The Steamboat Ladies at Trinity Commencements, July 1906 This photograph of the Steamboat Ladies was taken on the Dining Hall Steps prior to the formal commencements lunch. The Provost Dr Antony Traill and the Vice-Chancellor of the University are in the front row colleges. There were critics who accused Trinity of selling degrees to which the reply was that the money collected for the ad eundem degrees was to be used to open Trinity Hall, Dartry, as a residence for women students. The first warden of Trinity Hall in 1908 was Miss Elizabeth Cunningham, herself a Steamboat Lady who had been a student at Girton College and she modelled Trinity Hall on the lines of Girton, offering an intellectual and social life for the students, albeit without formal university lectures. Another benefit of the scheme was that valuable links were established between the Oxbridge women’s colleges and Trinity. The Cambridge colleges, particularly Girton, encouraged its students to go to Dublin. Emily Davies, foundress of Girton, had insisted from the beginning that her students would take all the necessary examinations to qualify for a Cambridge degree so they were ready and able to apply immediately for the Dublin degree. However, both Oxford and Cambridge Universities resisted the pressure to admit women to degrees until eventually Oxford did in 1919, but Cambridge women had to be satisfied with ‘titular degrees’ until 1947-8 before they were granted full university membership. The growth of women’s higher education was a feature of the twentieth century. The middle aged and young women graduates who graced the Trinity campus from 1904-07 were pioneers of the feminist movement and were to play a major part in the development of girls’ high school education and university colleges. Many of them wore the Dublin University blue MA hood for the remainder of their professional lives, and Trinity was proud to number them among its graduates. Susan M Parkes is an Emeritus Fellow of Trinity College Dublin, a historian of education and author of A Danger to the Men - A History of Women in Trinity College Dublin. TWG Archive Centenary Exhibition, April 2022 The Trinity Women Graduates (TWG), formerly DUWGA, is one of the oldest associations in Trinity, founded in 1922 and celebrating its centenary next year. The TWG Archive is a priceless collection of correspondence and documents written and preserved throughout the last 100 years. This archive is a celebration of the achievements and hard fought victories of these women to be acknowledged as equal citizens, students, academics and graduates. TWG plan to curate an exhibition tracing the history of women in Trinity and their impact and influence on both the college and Irish society, using the TWG Archive as source. The TWG material, donated to Trinity Library in 2018, will be archived, conserved, digitised and catalogued to create this exhibition which will allow us to fully appreciate the contribution of Trinity to the higher education of women in Ireland. The TWG Centenary Archive Exhibition will comprise a curated and catalogued exhibition in Trinity in 2022, as well as an online digital experience. Click below to request further information or share stories, anecdotes, photos and memories of your time in Trinity. Click here to email
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