THE first woman in my T&A series of Bradford’s female game-changers was Fanny Hertz, who came from a prosperous German family that settled in Bradford.
She was a passionate proponent of women’s education, fighting “the deeply rooted prejudice that woman has neither the same powers nor the same aspirations as man”. She was one of a few such middle-class women who had not been brought up in Bradford, but championed the case for its first secondary school for girls. That school was the new Bradford Girls’ Grammar School that opened in 1875. Today’s story is about the school’s first female academic high-flyer.
By 1870, the political climate towards education was changing. That year WE Forster, the Education Minister and MP for Bradford, had brought in his Elementary Education Act, guaranteeing basic education for all children to the age of 14. The year before, he had introduced an Endowed Schools Act covering a review of existing private schools. The Government sent school inspectors into Bradford Grammar School. The results were disastrous. A new governing body was formed, appointing the legendary Dr DH Keeling as the new headmaster.
Around the same time a handful of middle-class women such as Fanny Hertz started to make the case for a girls’ school. The 1662 royal charter had allowed for the education of ‘children and youth’ - it took more than 200 years before people started to think about girls!
The governing body proposed a joint endowment and a new scheme that laid down that ‘this foundation shall consist of two branches, one for the education of boys and the other for the education of girls’. Remarkably for the time, the scheme also allowed for an equal number of men and women on the governing body of eight representative and four co-opted governors
Born in Hull, Marion Greenwood (1862-1932) grew up from the age of seven in Oxenhope where her father managed a mill and was a Baptist lay preacher. At every stage of her education she overcame barriers as a female studying in the male preserve of science. She was one of the first pupils at the new Bradford Girls’ Grammar School when it opened in 1875.
The first students were mainly daughters of professional men and merchant families of the Manningham area, who paid the sum of 12 guineas per annum, with no extras. It was the first school in England of the ‘high school type offering education of the highest grade to girls from seven to 19 years of age’.
Term started with 109 pupils on September 29, 1875 with a formal opening by Lady Frederick Cavendish, wife of a prominent Liberal politician. The first location of the school was the cramped Hallfield Road School, a soot-blackened building, later attached to Busby’s department store. The school was, from the beginning, innovative in its curriculum. Founding headmistress, Miss Porter, wanted pupils to think for themselves and not be crammed with a mere smattering of knowledge, although she didn’t go as far as the local newspaper which envisaged the school training up girls fit to be intelligent companions for intelligent men!
In 1879, aged 17, Marion won a scholarship to Girton College, Cambridge’s first college for women, founded in 1869. Her obituary-writer said “she spoke often of the school with love and pride”. By 1879 Girton had just 33 students in her year, of whom four took science. Marion was the first to take a double first in the natural sciences tripos, newly available to women - Part One in 1882 in botany, physiology, and zoology and Part Two in 1883 in physiology.
After her graduation Newnham College, Cambridge’s second college for women, appointed Marion in 1884 demonstrator and lecturer in physiology and botany at the newly opened Balfour Laboratory. This supported practical work for women students in the sciences, the main university laboratories being closed to women. From 1890-1899 she was head of this laboratory, supported by an untrained boy as general attendant. Despite a heavy teaching load, she regularly published research on the digestive system. She lived in Newnham as lecturer and director of studies in biology, tutoring the women physiology students, walking the three miles between Newnham and Girton. Natural sciences clubs were set up there in 1883 and 1884, the men’s societies being closed to them.
A strong role model for Bradford girls, Marion made her academic reputation in the male-dominated preserve of science at both Cambridge’s women-only colleges, but still found her career hampered by prejudice. On December 14, 1893 she was the first woman to present a paper at the Royal Society but, as only Fellows of the Royal Society could read papers and, as women weren’t admitted until 1945, it was a man who read her paper!
Her full-time academic research came to an end in 1899 when she married George Bidder, a distinguished marine biologist. They had two daughters who both became Cambridge scientists, one at Girton, the other at Newnham. Marion became president of the Cambridge Women’s Liberal Association and a committed suffragist, (rather than the more militant suffragettes), campaigning locally for women’s rights and promoting women’s election in local councils. She was heavily involved in the management of Girton and Newnham Colleges and developed roles in the community (eg teachers’ training, mental health).
Marion’s impressive achievements in working her way into the academic establishment of Cambridge University showed that there were still many battles to come for a more equal society for women.
* Every Day Bradford by Martin Greenwood has a story for each day of the year about people, places and events from Bradford’s history. It is available online and bookshops including Waterstones and Salts Mill.
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