A new blog discusses the University of Cambridge 1897 vote on whether to allow women the titles of their degrees, and looks at the photographs that recorded extraordinary scenes. The vote (Spoiler alert) went badly against the women and it was not until 1948 that women were finally admitted to full membership of the University. A day and night of riotous celebrations by the male undergraduates followed. 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 extraordinary scenes of 21 May 1897 were captured by photographers stationed on rooftops and high places around the Senate House, where the voting took place. Photographs by Messrs Stearn on the Cambridge Digital Library capture the massed crowds and the excitement of the men spilling out of the Senate House after the result was announced. Of all the photographs, surely the most iconic is that of the crowd beneath the notorious effigy of a ‘new woman’ bicyclist in blue bloomers and pink bodice, suspended from a window above the Bowes & Macmillan (now Cambridge University Press) bookshop. The effigy was later pulled down and decapitated by the jubilant undergraduates.
Read the full blog and see the photographers here: https://specialcollections-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=28325
Comments