Princess Ida, first performed in London, January 1884.
2. Sir Basil Champneys (1842–1935) was a friend of the Sidgwicks; he also designed Somerville library, and buildings at Lady Margaret Hall and Bedford College.
3. Dilys Lloyd Davies MSS (1877–8), Newnham College Archives.
4. During the 1930s, when chaperones were dispensed with, it was still customary to state on social invitations to undergraduettes the comforting assurance that ‘Ladies will be Present’. The implication was that they should chaperone each other.
5. See note 3.
6. Dorothea Beale envisaged St Hilda’s originally as a teacher-training college solely f
or Cheltenham Ladies’ College students. During the early 1890s, however, too few Cheltenham Ladies applied to keep it financially viable, so admission was opened to others.
7. Jessie Emmerson’s reminiscences, published in the St Hugh’s College Chronicle (1931), St Hugh’s College Archives.
8. Schools Inquiry Commission Report of James Bryce, Commissioner for Lancashire (1867–8), quoted in McWilliams-Tullberg, Women at Cambridge, 25.
9. Punch, vol. 80 (1881), 130.
10. Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex?, 7.
11. The constituent colleges in the Victoria University federation gained their own charters in time: Liverpool in 1903, Leeds in 1904, and Manchester in 1935. Sheffield broke away from London in 1905 and Bristol in 1909, but Exeter, Hull, Leicester, Nottingham, and Southampton did not award their own degrees until after the Second World War.
12. The Taunton Commission was originally intended to investigate the state of elementary education for boys in England; Misses Buss, Beale, and Davies lobbied for girls’ schools to be included, and gave evidence to the commissioners. One of the commission’s eventual requirements was the establishment of a girls’ grammar school in every town in England with a population over 4,000 people.
13. Edith Cass MSS (1909), University of Leeds Archives.
14. The Mermaid (the university magazine), vol. 1 (1904–5), 135, University of Birmingham Library.
15. Emmerson, op. cit.
16. Bertha Johnson, quoted in Bailey (ed.), Lady Margaret Hall, 48.
17. The Macleod Family Magazine, vol. 1, no. 11 (November 1881), typescript copy (GCRF 4/1/24) in Girton College Archives.
18. Bessie Callender’s reminiscences, quoted in Bird (ed.), Doves and Dons (unpaginated).
19. Tylecote, Education of Women at Manchester University, 32; Tout, Ashburne Hall, 3; University of Manchester’s Department of Women Archives UA/4/23 (reminiscences).
20. Constance Watson MSS (1909), Somerville College Archives.
21. Students’ Record Books (1897–1918), King’s College London Archives.
22. Students’ Record Book, St Mary’s College Archives, Durham.
23. The Gryphon (university magazine), vol. IX (1905–6), 12, University of Leeds Library.
24. Audrey Brodhurst MSS (1931), Somerville College Archives.
25. J. M. Upcott’s reminiscences from a questionnaire to 1907–10 alumnae, Somerville College Archives.
26. See note 24.
27. Rathbone, ‘The Dales’, 77.
28. Sarah Mason, Diaries (1878–82), private collection; extracts also held in Girton College Archives.
29. See note 1.
30. Alfred Lord Tennyson’s description of women in The Princess, canto VI, lines 290–91.
31. ‘M.P.S.’, ‘The Disadvantages of Higher Education’, Girl’s Own Paper, February 1882, 333.
4. MOST ABHORRED OF ALL TYPES
1. Yggdrasil (magazine of Ashburne Hall, Manchester University), Christmas term, 1902.
2. Annie Rogers, secretary to the governing body for the Society of Home Students (later St Anne’s), and the first Classics tutor at St Hugh’s. Annie was a brilliant academic: her father – a professor at Oxford – entered her for the Local examinations in 1873, using just her initials; when the results were issued, she was top of the list, and therefore offered scholarships at both Worcester College and Balliol. There was considerable embarrassment when her gender was revealed.
3. ‘A Woman’s Reply’, Durham University Journal, 10 June 1899.
4. Former Oxford High School pupil Margaret Fletcher puts it beautifully in her book, O Call Back Yesterday (1939): ‘She must not trade with [her brains], but keep them in a napkin that she might one day hand them on unimpaired to a possible son.’ Quoted in Avery, The Best Type of Girl, 55.
5. Maudsley, ‘Sex in Mind and Education’, 467, 472.
6. Quoted in Burstyn, Victorian Education, 94.
7. Turner, Equality for Some, 126.
8. Dr N. Allen, quoted in Maudsley, op. cit., 477.
9. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, ‘Sex in Mind and Education: A Reply’.
10. Ibid., 590.
11. ‘The Intellectual Inferiority of Women’, Durham University Journal, 13 May 1899.
12. Burgon, To Educate Young Women, 29.
13. Quoted in Mallet, History of the University, vol. 3, 447.
14. Frances Elizabeth Sheldon MSS (1880–83), Somerville College Archives.
15. Rachel Lily Footman, ‘Memories of 1923–1926’, private collection and Somerville College Archives.
16. The Mermaid, vol. 12 (1915–16), 132–3, University of Birmingham Library.
17. Ibid., vol. 5 (new series, 1934–5), 146.
18. Winifred Pattinson, letter dated 23 May 1897, Newnham College Archives.
19. Kathleen Courtney MSS (1897), Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University.
20. Eglantyne Jebb MSS (1895–8), Lady Margaret Hall Archives.
21. Cutting, dated 5 March 1896, among a collection in the St Anne’s College Archives.
22. Hobhouse, Oxford, 101–3.
23. Report as to the Rules and Discipline in Force for the Women Students at the University of Oxford (BURR 031/49; 1909), St Hilda’s College Archives.
24. The Mermaid, vol. 2 (new series, 1931–2), University of Birmingham Library.
25. ‘The New Woman’, Owen’s College Union Magazine, February 1895, 74–5.
26. Girl’s Own Paper, September 1886, 770.
27. Maynard, Between College Terms, 189–90.
28. Girl’s Own Paper, September 1886, 769–70.
29. Ibid., 770.
30. Author’s collection (Addey).
31. Ibid. (Cohen).
32. Kathleen Lonsdale MSS (1914–22), University College London Archives.
33. Author’s collection (Harvey).
34. Ibid. (Wood).
35. Doris Maddy is a pseudonym, as is Hermione.
36. Daily Herald, 21 June 1935.
5. WHAT TO DO IF YOU CATCH FIRE
1. A family anecdote related to me by Clare Passingham of Oxford.
2. Christina Roaf, ‘Life Before Somerville’, Somerville College Report, 2003–4, 88.
3. Rathbone, ‘The Dales’, 72.
4. Quoted in Shafe, University Education in Dundee, 15–16. William Topaz McGonagall (1825–1902), whose publisher advertised him as ‘the greatest bad verse writer of his age… or of any age’, was affectionately known as the ‘Poet Laureate of the Silvery Tay’. His most famously awful poem is ‘The Tay Bridge Disaster’, celebrating (if that’s the right word) the tragedy in 1879 when a Scottish railway bridge collapsed, hurling train passengers into the river below. Seventy-five of them perished.
5. Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509), mother of Henry VII, is honoured as the foundress of Christ’s and St John’s colleges in Cambridge, and Devorguilla (c. 1210–90) was the principal benefactress of her husband John de Balliol’s foundation at Oxford.
6. Quoted by Pat Thane, ‘Girton Graduates: Earning a Living 1920s–1980s’, 350.
7. Conversations with the Macdonald family.
8. Bird (ed.), Doves and Dons (unpaginated), and St Mary’s College Archives, Durham.
9. Girl’s Own Paper, March 1886, 407.
10. A comment in Yggdrasil, Lent 1902.
11. Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 110–11. Woolf expanded her theme in Three Guineas (1938), an essay arguing for greater investment in women’s education and employment in Britain.
12. Florence Rich, Reminiscences (1884), Somerville College Archives.
13. Author’s collection (Edwards).
14. Kathleen Byass MSS (1917), Somerville College Archives.
15. Author’s collection (Beer).
16. Ibid. (Atkinson). Margaret went to Manchester University.
17. Quoted in a University of Liverpool thesis by Lynn Patricia Edwards, Women Students at the University of Liverpool: Their Academic Careers and Postgraduate Lives 1883�
��1937 (1999), 69.
18. F. M. Swann, ‘Four-Score Years and More’ (reminiscences), Lady Margaret Hall Archives.
19. Author’s collection (Pigrome).
20. Ibid. (Fredericks). All three sisters (at the time of writing) are still alive, aged a hundred, ninety-eight, and ‘the baby’, ninety-six. My interviews with Grace and Julie were high points in the research for this book: it was a privilege to hear their history.
21. Author’s collection (Fletcher).
22. Vice-Chancellor’s Letter Book (S.2344, pp. 819–20, 29 April 1918), University of Liverpool Archives.
23. Girl’s Own Paper, May 1893, 514.
24. Author’s collection (Hanschell); see also Daphne Levens, ‘Life Before Somerville’, Somerville College Report, 2003–4, 75.
25. Epigram quoted in Rothblatt, Tradition and Change, 186.
26. Author’s collection (Murray).
27. Ibid. (Kempner).
28. Marshall, What I Remember, 10.
29. Callender, Education in the Melting Pot, 12.
30. Ibid.
31. Author’s collection (Dainton). Barbara Wright’s mother, trained at the Royal College of Science in Dublin, was appointed the first married woman lecturer at the University of Liverpool. She was a physical geographer.
32. Ibid. (Morgan). Transcript of her mother’s diaries generously supplied by Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan.
33. Ibid.
34. See note 24.
35. Yorkshire Ladies’ Council on Education Reports, 1873–1920 (1874), University of Leeds Archives.
36. Author’s collection (Emma Mason).
37. Elizabeth Gordon MSS (G 2; 1928–32), St Hilda’s College Archives.
6. FRESHERS
1. Frances Sheldon MSS (29 January 1882), Somerville College Archives.
2. Freeman, Alma Mater, 2.
3. Eleanor Rideout, Reminiscences (1913–16) in Sphinx, vol. XLVI (June 1945), 12 (SPEC S/LF 372.5.S75), University of Liverpool Archives.
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