'A house of residence for lady students'
Janet Clarke Hall
On 18 October 1934, Dr Lilian Helen Alexander died at her home in Murphy Street, South Yarra, aged 73. An obituary in the Australasian newspaper opened with the explanation that she had been 'one of the first women graduates of the Melbourne University'.
She graduated bachelor of arts in 1886, and then, with Miss Helen M Sexton, decided to send a letter to the University Council asking to be admitted to the medical school. After some discussion, the council granted the request. Miss Alexander qualified in 1893.
'After some discussion, the council granted the request.' It almost reads like a brief and civil consideration.
Not the intensely heated debate that saw Trinity College take a lead and Warden Dr Alexander Leeper establish the Trinity College Women's Hostel – later renamed Janet Clarke Hall – to provide opportunities for women seeking to pursue tertiary education at the University of Melbourne to live in residence.
That was 1883. We've been doing it ever since, for more than 140 years.
An Australian "Girton"
'Next year is likely to witness the creation in Melbourne of an educational institution of a type as yet unknown in the colonies. We learn that a "hostel" for lady students attending lectures at the University is to be established next term in connection with Trinity College.'
Throughout the 1870s and '80s the issue of whether to permit women to pursue tertiary education echoed globally. Moreso than England or the United States, Europe seemed particularly agitated by the concept.
And yes, let's say it again – 'permit'. For that was exactly the sentiment behind the debate.
For a few years, between 1871 and 1880, Leipzig University had allowed women students to attend lectures before the Saxon Government put a stop to it. Austria was not dissimilar, having permitted it for a time before following Germany's lead.
In the west of the continent, Spanish women had been admitted in to universities until a royal decree in mid-March 1882 closed that door. While in Galway, Ireland, six women had presented themselves for admission to a college, only to be rejected by the council.
Belgium, however, was something of stand-out exception, with the number of young women frequenting lectures rapidly on the increase.
In 1884, the University of Ghent took in its first female student in the natural sciences. In Brussels, seven women were regular attendees at lectures, across the natural sciences, pharmacy and philosophy.
In 1871, the University of Melbourne Council passed a resolution, stating that 'in the opinion of this Council females may be admitted to the matriculation examination, although such females are precluded from matriculation.'
That stance was softened in March 1880, although with a noteworthy exception – women were to be 'admitted to all corporate privileges of the University, except that until special provision is made they be restricted from proceeding to medicine.'
The notion of women students learning about the human anatomy alongside, and in the same lectures as their male counterparts was a step too far for many within the University.
Still, the conservative resistance of the past was breaking.
In order to pass her matriculation in 1878, twenty-five-year-old Bella Guerin completed her Bachelor of Arts at the University of Melbourne, becoming the first female graduate from an Australian university in December 1883.
North of Tin Alley, Trinity College was taking a different position.
A member of the University's Council, Leeper was particularly receptive to extending the opportunities of a collegiate education, with women students able to attend lectures at Trinity. Lilian Alexander became the first of Trinity's female students, enrolled on 4 April 1883.
Laura Moerlin (TC 1884), who commenced the following year, would become the University's second female graduate – and Trinity's inaugural – when she graduated in 1885 with a Bachelor of Arts, followed with a Master's degree in 1887.
Lilian Alexander and the women students that followed her into Trinity throughout the early 1880s demonstrated to the University – if illustration was required – that the other half of the population were just as desiring of tertiary education as their male colleagues.
By 1885, no fewer than eight women were attending evening lectures at the college and with strong demand for further opportunities.
As the Argus summed up a few weeks before Christmas:
'Trinity College, which has always shown itself proud of its position as the first founded college, and anxious by progressive improvements to keep worthy of it, have determined to open a "hostel" for the residence of lady students, where they will have the same advantages as their brothers and male relatives.'
With no suitable buildings available on campus for this venture, Trinity rented a recently completed two-storey terrace house further north along Royal Parade, north of Gatehouse street, 'Trinity Terrace'.
Novel for the Antipodes, the model was not without precedent.
In England, the all-women Girton College had opened in 1869 as one of the constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge, with five students, four members of staff and a mistress.
Less than a decade later, Cambridge University had 77 women students, 33 of them at Girton College, with a further 44 – 15 of them living in residence at Newnham College, founded a few years after Girton in 1871.
If the Cambridge example was anything to go by, the establishing of the Trinity College Women's Hostel was only a beginning.
Women students on the balcony of 'Trinity Terrace' along Royal Parade, Parkville, c. 1886.
Women students on the balcony of 'Trinity Terrace' along Royal Parade, Parkville, c. 1886.
Marian Pirani, 'Mrs M.P. Fox MA' (TC 1884), oil on canvas, The University of Melbourne Art Collection, 2006.0002.000.000. Gift of Mr Philip Fox, 2006.
Marian Pirani, 'Mrs M.P. Fox MA' (TC 1884), oil on canvas, The University of Melbourne Art Collection, 2006.0002.000.000. Gift of Mr Philip Fox, 2006.
Lady Hopetoun laying the Memorial Stone of the Trinity College Women's Hostel. Illustrated Australian News, 1 April 1890.
Lady Hopetoun laying the Memorial Stone of the Trinity College Women's Hostel. Illustrated Australian News, 1 April 1890.
The Janet Clarke Building
Such was demand that within a handful of years, the Royal Parade terrace house was no longer able to cater for the college's women students.
Janet, Lady Clarke, the wife of Sir William Clarke who, together with his brother Joseph, had jointly funded Trinity's Clarke Buildings in the 1880s, donated £5000 towards what was anticipated to be an eventual total cost of £20,000.
Sir Matthew Davies, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, contributed a further £2000 towards an endowed fund to the benefit of the new institution.
On 17 March 1890, the Countess of Hopetoun Hersey Alice Eveleigh-de-Moleyns, the wife of the then Governor of Victoria, the Seventh Earl of Hopetoun, laid the memorial stone of the new hostel building – the Janet Clarke Building – situated immediately north of the college, on the eastern side of Royal Parade. It was formally opened the following April.
Trinity's Women's Hostel as seen from Royal Parade, c. 1910. Trinity College Archives, MM 001718
Trinity's Women's Hostel as seen from Royal Parade, c. 1910. Trinity College Archives, MM 001718
Ada Mary a'Beckett (TC 1892) remembered clearly that final decade of the nineteenth century and the battles fought for equality. She had commenced at the University the year before, coming to Trinity in her second year as an Annie Grice Scholar before graduating in science in 1895, followed by a Master's two years later.
'There was more real social and cultural life at the University in the '90's than there is today,' she recalled in 1948.
'In those days the wives of the professors used to invite the students to their homes ... on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and evenings it was just 'open house' at the professors' homes for students.'
After Trinity students Lilian Alexander and Helen Sexton wrote an open letter in The Age newspaper in January 1887, asking for women interested in studying medicine at university to reply to them, the University of Melbourne finally relented.
Ada Mary a'Beckett was seated in Wilson Hall when the first female graduates were conferred with medical degrees, Lilian Alexander among them, in 1893.
Ada herself would go on to become the first women appointed a university lecturer in 1901 and the founder of the Victorian Women's Graduates' Association. She returned to her alma mater as chair of the Janet Clarke Hall Committee for two periods, between 1923-26 and again in 1928.
Charles Wheeler, 'Mrs T.A. a' Beckett, C.B.E., MSc' (Ada Mary a'Beckett)(TC 1892), oil on canvas, Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, 1948.0024.000.000. Copyright © estate of the artist.
Charles Wheeler, 'Mrs T.A. a' Beckett, C.B.E., MSc' (Ada Mary a'Beckett)(TC 1892), oil on canvas, Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, 1948.0024.000.000. Copyright © estate of the artist.
Anna Fredrika 'Freda' Bage (TC 1901)
1883 - 1970
First principal, University of Queensland Women's College
Born in 1883 in Victoria, Bage attended Oxford High School, England, and later Fairlight School upon returning to Australia, before coming in to Trinity's Women's Hostel in 1901, while studying at the University of Melbourne. She graduated in 1907 with a Masters in Science, and commenced a long career in the field of biological science.
In 1914, she was appointed the inaugural principal of the University of Queensland Women's College, a position she held for the following 32 years.
A strong proponent of women's rights, she was President of the Australian Federation of University Women (AFUW), representing them at several conferences of the International Federation of University Women.
In 1941, Bage's tireless work was recognised when she was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE).
Vera Scantlebury Brown OBE
(TC 1907)
1889 - 1946
Medical practioner and paediatrician
Winifred McCubbin, Vera Scantlebury Brown
Medical History Museum, oil on canvas, MHM 2013.90
Vera Scantlebury graduated in medicine at the University of Melbourne and became Resident Medical Officer at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in 1915, and the following year was appointed Resident Medical Officer at the Children's Hospital where she became a Senior RMO before the year's end.
In 1917, she travelled to London where she worked as a Medical Officer with rank of Lieutenant at a major military hospital (Endell St). In 1920, Vera was a Resident Medical Officer at Melbourne's (later Royal) Women's Hospital, before going into private medical practice.
Between 1926 – the year of her marriage to Dr Edward Byam Brown – and her death in 1946, Scantlebury-Brown was the Director of Infant Welfare Victoria at the Department of Public Health. She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in June 1938 for her work in the fields of infant and maternal welfare.
Enid Joske (TC 1909), Principal of Janet Clarke Hall from 1928 until 1952. Trinity College Archives, MM 004415.
Enid Joske (TC 1909), Principal of Janet Clarke Hall from 1928 until 1952. Trinity College Archives, MM 004415.
Janet Clarke Hall Tennis IV, 1930, wearing their blazers. In the early decades - and despite a specific JCH crest - the Trinity crest was often worn broadly by both the college's men and women students.
Janet Clarke Hall Tennis IV, 1930, wearing their blazers. In the early decades - and despite a specific JCH crest - the Trinity crest was often worn broadly by both the college's men and women students.
The 'Hostiles' and the hockey field
'The credit of the College was also upheld in a more dignified fashion, when the Hostiles beat the Ormond lady tennis players on the Ormond courts, on Friday, June 21st, winning by two games.'
It didn't take long, in the way of such collegiate banter, for those residents of Trinity's Hostel to earn another moniker – the 'Hostiles'.
Hostile in name, perhaps, but not in nature.
Trinity's women students were spoken of in high regard in the pages of the Fleur de Lys – a shared student-publication between both the College and the Hall from its outset – by the men, for their part in upholding the 'credit of the College'.
Indeed, 'collegiality' seems to an inadequate a term for the relationship shared at a student level.
To the extent that strict curfew times were set after which a student found with a women in his room would be heavily fined. These continued well up until the 1970s, although the final hour at which curfew commenced progressively inched later and later.
Many a romance was kindled across the fence, or as the Hostel students made their way across to the University along a path put in in 1947 just south of Behan, dubbed 'Purity Path'.
Although the numbers are diminishing, it was not so long ago that reunions would bring together numerous couples, Trinity men and women alike who had met, married and raised children who in turn formed part of the following generation of alumni.
Yet while the student populations enjoyed close relations that almost belied the boundary fence, at a governance level tensions did exist.
In 1927, Enid Joske – herself a former alumna of Trinity – was invited back to commence as Principal of the recently renamed Janet Clarke Hall (adopted in 1921). Alumnae began to assume a commencing year that distinguished them from the parent college, and identified them with the Hall – namely 'JCH' followed by their entry year.
A graduate of the University of Melbourne with a BA Hons in 1912 and a Diploma of Education the following year, and extensive travel experience, Joske brought both qualifications and a worldly outlook to the position.
Nonetheless, it was expected she would last three months.
She lasted 25 years.
Not without dealing with fairly consistent animosity from Trinity's Warden, John Behan. At the time, Janet Clarke Hall fell under the college's governance structure, the Principal of the Hall sitting on the College Council.
Behan had held relatively good relationships with Joske's predecessor, Margery Herring, but in matters concerning the running of the College, Joske found him quite uncompromising.
But if she harboured any notions of separation, she kept them to herself and continued to advocate for the interests of the Hall and its community.
Judy Gregory (JCH 1947) entered the Hall just after the war, during Joske's final five years, and would go on to become Senior Student in 1949.
She recalls:
'Miss Enid Joske was Principal throughout my time in College. She cared very much for her students and we recognised what a great responsibility it was. We were allowed out until 10pm as long as we signed the book by the front door. To be out later than 10pm, we had to gain permission. This involved seeing Miss Joske in her study early in the morning and that could be a daunting experience!'
Despite the strained relationship between Joske and Behan, there were plenty of opportunities for the two student cohorts to come together; common room dances, chapel – still compulsory at the time – and the college play.
The JCH Drama Club would arrange for play readings on Sunday evenings, held in Joske's sitting room, and Judy recalls 'Trinity men' attending these, as the cast rehearsed their lines.
One event stood out however in the social calendar. The annual hockey match.
Established in 1920, in the immediate post-war environment, and played in August as students returned from the mid-year break, the annual match was undertaken with a good deal of frivolity.
The women fronted a 'serious' team while the men of Trinity, who were amateurs at the sport and reliant upon their skill from other sports, used the occasion to as a light-hearted game played in fancy dress.
'In accordance with the best traditions of the last two years, the ladies again met the men of the College in deadly combat on the hockey field. Some of the costumes took some getting used to, but otherwise the match passed off without accident.'
Janet Clarke Hall's hockey team at the annual Hockey Match between the Hall and Trinity College, 1924.
Janet Clarke Hall's hockey team at the annual Hockey Match between the Hall and Trinity College, 1924.
When the 1923 match had to be cancelled due to poor weather, the Fleur de Lys noted sorrowfully that 'The College lost a good deal of amusement and the laundries their usual harvest in the cleaning of pyjamas, dress shirts, and other garments worn for the occasion.'
The annual hockey match continued for the best part of 30 years, stalled by the next world war, but resumed again in 1946 and continued right up until the eve of Janet Clarke Hall's decision to separate as an independent, women-only college in 1961.
In 1959, the Fleur de Lys would laud the prowess of the college women on the hockey field, noting:
The superiority of women was borne out in the annual hockey match against Trinity on the last Saturday of swot vac. The gentlemen had more speed and better weapons, but for tactics, fighting spirit and courage, the pyjama-clad players were unmatched!
Ethel Mary Bage (TC 1907)
1884 - 1943
Advocate for women's equality
Following her older sister Freda (TC 1901) and brother Robert (TC 1905) in to College, Ethel enrolled in the Trinity Women's Hostel in 1907.
Ethel showed the same independent spirit shared by her siblings. After graduating with a Master's degree, she undertook an extended trip to England in 1903 – via Siberia and Korea. She repeated the trip in reverse three years later during the First World War, spending time in London working with the Red Cross.
In the post-war years, Ethel was 'well known as an enthusiastic worker in women's interests'. An honorary secretary of the Victorian Women's Graduates Association, by 1924 she was chair of the International Relations Committee of the Australian Federation of University Women.
In 1926 she took over the motor garage business in Kew of her late, likeminded friend Alice Anderson. A pioneering motorist, few could match Ethel's eleven trips between Melbourne and Canberra.
Dr Jean Battersby AO (JCH 1948)
1928 - 2009
Chief Executive, Australian Council for the Arts, 1968-1982
Jean Robinson was born in 1928 to land-owning parents in Victoria's west, until the imminent economic downturn of the Great Depression forced them to sell the property, and move to Geelong where her father became a school teacher. She attended Geelong High School.
Studying at the University of Melbourne – from where she would graduate with a PhD in French Literature – she met her future husband, Charles Batterby. Even though the couple would not marry until 1950, in the Trinity College Chapel, she signed the college's student register two years earlier as 'Jean Battersby'.
When the Australian Council for the Arts was established in 1968, and in a surprise step not to make a selection from the ranks of public servants, inaugural Council chair H.C. 'Nugget' Coombs, appointed Battersby as the Council's executive officer.
Under the subsequent Whitlam federal government, as the funding to the Council increased, her title changed to chief executive. After 13 years in the role, she eventually quit in 1982.
In 1986, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO), in recognition of service to the arts and to public service.'
Dame Leonie Kramer (JCH 1942)
1924 - 2016
First female chancellor of the University of Sydney, 1991 to 2001
Judy Cassab, Dame Leonie Kramer
Trinity College Art Collection, oil on canvas, AC 000180
An alumna of the Presbyterian Ladies' College, Melbourne, Leonie Gibson entered the Women's Hostel, Janet Clarke Hall, in 1942 when much of the College had been taken over by the RAAF during wartime.
Graduating in 1945, she continued her studies at Oxford University where she received her Doctor of Philosophy in 1953.
Lecturing in English Literature at the University of New South Wales for 10 years, in 1968 she was appointed to the University of Sydney, the first female professor of English in Australia.
Across a long and distinguished career, Dame Leonie was the first woman to chair the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the first female chancellor of the University of Sydney, from 1991 to 2001.
Dr Fay Marles AM (JCH 1944)
1926 -
Eighteenth Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, 2001 to 2004
Juan Ford, Dr Fay Marles AM
Trinity College Art Collection, oil on linen, AC 000181
Born in Melbourne, Fay Pearce attended Ruyton Girl's School, Kew, before coming in to residence at Trinity's Janet Clarke Hall in 1944. She graduated four years later with a Bachelor of Arts and Diploma of Social Work from the University of Melbourne, subsequently commencing work as a social worker in Queensland.
Her marriage to Donald Marles in 1952 however meant she was subjected to the marriage bar, and she was forced to resign her position; a situation that likely contributed to her future career path to advocate against such inequalities.
Between 1977 and 1987, Marles served as Victoria's inaugural Commissioner of Equal Opportunity. A year before she retired from the role, she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her public service, particularly in the field of social welfare.
In 2001, she was appointed Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, succeeding Sir Edward Woodward.
'Trinity Hostile was sighing,
As she sat on the packing-room floor,
And sadly she folded her blazer,
For her days at the College were o'er'
But change is inevitable. And it did change. In two steps.
Behan had retired in 1946 as Trinity's Warden, and for her final years Joske had enjoyed a more relaxed atmosphere with his successor, Ron Cowan. When Joske retired herself in 1952, Harvard graduate Margaret Dewey commenced as Janet Clarke Hall's new Principal.
Change had been coming for some time however. Post-war student numbers at Trinity had been growing, and likewise for the Hall allowing it to have a level of financial independence. The passing of the Trinity College Act in 1957 removed any legal impediment of the Hall pursuing its independence.
In 1961, after 75 years, what had commenced under Alexander Leeper as a progressive and forward-looking initiative to support women's education in Australia took its next step, and the Hall joined the community of independent university colleges affiliated with the University of Melbourne.
'It is hoped', the official report at the time noted, 'that the cooperation which has always existed in such matters as tutorial classes, chapel services and the like, will continue on the basis of common agreement.'
'Certainly it is a good augury for the future that the whole process of partition took place and separation was finally achieved with the utmost goodwill on both sides.'
A decade later, when Trinity alumnus James Grant (TC 1950) was compiling the official history for the centenary, he wrote that to 'the average student the separation is more apparent than real'.
'Combined activities flourish as before – Play, Magazine, Concert, Juttoddie, Football Match. Religious facilities – the Chapel and Chaplains – are shared as are also those for teaching medical and legal subjects – tutors and the specialised resources of the Leeper Library.
He was writing only a few short years before the next moment of change would occur. A little over a decade after the separation, both Hall and College followed the pattern spreading throughout the university's residential colleges in the early 1970s, and became co-residential.
With co-residency, both College and Hall have grown and formed their own strong, unique communities and identities over the last 50-odd years.
But despite these distinctions, the rich shared history of almost a century that precedes co-residency still permeates our mutual collegiate experiences; in the College Chapel, in the sandstone crests that adorn the buildings of both College and Hall, and in the friendships that continue to straddle the boundary fence.
But perhaps most importantly, in the generations of numerous alumnae who have left their indelible mark on Australian society.
Dr Ben Thomas, Rusden Curator, Cultural Collections
curator@trinity.unimelb.edu.au
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