Frances Mary Buss and her work for education

by Annie E. Ridley

“March 2, 1874.

“I have had some conversation with the other members of the Local Examinations Syndicate, and I think I am warranted in expressing an opinion that if the subject of the printing of the girls’ names in the published lists were again brought before the Syndicate by a representation signed by influential local secretaries and others who are interested in the question, it would meet with a different solution than it has done heretofore, thanks to the remarks you have made to me of your own experience.

“I told Mr. Browne in our last conversation that I thought the best way to bring the matter before us again would be for me to write to you, and give you an intimation of the present feeling, and you would know through whom to move.”

In the same spirit in which she had entered into the Cambridge Local Examinations did Miss Buss throw herself into the larger work which soon engrossed Miss Davies, viz. the development of Girton College. The members of the Kensington Society were the first supporters of this movement, one of the leaders being Mrs. Manning, who, with Miss Davies and Mr. Sedley Taylor, and Mr. Tomkinson, took part in the first meeting of a committee, on December 5, 1867, to consider “A Proposed College for Women.”

In 1869 a house was taken at Hitchin, where five students were received, Mrs. Manning acting for the first three months as Lady Principal. She was succeeded, for the next year, by Miss Emily Shirreff, who relates that a proposition to go as missionary to Fiji would at that time have caused less amazement to her friends than this venture into untried ways. Miss Davies herself was the first Head at Girton.

The effort to obtain the £13,000 required for the new buildings was, like all other early efforts of the kind, a work of courage and patience. The first £1000 was given by Madame Bodichon, and the same sum by Miss E. A. Manning, while £8000 had been collected by the committee. One of the things hard to bear by those who had made it possible to take such a step was the foundation of the new Holloway College, with magnificent buildings for which there were then no students, whilst Girton was still struggling for the merely necessary accommodation needed for its students actually in residence.

Occupied as she was with the same effort to obtain funds for her own schools, Miss Buss could not give much pecuniary help. But she did help very largely by her influence, being always and everywhere an able propagandist of the new ideas.

Side by side with the Girton movement went another which began with a set of lectures started by the Cambridge Ladies’ Association, in January, 1870, to enable women-students to take advantage of the instruction offered by Trinity College. For the accommodation of ladies attending these lectures a house in Cambridge was taken by Mr. Sidgwick, Miss Clough being placed at the head of it. This beginning, known as Merton Hall, developed rapidly into the present Newnham College, with its now fine building, possessing the advantage over Girton—which is distant three miles out of Cambridge—of being within easy access to all the advantages of the University.

The work at Newnham differs from that at Girton in offering a special examination for women, under the authorization of the University and with certificates, but not demanding the same work from women that was imperative for men.

From the first, Miss Davies and her friends—Miss Buss being very firm on this point—had steadily resisted every offer that made a separation between men and women. They demanded for women the very same curriculum as that expected from men. The trend of public opinion has on the whole been in this direction during the later progress of the movement, and although several difficult questions are still to be solved, few now doubt that in the beginning it was expedient to make the demand in the form in which it was made.