HEALTH SCIENCES Memories of a 1950s Trinity Medicine Student by Dr Ann Grahame, (MA 1960) I was brought up in London, but my father, Dr Thomas Stokes, was Irish, and I was delighted to be accepted to study medicine in Trinity. Medicine is the family profession - I was one of five Stokes first-and-second cousins attending various Irish Medical schools from the 1940s to early 1960s. I remember vividly my first day in October 1952. After arriving in Dublin by ferry and making my way to my (awful) digs in Merrion Road, I got the bus to Nassau Street the next morning and walked round to Front Gate, where I was directed by a porter wearing a black velvet crash cap to ‘Number 6’. At the time, women students had to wear skirts - if we were wearing slacks we were regarded as “academically naked, and therefore not present” - and we couldn’t have rooms in college. We weren’t allowed eat with male students in the Dining Hall, nor attend Commons, and we had to be off the campus by 6pm, unless we were studying in the Reading Room, where we could stay until 9pm. ‘Number 6’ in Front Square, was our haven – the only place on campus where we could eat (main course 2 shillings and 3 pence, with dessert another 4p). On that first day, I went to see my tutor, Professor JV Luce (a classics professor, not a medic). In his rooms overlooking Front Square, he explained that the traditional role of a tutor was to bail out undergraduates who were picked up by the Gardaí for being drunk and disorderly - he kindly said that he didn’t think he would have to do that for me! I also had an appointment to see the Dean of the School of Physics, who was also Professor of Physiology, Dr David Torrens. That interview did not go so well. He said: “You have been given a place which should have gone to a man, who would support a family for life. See that you don’t waste it!” (I certainly did NOT waste it, as I was later in clinical practice for 44 years, and then continued to facilitate seminars for the College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan, for a further 8 years). Of the 150 students in our Pre-Med lectures, maybe 10% were women. My heavy class schedule in first year included practical sessions, one of them on Saturday morning, which really messed up my weekends, preventing me going to Clonmel for fox-hunting. In addition to the science subjects, held at the far end of campus, we had to take arts courses, given in various locations in Front Square – the ancient cobblestones would ruin several pairs of heels in the succeeding years. A month into term, space became available at Trinity Hall in Dartry, where women could lodge, and I left my dismal digs in Merrion Road. Trinity Hall was palatial in comparison and was kept gleaming by a team of maids who wore black dresses with snowy white aprons and caps. There being no central heating, we got a small scuttle of coal and a few sticks four days a week and we soon became expert at lighting fires in the temperamental small fireplaces.
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