Girton at once prepared its students for the university Previous Examination, and claimed that they should be examined for both the
ordinary and the honour degree. Newnham at first prepared its students for the Higher Local examinations and the triposes, discountenanced the Previous Examination and would not allow its students to prepare for the Ordinary degree. In the event, Newnham has had to abandon the examination which was the original raison d’être of its existence, and Girton has had virtually to abandon its claim to examination for the ordinary degree. This means that every woman who takes a degree takes it in honours: the same is true of no college of men in Cambridge except King’s. The founders of Newnham considered it a waste of time for women to come to the university to qualify themselves for that Ordinary degree which graces the majority of our men, and which represented such a mysterious weight of learning to sisters at home in the old days. This decision has a double ricochet—it is good for the colleges, for only the better women come up; it is bad for many women who, like many men, are unfit to do tripos work and who might yet enjoy from residence at Cambridge the same advantages—direct and extraneous—which the ‘poll’ degree man now obtains.
Girton.
The first committee for the future Girton College met on December 5th 1867;[449] but the foundation of Girton dates from October 16, 1869 when a hired house at Hitchin, midway between Cambridge and London, was opened to six students at a time when it was not thought advisable to plant a women’s college in Cambridge. The college at Hitchin[450] was carried on under serious tuitional and other disadvantages—lecturers from the university, for example, were paid for the time occupied in the journey—and in 1873 the college was removed to Girton, a village two miles out of Cambridge.
The manor and village of Girton.