Bluestockings (2 page)

1864
   The North of England Council for Promoting the Higher Education of Women is established by Josephine Butler and Anne Jemima Clough.

1865
   Cambridge ‘Local’ examinations are formally opened to girls.

1867
   The University Extension Scheme administers lectures in Liverpool and Manchester, to which women are admitted.

1868
   The Taunton Commission reports damningly on the education of girls in England.

1869
   Cambridge ‘Higher Local’ examinations come into being, for both sexes.

Emily Davies sets up an academic community at Benslow House, Hitchin, later to become Girton College, Cambridge (1873).

1871
   Teaching Fellows at Oxford and Cambridge are
allowed to marry, so the higher reaches of academia cease to be male preserves.

A community of five women students is founded by Henry Sidgwick and Anne Clough in Cambridge; it develops into Newnham College.

1872
   The Girls’ Public Day School Trust is founded.

1874
   London School of Medicine for Women opens.

1875
   Oxford ‘Higher Local’ examinations come into being.

1876
   The Enabling Act technically allows the admission of women to universities.

1878
   London University is the first to admit women undergraduates on the same terms as men. The first degrees are awarded in the summer of 1880.

The Association for the Education of Women in Oxford is founded, and is responsible for the administration of ‘Home Students’ (local women) from 1879. (In 1952, the Society of Home Students coalesces into St Anne’s College.)

1879
   Somerville Hall (later College) and Lady Margaret Hall open in Oxford.

1881
   Women are allowed to sit Cambridge Tripos (but not officially to graduate).

Victoria University incorporates colleges at Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds, and admits women undergraduates.

1881
   Nottingham becomes a co-educational university college.

1882
   Westfield College, London, opens.

1883
   Bristol becomes a co-educational university college.

1884
   Oxford degree examinations are opened to women (but no certificate is awarded to those who pass).

1886
   St Hugh’s College, Oxford, is founded.

Royal Holloway College, London, opens.

1892
   Reading awards London University degrees to women.

1893
   St Hilda’s College opens in Oxford.

1895
   Durham allows women degrees.

1895
   The London School of Economics opens.

1897
   Sheffield awards London University degrees to men and women.

1901
   Exeter becomes a co-educational university college. Birmingham University awards men and women degrees.

1902
   The ‘Ladies’ Department’ at King’s College, London, awards degrees.

Southampton University College is founded.

1907
   Imperial College, London, opens.

1908
   Edith Morley of Reading becomes the first woman university professor in England.

1915
   Queen Mary College becomes part of the University of London.

1919
   The Sex Disqualification Removal Act.

1920
   Women are awarded degrees at Oxford.

1923
   Women students at Cambridge are admitted to university lectures by right, rather than by privilege.

1927
   Hull and Leicester University Colleges are founded.

1948
   Women students at Cambridge are officially allowed to graduate.

1959
   The five women’s ‘societies’ at Oxford (Somerville, Lady Margaret Hall, St Hugh’s, St Hilda’s, and St Anne’s) finally become full members of the university.

Acknowledgements

The best thing about writing this book has been the opportunity to meet so many inspiring people. I have corresponded with or interviewed some 120 erstwhile bluestockings, all of whom welcomed my questions and gave generously of their time and memories. None was younger than her mid-eighties; the eldest were proud centenarians. Without exception I found their courtesy and spirit hugely uplifting, and I must thank them all.

I am also grateful to the friends and families of women who graduated before the Second World War for responding so readily to requests for information and reminiscences. I make no apology for the length of these lists, and hope those named will forgive the lack of titles or letters showing academic achievement. It might look a bit impersonal, but shouldn’t imply any want of respect or gratitude. This book is more theirs, after all, than mine.

So: for all their help, and for permission to quote from correspondence and interviews, I should like to thank: Diana Allen (née Wimberly); Mary Applebey; Joan Bayes (for Miriam, Elsie, Rose, and Dolly Morris); Gordon Bebb (for Gwyneth Bebb); Ruth Beesley (née Ridehalgh); Martha Camfield (née Kempner); Michael Crump; Clare Currey (for Ruth Wilson); Barbara, Lady Dainton; Lucy de Burgh (née Addey); Katherine Duncan-Jones (for Elsie Phare); Kathleen Edwards; Hugh Epstein (for Mary Noake); Robin Fabel (for Mariana Beer); Barbara Fletcher; Patrick Frazer (for Cynthia Stenhouse); Grace and Julie
Fredericks; Norah Frost (for Sarah Beswick); Hilda Gaskell; Edith Gersay (née Wood); Dilys Glynne (for Dilys Lloyd Davies); Carolyn Greet (for Nora Wilde); Mary Grice (née Plant); Barbara Groombridge (for Marjorie Collet-Brown); Beryl Harding; Constance Hayball (née Houghton); Daphne Hope Brink (née Harvey); Barbara Hutton (née Britton); Leta Jones; John Killick (for Emma Mason); Tom Lester (for Sarah Mason); Daphne Levens (née Hanschell); Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan (for Joan); Hazel Lowery (née Bray); Frederick Macdonald (for Louisa and Isabella Macdonald); Anne Milner (for Christine Burrows); Helen Nicholson (for Ivy Beatrice Jenkins); Angela Nosley (née Allen); Audrey Orr; Rosalind Page; Christina Roaf (née Drake); Dominica Roberts; Jane Robson (for Honoria Ford); Geoff Seale (for Stella Pigrome); Mary Tyndall; Myles Varcoe (for Rachel Footman); Harlan Walker (for Katie Rathbone, née Dixon); Pippa Warren (for Kathleen Proud); Rosalind Willatts (for Edna Green); the late Hannah Winegarten (née Cohen) and her family; Beatrice Worthing; Diana Young (née Murray); Rosina Mary Young (née Stevens); and Marie-Luise Ziegler (née Haardt).

For colouring in the background, I am indebted to: Mary Abraham; Prudence Addison; Alex Aldrich-Blake; Bob Anderson; Jane Anderson; Hilary Arnold; Charles Arthur; Joan Aubrey Jones; Phyllis Austin; Ian Aveson; Simon Baguley; Mary Berry; Cindi Birkle; Joan Blyth; Vivian Bone; Helen Boon; Irene Boss; Elaine Bound; Sibyl Boyes; Gaynor Bramhall; Winifred Brancker; Anne Brew; Christine Bridgen; Barbara Briggs; Tony Bron; Margaret Bruce; Joan Carter; Dorothy Chadburn; Clemency Chapman; Violet Chell; Robyn Christie; Joyce Clifton; Penny Cloutte; Joan Coates; Mary Corran; Margaret Cosgrave; Hester Crombie; Valerie Crowson; Sarah Curtis; John Dainton;
Brian Davis; Jacqueline de Trafford; Elizabeth Dimmock; Caroline Essame; Yvonne Fox; Anne Francis; Eileen Fraser; Phyllis Firth; Jean Glover; Helen Goodliffe; Joanna Gordon; Robin Gordon-Walker; Helen Gray; Christopher Grimaldi; Isobel Grundy; Celia Haddon; Anne Haward; Jocelyn Hemming; Sylvia Hiller; Barbara Horsfield; William Horwood; Sr Anna Howley; Noel Ing; Paul Jeffery; Barbara Jones; Sally King; Mary Kirkman; Janet Lambley; David Le Tocq; Jenny Lister; Cindi Lockett; Esther Lucas; Margaret Macdonald; Margaret Macpherson; Deborah Manley; Annette Marshall; Christine Martin; Margaret Matthews; Sarah McCabe; Mary Midgley; Anne Mille; Margaret Morgan; Jane Morris-Jones; Helen Mortimer; Lionel Munby; Nina Nathan; Frederick Nicolle; Joyce Openshaw; Clare Passingham; Anthony Peabody; Jonathan Peacock; Barbara Pease; Lucy Pollard; Helena Port; Cora Portillo; Rosemary Pountney; Dorothy Price; Barbara Raban; Margaret Ralphs; Elizabeth Rattenbury; Joyce Reynolds; Edith Rhodes; Jean Ross; Timothy Scott; Frances Sellers; Mother Serafima; Alison Sims; Gilia Slocock; Sally Smith; Eileen Steel; Nell Steele; Diana Stephens; Olivia Stevenson; Elizabeth Strevens; Joan Stubbings; Noel Sumner; Angela Swetenham; Celia Tate; Charlotte Tester; John Theak-stone; Sir Crispin Tickell; Michael Toothill; Barbara Twigg; Kathleen Ward; Sheila Ward; John Warren; Selby Whittingham; Joan Wilson; Olive Withycombe; Dorothy Wood; Joe Woolwich; Maisie ‘Pip’ Wray; and M. Yates.

Various institutions have kindly given me permission to quote from printed and manuscript material in their care. Extracts detailed in my notes and references are reproduced by courtesy of: Ashburne Hall, Manchester; Special Collections, University of Birmingham; by permission of Durham University Library; the Mistress and Fellows, Girton College, Cambridge; Hull University; King’s College
London; by kind permission of the Principal and Fellows of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford; the University of Leeds; the University of Liverpool; the University Librarian and Director, the John Rylands University Library, the University of Manchester; Newnham College, Cambridge; Queen Mary, University of London Archives (including Westfield College material); Royal Holloway, University of London (including Bedford College material); St Anne’s College, Oxford; the Principal and Fellows of St Hilda’s College, Oxford; by kind permission of the Principal and Fellows of St Hugh’s College, Oxford; St Mary’s College, Durham; the Governing Body of Somerville College, Oxford; College Collections, UCL Library Services, Special Collections; and the Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University. I also acknowledge with thanks the support and efficiency of the curatorial staff at all these institutions, as well as at the universities of Bristol, Exeter, Leicester, Nottingham, Reading, Sheffield, and Southampton.

Extracts from Vera Brittain’s
Testament of Youth
are published by permission of Victor Gollancz, an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group; I have quoted from Vera Brittain’s
Chronicle of Youth
by kind permission of Mark Bostridge and Timothy Brittain-Catlin, Literary Executors for the Estate of Vera Brittain 1970; extracts from
Miss Weeton: Journal of a Governess
, edited by Edward Hall (1936), are published by permission of Oxford University Press; the Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Virginia Woolf granted permission to quote from
A Room of One’s Own.

Finally, I should like to thank the following people for services above and beyond the call of scholarly duty: Pauline Adams; Adrian Allen; Elizabeth Boardman; Mark Bostridge; Elizabeth Boyd; Val Clark; Liz Cooke; Angela Evans; Liza Giffen; Eddie Glynn; Sheila Griffiths; Ele Hunter; Anne
Keene; Kate Perry; Deborah Quare; and Anne Thomson. Alison and Rusty listened to two years’ commentary on the book’s progress with humour and forbearance. My sister Hannah Mortimer did sterling work transcribing records, which I much appreciate. My former agent Caroline Dawnay lent expertise and encouragement (both invaluable assets), and my editor Eleo Gordon has been – as any undergraduette worth her salt would put it – a brick. Richard and Edward tolerated my EFV with remarkable kindliness, while Bruce was – and continues – peerless.

While every effort has been made to contact copyright holders, the publishers would be pleased to hear from any not here acknowledged.

Introduction

In mixed company, always keep at least one foot on the ground.
¹

Alison Hingston was a student at Newnham College, Cambridge, from 1899 to 1902. There are three stout cardboard boxes in the college archives, containing her scrapbooks. It takes two hands to heave out the volume inside each box; as you do so, bits of apparent rubbish escape from uneven gaps between the wavy pages. The covers bulge under the strain of their contents. Most Victorian scrapbooks are dainty little albums with pasted drawings, poems, and paper decorations. Miss Hingston’s are monsters.

They were almost my first discoveries when I began researching this book. Newnham was high on the list of places to visit, being among the earliest women’s colleges in England. And even though
Bluestockings
covers every university extant in England before 1939, Cambridge – the first to host women students, and the last to give them a degree – seemed the obvious starting point.

I did not have particularly high hopes of Miss Hingston’s college souvenirs. Words, I thought, reveal far more than things. But even after a full two years’ research, happily exploring letters and diaries in scores of libraries, archives, and private collections, those scrapbooks still loom large.

Intensely personal (and slightly weird), Alison’s
objets trouvés
include a few pale wisps of moss from the college grounds; chips of bark from a tree by the hockey field; a poke of paper
with some sweets still inside; a half-smoked cigarette (which, despite the impossibly early date, I have reason to believe was hers); two twigs with their evergreen leaves in shards; a small tooth of unknown provenance; the printed results of university exams; a cryptic note in a strange hand. Yet, eclectic as it is, this collection seems to me to articulate everything
Bluestockings
seeks to convey about the pioneering women within its pages: enthusiasm, adventure, self-discovery, and the importance of cherishing whatever is most precious.