Those amazing Steamboat Ladies
The Oxbridge women who travelled across the Irish Sea
This week’s post is about a subject close to my heart, the closely interlinked issue of women’s access to higher education at two ancient universities divided by the Irish Sea: the University of Cambridge and Trinity College Dublin. Between 1904 and 1907, over 700 former students of Oxford and Cambridge travelled from England by steamboat to Ireland. There, at special graduation ceremonies in the beautiful Examination Hall at Trinity College Dublin, they were awarded the degree certificates which they had earned, but which their own universities had refused to give them because they were women. During those three years, lasting links were forged between past and present women students at Trinity College Dublin and at Cambridge University (including myself).
