A Short History of Newnham College, Cambridge

by Alice Gardner

The great services of Dr. Sidgwick to the incipient College have been alluded to, though they are far too wide and various to be severally recorded.[6] His wife, formerly Miss Eleanor Balfour, had for some years been a very able treasurer and member of council. She had given a scholarship to Newnham in Mathematics, her own chief subject of study at that time. They lived a quiet, scholarly, but sociable life in their house at Hillside, at the beginning of the Chesterton Road. At this moment, when anyone of less standing in the University and the world generally could hardly have met the emergency, Mrs. Sidgwick agreed to come and preside in the new Hall, with the title of Vice-Principal, and Mr. Sidgwick came to live there also, thus giving up his privacy and the company of most of his books. The arrangement was the more successful in that Miss Gladstone also took up residence in the North Hall as her secretary. The name of Gladstone brought distinction with it. Miss Helen Gladstone had resided as a student of English and Political Economy for one year with the Sidgwicks and for two years in Newnham Hall, and was deservedly popular both with the students and in the University world outside. Students who entered the College, and were taken into the new Hall, cherished ever after the memory of these two years as a halcyon time—in which they enjoyed listening to good talk and associating with interesting persons more than during any other period of their lives. At the end of two years, Miss Gladstone became Vice-Principal, resident in the North Hall, a post which she held for many years, and in which her well-known geniality, cheerfulness, and whole-hearted devotion to her task and to the students under her care found abundant scope and recognition.

It was under the same roof as the North Hall that the much needed lecture rooms were raised. There were at first three. Later when a large number of small rooms for private teaching were made in the Pfeiffer Building, two of the lecture rooms proper were knocked into one, thereby giving the College one room large enough to accommodate (if desks were removed) about a hundred people. It was chiefly by pressure from Miss Gladstone that an infirmary or hospital was built, adjoining the North Hall, but with its separate entrance. This has often proved useful in checking the spread of infectious ailments among the students or the servants. A chemical laboratory had already been erected in the garden at a respectful distance from the original Hall. Its equipment was mainly the task of Miss Penelope Lawrence, afterwards headmistress of Roedean School, Brighton. A laboratory for the study of Biological subjects was provided in the town in 1884, a disused Congregational chapel being adapted to the purpose. Mrs. Sidgwick and her sister, Miss Alice Balfour, were the principal donors, and the laboratory was appropriately named after their brother, Francis Maitland Balfour, whose promising and already distinguished career had been cut short by an accident in the Alps. For many years, these two laboratories formed the training ground of a large number of students, who did much to supply the demand for improved science teaching in schools and colleges for girls. In the Chemical Laboratory Miss Freund and in the Balfour Laboratory Miss Greenwood (now Mrs. Bidder) and Miss Saunders presided for many years, carrying on both teaching and research. (Both Miss Freund and Mrs. Bidder were former students of Girton.) In course of time, the opening of the University laboratories to women students rendered these buildings less necessary, and they are at present let for University purposes.

With the increase in the number of students, further buildings became necessary. The South Hall (formerly Newnham Hall) had been designed with a view to possible extension, and in 1882, a west wing was built, containing rooms for about twelve more students. The ground floor of this building was devoted to a well-planned Library, at that time a great desideratum. The equipment of the College as to books had originally been scanty. Perhaps the need of books was, for a time, not altogether to be deplored, as the early generation of students realized the necessity of procuring their own books or of inducing generous friends to assist them in that direction; and many gave books as a parting present to the College. A moderate-sized common-room in the Old Hall (since divided into two rooms for students) was the first library, but was soon outgrown. But when something larger was required, the new Library (now the Reading Room of the Old Hall) both served its purpose till the books again outran the accommodation, and afforded a delightful morning room for study, as well as space for occasional social parties.

(3) During the late 'seventies and the early 'eighties, women students were informally admitted to privileges which greatly facilitated their work, and in particular many College lectures were opened to them. Their own lectures—before the building of Sidgwick Hall—were given in the rooms belonging to the Young Men's Christian Association, near the old Post Office, a central but somewhat noisy situation. The larger rooms in this building were of good size and convenient, but the class-rooms were less so, and to many students their first introduction to Greek Tragedy or to English Law will always be associated with the striking of a hammer on the blacksmith's anvil. The new lecture rooms at Newnham had not this drawback. The professorial lectures were generally given in rooms now absorbed in the University Library. In some, women were allowed to come into the gallery, where their presence was not easily discerned. But meantime, as already mentioned, some of the Colleges were ready to accept suggestions as to admitting women to the Inter-collegiate Lectures. The first of the Colleges to admit women to lectures in its own hall was Christ's. In the summer term of 1876, eight students of Newnham College (some working at classics, others at history) were admitted to a course of lectures on the Punic Wars given by Mr. (now Professor) J. S. Reid in the temporary dining-hall of Christ's. Great efforts were made to meet the somewhat exacting demands—in those days—of social propriety. Thus these students were obliged always to be chaperoned by a responsible lady, and as Miss Clough had in the early days few colleagues to lighten her responsibilities, the task usually fell on her. Needless to say, she never represented this as a grievance, though the lectures were three times a week, the hour inconvenient, and the weather generally wet. She was only too glad to help in a new departure, and, as she said (with reminiscences of her brother and Dr. Arnold), she always found Roman History interesting.

King's was the next College to admit women. Trinity not till a little later. It may be noticed, without any disparagement of the lecturers who obtained these concessions, that in the case of those already lecturing to women according to the previous arrangements, it was more convenient to have seats assigned to the women in the College lecture rooms or halls than to give the same lecture to their men pupils in College in the morning and to the women in a room belonging to the Young Men's Christian Association, or even in Newnham College, in the afternoon. Nevertheless Newnham owes gratitude to the Lecturers and to the Fellows of Colleges who showed, in many cases, both zeal and courtesy in meeting the women students' needs. With regard to the undergraduates, it may be remarked that though at first some showed a curious amazement mixed with bashfulness at their strange visitors, they soon accustomed themselves to the change, and showed almost always a spirit of courtesy and good sense. As more accommodation came to be provided by the University—irrespective of College distinctions—in the New Divinity Schools and the New Lecture Rooms, access to lectures became easier for women, as for other non-members of the University.

Another great advantage which the students obtained in these years was permission to read in the University Library. They could not be admitted without referees, such as were demanded from non-university persons, but the Principal was always accepted as one referee, so that the student candidate had to find one only. Fees—very moderate—were paid by the College when a student had been specially advised to read in the Library. Formal admission was granted for the morning only, but a student who for any special reason wished to read in the afternoon as well could easily obtain permission.

Another privilege gradually obtained without any special effort was that of being examined in the Inter-collegiate Examinations popularly called Mays. As all Cambridge men and women know, examinations of students in their first and second years are held in most subjects at the end of the summer term, to test their knowledge and power of expressing it. These are not directly under any University board, but are given by the lecturers on the subjects they have been teaching, in various Colleges, during the past year. The "Mays," in spite of drawbacks, have often been of great value, in giving confidence to industrious but despondent students, and in warning those whose progress was unsatisfactory. The fact of having been through a certain course, examined on the subject, and marked with the undergraduates, emphasised the fact to the women students, the undergraduates, and the world at large, that the work done at Newnham and Girton was really of University standing.

(4) All these steps led towards what was necessary in order that the work of the College should be solid and permanent—the recognition by the University of the existence of women students and women of what I have called quasi-graduate status. It may be said—it was said, and still is said when further demands are made—that women had the real thing, why trouble about the artificial trappings? Women could become well-educated, even learned; those who had studied at Cambridge were the better esteemed in educational circles, and they were free from many tiresome responsibilities that weigh on full members of the University. But to this was answered: that the path to good education and sound learning is still more thorny than it need be; that the world, which often has to distribute educational posts and distinctions, does not care for education without a degree; that the position of the women, held only by courtesy, was insecure. A scrupulous examiner might at any time decline to examine a tripos-candidate whom he was not bound to examine, and any University lecturer might refuse to allow women at his lectures. At the same time, women who "brushed the flounce of all the sciences," and flitted about like bees for intellectual honey, might easily pose as University women and bring real students into disrepute. Finally: if there were duties as well as privileges exacted from the children of Alma Mater, women would hardly be found unwilling to accept them.

Matters came to a crisis at the end of the year 1880. In the winter 1879-1880 (the triposes came, then, at various periods of the year), Newnham and Girton obtained first classes in three triposes, the most conspicuous case being that of Miss C. A. Scott of Girton, who in the Mathematical Tripos had obtained (by the usual informal examination) a place equal to that of the eighth wrangler. These successes seemed to give a reductio ad absurdum to the common arguments about the inferiority of the "female mind," to set the mark of success on the methods followed at both Colleges, and to suggest the inexpediency—if not injustice—of withholding from women the title which should give them status and improve their prospects in the academic world. It may be mentioned that, in 1878, London University had obtained a supplement to its Charter empowering it to admit women to its degrees, a step which marked both a recognition of the claims of educated women and an abandonment of London's first tentative measures in providing examinations for women. It had for some time admitted women to a "General Examination," closely resembling the Matriculation, but allowing more option as to subjects. This might be followed by examinations for certificates of Higher Proficiency, which could be taken, without further fee, with the General, or in any subsequent year. It was a very useful examination for girls who had left school and in continuing their studies at home wished to take up one subject or another, together or at intervals, according to convenience. The weak points were that the syllabus did not sufficiently correspond to the men's to give any guarantee as to standard demanded and attained—and far worse: that there was nothing progressive about the "Special" examinations, there being only one examination held in each subject. When the degree examinations were thrown open, a good many Cambridge women took the London B.A. or M.A. after their triposes in order to have some title to present to the academic world. But—as London degrees examinations were then arranged—such work generally involved the consumption of much time on other than specially chosen lines on the part of any Cambridge Tripos student. The fact that it was desired and achieved gave proof—if fresh proof were needed—of the actual market value to educated women of the letters denoting a certain standard of mental equipment. London University was then, it may be added, a University only in name. The teaching tested in its examinations had been obtained by solitary students reading privately, by residents in various provincial Colleges, and by members of those Colleges in London—University, King's, Bedford, and Westfield, which were ready to take their place as Colleges of an actual teaching as well as degree-granting University—as London became in 1900. The provincial Universities (Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, etc.) all admitted women to their degrees early, if not at their first opening.