The 1897 protests, 2: the woman cyclist
Fears of the 'New Woman' at Cambridge
This is Part Two of ‘No Women at Cambridge!’ The 1897 protests. In this final part I look in detail at close-up images of the women present in the photograph above, and investigate their connection to the women's colleges and their campaign for women students to have the right to a Cambridge B.A.
The female cyclist
An effigy of a young woman on a bicycle has been suspended above the entrance to the university bookshop. Wearing a pink bodice, blue bloomers and striped stockings, she is a misogynistic caricature of a ‘Girton girl’, a student at Girton College, Cambridge. It seems likely that she has red hair, familiar shorthand at the time for a ‘dangerous woman’, and her depiction as a cyclist connects her to the independent-minded New Woman of the 1890s (see ‘Ladies who cycle’).
Just in view in this photograph are some of the thousands of male undergraduates, non-resident M.A.s and other men and boys who gathered on King's Parade on 21st May 1897 to protest against women students being awarded a Cambridge B.A. The excitement built steadily from early morning until the result of the vote was announced at 3pm: 1713 votes against, 662 for degrees for women. Exploding crackers, eggs and bags of flour were instantly fired into the air, and at the horrified professors, to celebrate a decisive victory for the men. ‘A day and night of riotous celebrations by the male undergraduates followed,’ writes Jill Whitelock. ‘Shop windows were broken, a giant bonfire was lit in the Market Square and fuelled with pillaged shutters and any other wood that the students could lay their hands on. The damage to public property ran to hundreds of pounds.’1
Violence and bearing witness
The damage to the cause of women was much worse. The effigy of the female cyclist was torn down from the balcony and paraded on the undergraduates’ shoulders around the town. One large group of young men broke away and marched to Newnham College, shouting and demanding entry, until they were firmly but politely turned away by the Principal, Eleanor Sidgwick. Later the effigy was burnt on a huge bonfire in Market Square, while rioting continued into the night. The Cambridge Weekly News recorded the events in a special edition called ‘The Triumph of Man’.
The ritualistic, violent disposal of the cyclist effigy was intended as a warning to women that they should never again dare to challenge the all-male status of Cambridge University. Yet, looking more closely at photographs taken that day, it’s clear that many of the women there were anything but fearful. They were there calmly to bear witness, and knew that one day their cause of equality in higher education would win.
Who were these women? Their identities in the photograph are still a mystery, but we can make some educated guesses.
The photographer family
The photograph at the top of this post was taken by Cambridge photographers Thomas Stearn & Sons (his wife, niece, and other family members also worked in the firm). The photographer’s vantage point, from the tower of Gonville & Caius College, gave him or her an excellent view of Macmillan and Bowes’s bookshop, now Cambridge University Press bookshop, and of King's Parade, crammed that day with thousands of male undergraduates, and other men and boys (see ‘The 1897 protests’ Part 1).
In this detail above, made possible thanks to the excellent quality of the images held by Cambridge University's digital library, another male photographer can be seen opposite, on the balcony of Great St Mary's Church opposite Gonville & Caius College. He's standing behind his camera, wearing a bowler hat. Nearby are three of his male assistants and a handful of young women wearing white blouses and dark skirts and holding onto their straw boaters. They are likely to be Girton or Newnham students who are viewing the scene. With them is a young man sporting a boater: perhaps a brother of one of the women. On the right is a woman in a dark dress and more formal hat with her back to the camera, talking to one of the women students.
In the second close-up by the bookshop (see below), more women and girls are visible. Some are with male companions, but most of the women who have gathered by the bookshop door look as if they have arranged to be there together. As on the balcony of St Mary's, some of the group appear to be women students, with white blouses and straw hats, while others look a little older, wearing dark dresses and bonnets. They could be there to chaperone the younger women, of course, particularly in this rowdy crowd of male undergraduates, but I think that many of these women were active supporters of the campaign to secure women's degrees.
Lecturers and activists
In the doorway of the bookshop, in a dark dress and hat and looking up at the camera, might be the Irish suffragist Mary Ward (née Martin, 1851-1933) then aged 46. She won a scholarship to Newnham in the 1870s and became a politically active student, campaigning for women to have equal access to university education and to be admitted to the Cambridge’s Tripos examinations. In 1879 she gained a first class honours in the Moral Sciences Tripos, the first woman to do so, and was a resident lecturer at Newnham until her marriage in 1884 to James Ward, a fellow of Trinity College and a keen supporter of women's education. Mary continued her close ties with Newnham after her marriage, lecturing and supervising students, as well as becoming an active member of the Cambridge Women’s Suffrage Association (CWSA) founded in 1884. It’s very likely that the passionately political Mary Ward was there that day.
I’m still trying to work out who might be standing close beside her. It could be the botanist and geneticist, and Newnham scholar, Edith Rebecca Saunders (1865-1945). In 1897 she was 32 and the Director of the Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women, working closely with the biologist William Bateson (1861-1926), then aged 36 and greatly in favour of women’s suffrage and degrees at Cambridge.
It’s possible that his sister Mary Bateson (1865-1906), 32, was also present that day. She was a Newnham scholar of medieval history and for the previous two years had been one of the leaders in the campaign to secure women's degrees at Cambridge. She was an active suffragist along with her mother Anna Bateson (c.1830-1918) and journalist sister Margaret Heitland (née Bateson, 1860-1938). It seems very likely that several members of extraordinary, activist Cambridge family were there that day.
Brilliant students and scholars
Also active on behalf of women at Cambridge, and possibly among the crowd that day, were Girton's librarian and scholar (later College Mistress) E. Constance Jones (1848-1922), Bertha Skeat (1861-1948), the first resident lecturer at the Cambridge Training College for Women Teachers (the university's oldest graduate college, later renamed Hughes Hall); and the historian Ellen A. McArthur (1862-1927) who in 1896 opened the first hostel for postgraduate women students in Green Street, Cambridge. In 1905 she would be awarded the first ever doctorate given to an Oxbridge woman in recognition of her research. The photograph above shows her in her doctoral academic robes.
Philippa Fawcett (1868-1948) was active in her support: her First Class in the Mathematical Tripos in 1890 made national news, proving women’s intellectual ability in a subject that until then had been considered as the preserve of men. In 1897 she was 29 and conducting research in fluid dynamics at Newnham, the college co-founded by her mother Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847-1929).
Agnata Frances Butler (née Ramsay, 1867-1931) was the only student to gain a First in the Classics Tripos of 1887, beating all Cambridge’s male undergraduates. Although she gave up her research into Herodotus soon after marrying the Master of Trinity College, Montagu Butler, in 1888, they both continued to be very active in the campaign for Cambridge women to be awarded degrees. In early May 1897 Montagu wrote to Agnata that he was helping Henry Sidgwick to hold an urgent meeting in Trinity College's Lodge to boost support for the women's cause. He and Henry were in the Senate House voting on 21st May, and it’s possible that Agnata may have joined the women outside to lend her support.
Other possibilities are Ida Freund (1863-1914), an active suffragist and Newnham lecturer (the UK’s first woman university lecturer in chemistry; see photo above); Elizabeth Welsh (1843-1921), then Mistress of Girton College; and Blanche Athena Clough (1861-1960) among others. Not all of the women’s supporters were directly connected with the colleges. Newspaper columnist Catharine Tillyard (née Wetenhall, 1852-1932) wrote scathingly about the undergraduates’ lack of good manners in her column for the Cambridge Independent Press, so it seems likely that she witnessed the egg-throwing at close quarters. When I saw the striking photograph of the solitary woman watching and waiting in the crowd towards the end of Jill Whitelock’s post yesterday, I wondered if she could be Tillyard.
Taking root
But although the identities of many of the women in the photograph remain unknown, what’s important is that they were there; I counted almost 50 women and girls in this photograph alone. The 1897 vote did not put a stop to the support for Cambridge’s women’s colleges throughout the UK and beyond. This would be much needed over the next fifty years because the survival and growth of Girton and Newnham depended entirely on private donations to fund residential buildings, libraries and research grants. The women’s colleges would slowly but surely establish themselves in the city despite how unwelcome they were made to feel at times. It was thanks to the generosity of their many friends and supporters, male and female, that, after this dark day in 1897, women students and scholars at Cambridge continued to flourish and grow.
Thank you for reading, and for all your lovely and informative comments on Part 1 of this post. I would love to read more of your thoughts - you can reply to me directly by email, or by posting a comment here.
Sources: My thanks to the Women’s History Network for their generous financial support with this research. This is an expanded and updated version of a post first published on my former Wordpress blog. Books and articles consulted include Muriel Bradbrook, That infidel place (Chatto & Windus, 1969); Christopher Brooke, Chapter 9: ‘Women’ in A history of the University of Cambridge, Vol IV (CUP, 1993); Sue Slack, Cambridge women and the struggle for the vote (Amberley, 2018); Rita McWilliams-Tullberg, ‘Women and Degrees at Cambridge’ in Martha Vicinus, A Widening Sphere: Changing Roles of Victorian Women (Methuen, 1977); Jill Whitelock, ‘A crowd’s-eye view: the 1897 Cambridge vote for women’s degrees’ (all websites accessed 22.5.24)
'No women at Cambridge!': The 1897 protests, part 1
Part 1 The men in the photograph On the morning of 21 May 1897, all along King's Parade, thousands of men stand waiting. The view from a first-floor window shows a sea of straw boaters stretching into the distance. Most of the men in this photograph are Cambridge University undergraduates, some looking nonchalant with their hands in their pockets, others…
Jill Whitelock, ‘A crowd’s-eye view: the 1897 Cambridge vote for women’s degrees’ (accessed 22 May 2024).
Fascinating and refreshing, this opens up the story in a new way by asking who might have been there and then giving a succinct, informative answers. Also the atmosphere of the day comes across so well. A major piece of history economically told.
Thank you for this illuminating series and your research to round out the story, Ann! Ironic that the men who were trying to show that Cambridge was for men only (because of women’s perceived inferiority) were acting like such a mob of jack*sses.