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Authors: Jane Robinson
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In fact, good schools welcomed the introduction of a benchmark qualification for girls, and the experiment was asuccess. In 1865, the Locals were permanently opened to girls. ‘The idea almost takes one’s breath away,’ wrote one horrified critic, convinced that the Empire’s mothers-to-be were being mentally and probably physically addled by spurious intellectual competition. Most people concerned with the general progress of education in England, however, were in favour. The corresponding Local exams administered by Oxford were opened two years later.
The next stage in Emily Davies’s crusade was to institute more advanced exams – ultimately ‘A’ levels – which had not existed for boys before but, because of the demand for a plenary test at the end of a girl’s career in education, soon became commonplace in schools for both sexes. The Cambridge ‘Higher Locals’ came into being in 1869 (and Oxford’s in 1875). Constance Maynard took Cambridge Highers, as entrance exams to Girton.
She had to travel to London during the hot summer of 1872 to sit the exams. There were several papers, and after overcoming an initial conviction of ‘bewildering incompetence’, Constance relaxed. She was thrilled by the complete silence of the examination hall (but for the scratching of pens), the urgency of the occasion, the intense collective concentration of her fellow candidates. And when the morning exams were over, she loved the novelty of ‘turning out alone into the streets of London, choosing a shop and ordering coffee for luncheon’.
The series of papers went on. The New Testament was quite obvious, the Euclid would have been perfect had I had more time, but my distinctly slow hand-writing was against me, and the dreaded Arithmetic let me do fully nine out of twelve questions. The Drawing was nothing, the Greek so hard I heartily wished I had taken German, the Grammar (English) I did badly as I thought, but the Essay was charming… Counting all together it was absurd to think I might have failed, but I did, and returned home late on the 21st June, sometimes rejoicing in the new experience, and sometimes almost bent double with fear that my last chance had gone…
On 27th came the splendid word ‘Passed’. 22
Constance was bound not for Girton village, where the college now stands, but for Hitchin, an inoffensive market town in the heart of middle England. In 1869, Emily Davies’s quest had led to her renting a building there, Benslow House, for herself and five other women. 23 They were orphan Anna Lloyd, aged thirty, whose sisters were so outraged at her selfishness in abandoning them that they forced her to leave college after a year; Louisa Lumsden, twenty-nine, later Dame Louisa, who took Classics and became a lecturer at Girton herself; Emily Gibson, a shipbuilder’s daughter who had been working as a pupil-teacher and was subsidized through college by her brother; Sarah Woodhead, a mathematician, who at eighteen was the youngest student in residence; and Rachel Cook, another Classicist, whose father was Professor of History at St Andrew’s University in Scotland. With the support of visiting professors from Cambridge, less than an hour away by train, the five would live together, learn together, and become the first women to study a degree course at any English university.
Emily Davies had campaigned long and hard for this. She depended on the headmistresses of girls’ schools: if they did not enter their most able pupils for the Junior Locals and Highers, the cause was lost. And even though her college had no official connection with the University of Cambridge, she relied on the authorities’ goodwill and forbearance. High-profile members of the Langham Place Ladieshelped too, by publicizing the venture and arguing its advantages in print. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, not surprisingly, did all she could to further her old friend Emily’s enterprise, and Barbara Bodichon was a stalwart
In fact, good schools welcomed the introduction of a benchmark qualification for girls, and the experiment was asuccess. In 1865, the Locals were permanently opened to girls. ‘The idea almost takes one’s breath away,’ wrote one horrified critic, convinced that the Empire’s mothers-to-be were being mentally and probably physically addled by spurious intellectual competition. Most people concerned with the general progress of education in England, however, were in favour. The corresponding Local exams administered by Oxford were opened two years later.
The next stage in Emily Davies’s crusade was to institute more advanced exams – ultimately ‘A’ levels – which had not existed for boys before but, because of the demand for a plenary test at the end of a girl’s career in education, soon became commonplace in schools for both sexes. The Cambridge ‘Higher Locals’ came into being in 1869 (and Oxford’s in 1875). Constance Maynard took Cambridge Highers, as entrance exams to Girton.
She had to travel to London during the hot summer of 1872 to sit the exams. There were several papers, and after overcoming an initial conviction of ‘bewildering incompetence’, Constance relaxed. She was thrilled by the complete silence of the examination hall (but for the scratching of pens), the urgency of the occasion, the intense collective concentration of her fellow candidates. And when the morning exams were over, she loved the novelty of ‘turning out alone into the streets of London, choosing a shop and ordering coffee for luncheon’.
The series of papers went on. The New Testament was quite obvious, the Euclid would have been perfect had I had more time, but my distinctly slow hand-writing was against me, and the dreaded Arithmetic let me do fully nine out of twelve questions. The Drawing was nothing, the Greek so hard I heartily wished I had taken German, the Grammar (English) I did badly as I thought, but the Essay was charming… Counting all together it was absurd to think I might have failed, but I did, and returned home late on the 21st June, sometimes rejoicing in the new experience, and sometimes almost bent double with fear that my last chance had gone…
On 27th came the splendid word ‘Passed’. 22
Constance was bound not for Girton village, where the college now stands, but for Hitchin, an inoffensive market town in the heart of middle England. In 1869, Emily Davies’s quest had led to her renting a building there, Benslow House, for herself and five other women. 23 They were orphan Anna Lloyd, aged thirty, whose sisters were so outraged at her selfishness in abandoning them that they forced her to leave college after a year; Louisa Lumsden, twenty-nine, later Dame Louisa, who took Classics and became a lecturer at Girton herself; Emily Gibson, a shipbuilder’s daughter who had been working as a pupil-teacher and was subsidized through college by her brother; Sarah Woodhead, a mathematician, who at eighteen was the youngest student in residence; and Rachel Cook, another Classicist, whose father was Professor of History at St Andrew’s University in Scotland. With the support of visiting professors from Cambridge, less than an hour away by train, the five would live together, learn together, and become the first women to study a degree course at any English university.
Emily Davies had campaigned long and hard for this. She depended on the headmistresses of girls’ schools: if they did not enter their most able pupils for the Junior Locals and Highers, the cause was lost. And even though her college had no official connection with the University of Cambridge, she relied on the authorities’ goodwill and forbearance. High-profile members of the Langham Place Ladieshelped too, by publicizing the venture and arguing its advantages in print. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, not surprisingly, did all she could to further her old friend Emily’s enterprise, and Barbara Bodichon was a stalwart
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