Bluestockings

The Remarkable Story of the
First Women to Fight for an Education

JANE ROBINSON

VIKING

an imprint of

PENGUIN BOOKS

Contents

List of Illustrations

Chronology: Landmark Dates in the History of Higher Education for Women in England

Acknowledgements

Introduction

  1.     Ingenious and Learned Ladies

  2.     Working in Hope

  3.     Invading Academia

  4.     Most Abhorred of All Types

  5.     What to Do if You Catch Fire

  6.     Freshers

  7.     Women’s Sphere

  8.     Blessed Work

  9.     Spear Fishing and Other Pursuits

10.     Shadows

11.     Breeding White Elephants

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

Also by Jane Robinson

Wayward Women

Unsuitable for Ladies

Angels of Albion

Parrot Pie for Breakfast

Pandora’s Daughters

Mary Seacole

www.jane-robinson.com

For Mollie Haigh,
an inspirational lady

List of Illustrations

   1.  Frances Buss of North London Collegiate School (courtesy of North London Collegiate School)

   2.  Constance Louisa Maynard of Girton and Westfield Colleges (courtesy of Queen Mary, University of London Archives, Westfield College Collection)

   3.  Emily Davies, founder of Girton College (courtesy of the Mistress and Fellows, Girton College, Cambridge)

   4.  Anne Jemima Clough, the first Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge (courtesy of the Armitt Collection, Ambleside)

   5.  Dorothea Beale, founder of the Cheltenham Ladies’ College, c. 1885 (courtesy of the Cheltenham Ladies’ College)

   6.  Eleanor Sidgwick, maths tutor and later Principal of Newnham (courtesy of Harlan Walker)

   7.  Miss Buss, surrounded by staff and students, 1877 (courtesy of North London Collegiate School)

   8.  ‘The Ladies’ College’, Somerville Hall (from Graphic, 31 July 1880, courtesy of the Principal and Fellows of Somerville College, Oxford)

   9.  Students at Cambridge protesting, 1897 (courtesy of Newnham College)

10.  A proud graduate, c.1890 (courtesy of Mary Evans Picture Library)

11.  Chinese student Pao Swen Tseng, 1916 (courtesy of Queen Mary, University of London Archives, Westfield College Collection)

12.  Sarah Mason (Mrs Tebbutt) and her children (courtesy of Tom Lester)

13.  A student cocoa party, c.1890 (courtesy of Royal Holloway, University of London)

14.  Oxford ‘Home Students’, 1899 (courtesy of St Anne’s College, Oxford)

15.  Graduates of St Hild’s in Durham, 1898 (by permission of the College of St Hild and St Bede, Durham University and Durham County Record Office, ref. DRO E/ HB 1/652)

16.  The Principal and Students of St Hilda’s, 1907 (courtesy of the Principal and Fellows of St Hilda’s College, Oxford)

17.  Girton’s ‘College Five’, 1869 (courtesy of the Mistress and Fellows, Girton College)

18.  A portable fire-escape, c.1890 (courtesy of Queen Mary, University of London Archives, Westfield College Collection)

19.  The Girton student fire brigade (courtesy of the Mistress and Fellows, Girton College)

20.  A third-year performance of The Princess at Girton, 1891 (courtesy of the Mistress and Fellows, Girton College)

21.  A group of Girton Classicists, 1891 (courtesy of the Mistress and Fellows, Girton College)

22.  Vera Brittain of Somerville College, Oxford, 1913 (copyright © Vera Brittain Estate)

23.  Open-air revision in June 1919 (courtesy of the Mistress and Fellows, Girton College)

24.  The first women entitled to wear academic dress at Oxford, 1921 (courtesy of the Principal and Fellows of St Hilda’s College)

25.  Grace, Julie and Daphne Fredericks (courtesy of Grace Fredericks)

26.  Students of Lady Margaret Hall prepare for punting, c.1890 (courtesy of the Principal and Fellows of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford)

27.  The Oxford University ladies’ hockey team, c.1900 (courtesy of the Principal and Fellows of Lady Margaret Hall)

28.  St Hilda’s Boat Club, 1920s (courtesy of the Principal and Fellows of St Hilda’s College)

29.  Exeter University’s tennis team, 1929 (courtesy of Exeter University)

30.  The entire student and staff population of Leicester University, 1922 (courtesy of Leicester University)

31.  A student chemist at Leeds University, 1908 (courtesy of Mary Evans Picture Library)

32.  Physics research at Queen Mary College, c. 1930 (courtesy of Queen Mary, University of London Archives, Queen Mary Collection)

33.  A practical lesson in anatomy, 1911 (courtesy of Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

34.  Medical students at Bedford College, London, c.1915 (courtesy of Royal Holloway, University of London)

35.  A drawing class in the 1890s (courtesy of Royal Holloway, University of London)

36.  Trixie Pearson’s Class of 1932, St Hilda’s College (courtesy of the Principal and Fellows of St Hilda’s College)

Illustrations in the Text

p. iii   Girl with a quill pen, from Fritillary (the Oxford women’s colleges’ periodical), November 1924

p. 6     Dr Syntax woos a ‘Blue Stocking Beauty’, Thomas Rowlandson cartoon from William Combe, The Third Tour of Dr Syntax in Search of a Wife, 1821

p. 27    ‘She Stretcheth Out Her Hand to the Poor’, from The Workwoman’s Guide, by a Lady, 1840

p. 40    ‘The Girl: What Will She Become?’, from Punch, 1916

p. 59    Ashburne Hall fire drill, 1905, courtesy of Ashburne Hall Archives

p. 73    Callisthenics routine, from the Girl’s Own Paper, May 1884

p. 90    Women in academic dress, from Fritillary, November 1924

p. 112   Royal Holloway College, c. 1886, courtesy of Royal Holloway, University of London Archives

p. 124   A monitor summons her fellow students, 1905, courtesy of Ashburne Hall Archives

p. 136   First women graduates in England, from the Girl’s Own Paper, July 1882

p. 166   Pupils practise in the gym at North London Collegiate School, from the Girl’s Own Paper, April 1882

p. 207   Cambridge alumna conquers the world, late nineteenth-century cartoon reproduced in Mountfield, Women and Education, 1990

Chronology

Landmark Dates in the History of
Higher Education for Women in England

1096    The earliest record of Oxford as a centre of teaching and learning. It is the first university in the English-speaking world.

1209    The University of Cambridge is (one could argue) indirectly founded by an Oxford woman, when scholars are banished from Oxford for her manslaughter, and decide to settle by the Cam.

1673    Bathsua Makin publishes An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen.

1694/7    Mary Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies appears, suggesting a type of university education for women.

1750s–70s    The heyday of the original Bluestockings, led by Elizabeth Montagu: mostly women, meeting in one another’s houses to discuss literature, philosophy, art, and intellectual discourse.

1792    Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman is published.

1826    The founding of University College, London (originally known as London University).

1829    The Governesses’ Mutual Assurance Society is established.

1830    Birkbeck College (then known as the London Mechanics’ Institute) admits women to lectures.

1832    Durham University is founded.

1841    Whitelands (teacher-training) College opens in London.

1847    London ‘Lectures to Ladies’ are instituted by Professor F. D. Maurice (whose sister is a governess).

1848    Queen’s College, London, is founded by Professor Maurice.

1849    Bedford College opens, later to become part of the University of London.

1850    North London Collegiate School opens.

1854    The Cheltenham Ladies’ College opens.

1854    The Oxford University Act removes the requirement for religious tests for BA students, thus widening access; the Act for Cambridge is passed in 1856.

1858    The English Woman’s Journal is first published, by the Ladies of Langham Place.

1863    Girls are allowed to attempt Cambridge ‘Junior Local’ examinations.

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.

Newnham College was less than thirty years old when Alison arrived at the close of the nineteenth century. By that time, some 15 per cent of undergraduates in England were women. The proportion had grown to about 22 per cent by 1939.2 Seventy years earlier, when the first women’s college was founded, the total of female university students in the country was a lonely five. Then, a female was politically classed with infants, idiots, and lunatics, as ‘naturally incapacitated… and therefore… so much under the influence of others that [she] cannot have a will of her own’.3 That is why there were such strict regulations governing her behaviour at university (and beyond), not only to protect her moral and physical welfare, but to defend good men, such as undergraduates and lecturers, from temptation and involuntary folly.

No more was asked of a virtuous Victorian daughter than domestic duty. In its first issue, on 3 March 1880, the popular Girl’s Own Paper urged its middle-class readership: ‘amiable ever, but weak-minded never, brave in your duty be, rather than clever’. Intellectually, a young lady was close to nonexistent. Her brain was considered small and dilute compared with a man’s, and her understanding generically shallow. Her constitution was not thought to have the physical, mental, or emotional resources to withstand reproduction and academic study. A fertile womb and a barren brain, or vice versa: the choice, pro bono, was clear.

Therefore, for the first few decades of their admission to university, women were treated with little more confidence than those infants and idiots. When Manchester allowed female undergraduates in the 1880s, it put them in a small room in the attic, sternly guarded by a stuffed gorilla and some moth-eaten lions and tigers from the university museum. Chaperones were required for social and academic occasions, everywhere, until the First World War. Lecturers could refuse to teach or even acknowledge women. For a long time no males – including fathers and brothers – were allowed in women’s rooms; after dispensation was granted to family members and (at a push) fiancés, it was still the rule that the bed should first be removed from the room, and the door propped open.

You might argue the situation was not much better by 1939, the end of the period covered by this book: Cambridge refused to award women degrees before 1948, and it was not until 1959 that the women’s ‘halls’ at Oxford became fully incorporated into the university. Less than a quarter of the country’s undergraduates were women, and when they graduated, they were still encouraged to choose between a profession and marriage.

To focus on these negatives, however, would be unfair. Nothing should distract us from the achievements of ordinary, extraordinary women like Alison Hingston, on whom this book is based. Quietly (or occasionally with some hullabaloo) they cleared the path that hundreds of thousands of women have since followed; most of us without a backward glance.

A word or two about terminology: an undergraduate is taken to be a student at any university, even though women were not allowed officially to graduate from Oxbridge until comparatively late, and were therefore not strictly undergraduates at all. I know Dorothy L. Sayers was not alone in abhorring the term ‘undergraduette’, finding it intolerably patronizing. But in the context of its era (principally the 1920s) it was also used with affection and even pride, both by students themselves, and by their observers. Bluestockings with a capital ‘B’ are those luminous intellectuals who graced the literary and artistic salons of fashionable eighteenth-century society; stripped of the pejorative gloss the label has acquired since then, it is here reclaimed – with a small ‘b’ – for all the undergraduates who give this book its voice.4