The Window Entry Of Women Into University Life

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30212, 17 August 1963, Page 10

The Window Entry Of Women Into University Life

uraeotatty written for "The Press” by

ARNOLD WALL

IT was my lot to observe from the sidelines the early entry of women into University life. In IBM or thereabout* the Senate of the University of Cambridge debated in Convocation the question of the awarding of degrees to women ana a vote of Convocation was taken. Member* from all over the country attended to cast their votes, many of them country parsons. The undergraduates, taking it for granted that all these members would vote in favour of the women, lined up at tlie gates of the Senate House and bombarded the voters with bags of flour, josUed and shouted at them. I looked on and aaw funny episodes My old Mend Mr Magnusson, an Icelander employed at the University library, gave as good as he got, lashing out furiously with his fists and enjoying himself. Later the undergrads demonstrated noisily at the women’s colleges, Girton and Newnham. The vote went against the women and we saw an anomaly when a girl came out top of the mathematical tripos, beat all the men, but was not allowed a degree. Many professors and lecturers at the older universities bitterly resented the presence of women at their lectures. A. P. Quiller-Couch, Professor of Poetry at Cambridge, used to address his class as "Gentlemen," when nine-tenths of the students were females. In his view th* ladies simply were not there; he should have known better. I knew two or th re* girls who were attending lectures st a London hospital and preparing to become doctor*. The women were always allowed by the men to occupy the front seats in the lecture room. One man objected to this, came in early and took the seat which Was usually occupied by a Russian woman. He was unlucky, for this woman wa* a freak, a sort of female Hercules; she took him by the collar and with one hand dumped him on a back seat—and serve him right! As a graduate of London University, which granted degree* to women from the outset, I sympathised with the women. I was well acquainted with Helen Macmillan Brown.

the first woman to take a degree, it was said, in any British University. Her bust adorns the hell of the Canterbury University, Where she graduated; the University of New Zealand granted women degrees from the outset I will dose these random reminiscences on a lighter note. A lecturer In anthropology was on* of these backwoods objectors to women in hi* classes Lecturing on th* Pacific Islands, he was dealing with a group where th* men far outnumbered the women—“even a Girton student” he said, “might find a husband there.” A woman in his audience felt so insulted that she got up and marched out of the lecture room. Just a* she reached the door the lecturer said sweetly, “You needn’t hurry, madam, there's no boat for a fortnight." Forgotten Graves It was, I suppose, inevitable that in the early days of our history many people should have died under circumstances that made formal burying* and memorials impossible. So it hat eome about that here and there, in th* back country especially, there are unmarked and quit* forgotten graves. I have eome acroas a few only; some day a complete tally of them may be made On Mount White Station, on the upper Walmakariri there is one cloee to the track to Lochinvar, on the eastern side of Mount White and close to a long low isolated mound. The man was a musterer and died whan the party was at work. I was told that he was in the last stages of T.B. end should never have taken on th* job. The oemp Was on the north side of the mound, and the grave was dug on the other aid* while the poor chap was still alive. At the Mount White Station itself, the graves of the children of the Cochran family who died there are, or were, unmarked because the headstones of limestone from Castle Hill, cut by J. D. Enys, were temporarily removed when the wool was being dried and subsequently altogether lost (or so I have been Informed). I remember them being propped up against a wall in the woolshed about 1912. On a later visit I could find no trace of them.

A nameless tramp or swagger died and was Informally buried on the eestern side of the West Coast road not far from Dry Cr*ek. I came upon bls grave quite by chance. It is marked by an oblong of round boulders set in the turf with one large one to mark the head or the grave. I cannot well describe the exact spot but could take anyone to it. Who could now want to see it? 1 have only a vague idea of the d*t«, but it must have been before the railway went through to the West Coast and when the coaches were still running. A musterer died and Was buried on the Havelock branch of the Rsngitsta below the mountain for which I could get no better name than Little Spur. I have no idea when, or under what circumstances his grave was dug, or how, if at all it is marked. I saw the place in about 1917. It is, I suppose, on Mesopotamia station. Coming to front country graves—when 1 first visited Camp Bay, opposite Lyttelton, the site of the old querantine station from 1883 to 1878, I was able to read the inscriptions on the headstones in the little cemetery there; th s was about WlO On later visits 1 was unable to find even the headstones themselves. I understand that a very few have been unearthed now. The destruction of the memorials was due to vandals who Sre the curse of this, and many other countries, in our day I remember that one of the graves was that of a young Anglican clergyman of Oxford, but I cannot recall his name.