THE VICTORIAN “DEB.”

Evening Star, Issue 23340, 9 August 1939, Page 13

THE VICTORIAN “DEB.”

Miss L. M. Dean is compiling a unique record of the activities of the Victorian young lady and her modern counterpart, the “deb.,” during the past hundred years, statesman overseas exchange. She is working, moreover, in Queen’s College, Harley street, which housed the first wonien students in mid-Victorian times. The college and its oldest Royal patron, Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, were born within a fortnight of each other in March, 1848. Its full title is Queen Victoria’s College, and it was Her Majesty’s special pride that she furthered women’s education by giving £250 to found it and by presenting it with a

Royal Charter. Each successive Queen has been the college’s patron-in-clnef. Until the advent of Queen’s College the ambitious women had to choose between a home education or ono at an academy whose solo purpose was to turn out girls for the drawing room and marriage market. Plans are already afoot to celebrate the college’s centenary in 1948, and as a result of Miss .Dean’s researches a history of the first hundred years of women students may be published. • ’ The first women students at Queen’s hud men teachers. Their education was modern, even for to-day, in spite of their long, heavy skirts and inescapable chaperons—and they shocked even their parents by attending life classes. They all adored their Italian master, handsome, bearded Eduardo Fusco, who went away, in the 1860’s, to fight for Garibaldi, and returned in 1866, the hero of all his pupils.