1950 was better suited for a potential English scholar. I was woefully ill-equipped even to teach English to foreigners.’ Daphne Wall (read Modern Languages) wrote of her tutor, ‘She sat by a cosy fire and I felt she might doze off any minute’. Unqualified praise came from Bridget Davies: ‘Jean Banister was an outstanding tutor and friend to us.’ Marie Thomas remembered that, despite reservations, she ‘enjoyed and benefited greatly from the three years’, and overall, that was the general feeling. There were plenty of other things to do besides academic work. Rowena Patterson (Dr MacKean) considers that her time at Somerville was ‘more growing up and learning about life than about Classics, I’m afraid’. Naomi Shepherd was the first woman to be Features Editor of Isis, ‘doing investigative journalism about student politics and food (expletives deleted).’ Maureen Oliver admits that ‘the river took too much of my time, both coxing the women’s eight and punting’. We remember the music, and the choirs we joined. Several of us were involved in student politics. Then there was religion. Margaret Trowell (died 2005; read PPE) became a Catholic and spent fifteen years in an enclosed order of nuns. Rosemary Storr (Mrs Green; read Mathematics) had a profound religious experience soon after arriving in Oxford, married a minister in the Church of England, and has spent her life, in addition to raising a family, in working for the church. I discovered the Quakers and have been involved with them ever since. Kate Tristram (read History) became one of the first women to be ordained into the Anglican church. But above all, we remember the conversations, and making friendships that have lasted a lifetime. To Naomi Shepherd, ‘The University seemed very much a male preserve’. Daphne Wall had tutorials with a don at St John’s College, and, ‘At the end of my sessions with him, he looked at me thoughtfully, and told me I had a brain like a man. I took this as the compliment it was supposed to be!’ Male dominance restricted our choice of careers, and, for most, all the careers advisory service could offer was teaching, social work, secretarial work and the like. Pauline Wickham (read English) wanted to work at the BBC, but ‘there was no recruitment programme at this time for women producers’. The civil service was a possibility, but women had to resign on marriage; this affected Ann Geale (Mrs Diamond; died 2020; read Chemistry) who was accepted for the Factory Inspectorate but had to leave after a year. The only one of us who made the move, now commonplace, into finance was Beryl Reid Davies (Lady Mustill; died 2012; read English). Some degrees led to a professional qualification, notably in medicine. Bridget Davies and Elizabeth Hunter (Dr McLean) both became consultants in psychiatry, and Rosemary Troughton (Dr Millard; died 2019) was a medical researcher. For Hilda Robinson (Mrs Cole), PPE led to a career as a statistician. Several of us, as would be expected of Somervillians, had distinguished academic careers; Marie Thomas, who retired as Professor and Head of Department of French Studies at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, is the survivor of these. There are fiction authors Daphne Wall and Naomi Shepherd, and published Gillian Dickinson (read History and died in 2002) and Pauline Wickham. Shirley Summerskill qualified as a doctor, became a Labour MP, and was a junior minister under Harold Wilson. Renate Steinert was Director of
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London Marriage Guidance. Henrietta Lamb (Mrs Phipps; died 2016; read History) gained an entry in Wikipedia for her work as a landscape gardener. Many of us were schoolteachers, fullor part-time, often for its convenience for a married woman with children. Several of us married early to men we had met at Oxford, most of us had children, most remained married to the same person, though the majority of those who remain are widowed. I asked responders to comment on their activities since the previous report. There were new travel opportunities. Music was often mentioned. Jill Todd (Mrs Hayward; read Mathematics) ‘sang with the same choir in Harrow for forty-nine years’. For fifteen years José Cummins joined Maureen Oliver and her husband for the London Mozart Players’ Eastbourne weekend. Elizabeth Hunter took an Open University course in music and started a U3A madrigal group, also playing chamber music, until deteriorating health limited her activities. Several others mentioned the U3A, and Rowena Patterson pursued her interest in the Tasmanian U3A to the extent of a PhD at the age of 86. Jane Sheldon (Mrs Peters; read Chemistry) became a tourist guide, an occupation she was able to continue into her eighties. Naomi Shepherd wrote, ‘I’ve gone back to my early love of short stories. I’ve only published one collection but have another in hand, and some have appeared in magazines.’ Daphne Wall took up painting, and has written her memoir and a collection of short stories. We enjoy our gardens, and Hilda Robinson noted that ‘My dog keeps me fit’. I myself continued to research the history of early Quakerism, though restricted by the need to care for my husband. Several of us mentioned caring responsibilities. I included a question as to how we were coping with Covid. Naomi Shepherd was one who found the protracted lockdown difficult: ‘At this stage, over a year on, I have to admit that it has taken a serious toll. We Somerville graduates should have the intellectual resilience to combat Covid accidie, but that “should” now sounds rather empty and arrogant’. But most of us have weathered Covid well, with family, friends and neighbours to lend a hand. Jenny Hugh-Jones reported, ‘Shutdown in New Zealand was short. I live in a Retirement Village for the Actively Retired so we actively shut down, ordering groceries online, with coffee parties in the road and lending each other books.’ Bridget Davies wrote that her garden and Zoom made lockdown ‘shamefully easy’, which is also my experience. Daphne Wall wrote, ‘In some ways I think our generation has been able to cope better than our children and grandchildren – after all, we were the war babies and knew about ration books and the importance of making our sweet ration last the week!’ So, seventy years on, a fair number of us are still enjoying life. Good Somerville brains are still active despite Covid and the physical limitations that come with old age. DR ROSEMARY MOORE (née Filmer, 1950, PPE)
In last year’s College Report we included a report on the year of 1952. If anyone would like to undertake a report on another year from the 1950s decade, please contact Liz Cooke (elizabeth.cooke@some.ox.ac.uk)
