In the College’s recent history, Sara Rhodes became Cambridge’s first female Butler when she joined Trinity Hall in 1997 and stayed for a remarkable 26 years before retiring in 2023. The previous year our Master, Mary Hockaday, became the first woman to hold the post, joining us on 1st October 2022 following a distinguished career in broadcast journalism. Now in the College’s 675th year, the story of women at Trinity Hall is continuously evolving.
The academical history of women at Trinity Hall, however, begins in 1865 when girls were first allowed to take the Cambridge University exams. Although it wasn’t until 1977 that the first female undergraduates were admitted to Trinity Hall, between this initial decision to examine girls at the University and the admission of women into Cambridge’s traditionally all-male colleges, lies over a century of the lesser-known academic history of women in Cambridge. And amongst it, Trinity Hall, as the fifth College to admit women, has its own story too.
Education for women in the mid-nineteenth century was so inadequate that most women were too poorly educated to be governesses, which started the gradual move for girls to be educated not at home but in an institutional setting. When the decision was taken to allow girls to take the Cambridge University exams in 1865, this was used to help raise standards in girls’ schools. By 1869, interest in higher education for women was so high that a group began discussing lectures for women. The first two women’s colleges in Cambridge were Girton College, founded in 1869, and Newnham College in 1871.
A decade later, in 1881, three university resolutions were passed to allow women to sit the Tripos, which entitled them to a certificate, but not a degree. In 1887, Agnata Frances Ramsay of Girton College came top of the Classics Tripos, obtaining a First with the highest scoring man placed in the second division. This garnered national attention. In 1890, Philippa Fawcett of Newnham College (daughter of Henry Fawcett, Fellow of Trinity Hall from 1856) was classed as the Senior Wrangler (top scorer) in the Mathematical Tripos. In the same year, another woman, Margaret Alford, became the Senior Classic (top scorer in Classical Tripos). The first female lecturer employed by the University, Ellen McArthur, became the Cambridge University Extension Lecturer in December 1893. Previously, she had gained a First in the History Tripos in 1885. Around this time the women’s colleges were beginning to appoint their female graduates to teaching positions, but they were only allowed to use the University Library between 10am and 2pm when many were teaching.
The vote to allow women to obtain degrees was held on 21st May 1897, but it was defeated 1,707 against, 661 in favour. The vote brought on protests from the male students. Satirical writings found in the Silver Crescent, a Trinity Hall student magazine at the time, demonstrate that many Trinity Hall students were opposed to granting degrees to women. According to the Silver Crescent, one of the effigies that was hung on Women’s Degree Polling Day was designed by two Trinity Hall students.
Women were finally granted the right to the title of degrees in 1921, a year after Oxford, but women were still barred from membership of the University. Moreover, the University restricted female students to no more than 1/5 the number of men (although in reality it was much less than this). Gradually rules about chaperones were relaxed, and female students and lecturers were finally able to use the University Library and borrow books in their own right, just like their male counterparts. The first female professor was elected in 1939 – Dorothy Garrod, who took up the Disney Professorship of Archaeology – and on 6th December 1947 women were finally granted full membership of the University. It would be another sixteen years before they were admitted to the Union Society.
In 1960, the regulations restricting the numbers of women admitted were rescinded, and in 1965, the University amended its statutes to allow colleges to amend their own statutes in order to admit women. 1965 and 1966 saw the foundation of three new graduate colleges admitting both men and women: Darwin, Wolfson, and Clare Hall. In 1969, the first female proctor was appointed, Janet Howarth, with the hope that she would be able to deal sympathetically with problems that might arise at the women’s colleges. The first three all-male colleges to admit women were Kings, Churchill, and Clare in 1972. Trinity Hall was the fifth college to admit women, after Sidney Sussex was the fourth in 1976. The first female Vice-Chancellor of the University was appointed in 1975.
In February 1967, two years after the University statutes were amended, a vote by the Governing Body approved, by a slim 2/3 majority, the removal of the definition of a ‘person’ as being a male person from the statutes. This subtle change meant that there were no longer any legal impediments preventing Trinity Hall from admitting women. The move to admit women was spearheaded in the mid ‘70s by Ernest Frankl, the Senior Tutor at the time. He organised the debate and vote where all of the Fellows were given 5 minutes to present their opinions on the matter. Unfortunately, no written record of the proceedings exists, but reportedly one of the arguments against was the fear the College would suffer athletically by having fewer men to choose from. The decision to admit female graduates and undergraduates was made at the December 14th 1974 meeting of the Governing Body, although we don’t have a record in the minutes. The first written evidence of the change having occurred appears in the 17th November 1975 Governing Body minutes (now 50 years ago, as we move through our 675th year) when two female staff Fellows were elected: Sandra Raban and Kareen Thorne. Kareen Thorne went on to become the first female Senior Tutor in 1985, and Sandra Raban became the first Admissions Tutor in 1986. Another Fellow, Joanna Womack, became the first female Bursar in 1990.
Accounts from the first female students and Fellows, suggest that the transition was rather smooth and that they were met with little opposition. Women constituted approximately a third of the undergraduate intake in 1977, and they became active members in College life, joining clubs and societies and being elected to offices from the outset. They played prominent roles in the MCR and JCR committees, and many societies, particularly the Music Society, Preston Society, and College Choir. Academically the College flourished, climbing to the top of the Tripos league table for the first time ever in the 1980s. The 1978 edition of the College newsletter remarked that the female students had won half of the College’s 52 awards. The women thrived athletically as well, several of whom attained Blues. In 1982, the Boat Club went head of the river for the first time since 1948, and Ladies IV boat went head of the river in the 1983 Lents. These achievements proved the detractors wrong. The fears that the College would suffer academically and athletically if women were admitted were completely unfounded. The other colleges followed suit when it became clear that those that admitted women were not suffering but were thriving. By 1988, all Cambridge Colleges had admitted women.”
