We much regret to record that Miss Sarah Emily Davies, one of the founders of Girton College, Cambridge, died recently at her home in Hampstead, in her 92nd year.
Miss Davies was born at Southampton in 1830. In middle life, when residing in London, Miss Davies became interested in educational questions and was a member of the first London School Board. She will be chiefly remembered, however, as the chief founder of Girton College. Though other men and women collaborated in the work, Miss Davies's was the guiding spirit and the College bore throughout the impress of her mind.
She may fairly claim to have been the founder of the first college in England to give women a strictly university education. The first educational project in which Miss Davies took part was the extension of the Oxford and Cambridge local examinations to girls, a concession much desired as a correct tive of the slipshod methods then in vogue at girls' schools. In 1865 the Cambridge Local Examinations were formally opened to girls. Oxford followed in 1870. The step had important results, for the lectures to women at Cambridge in connexion with the examination led to the opening of a hall of residence in 1871, which afterwards developed into Newnham College.
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The College was opened with five students. Irom the first the Council undertook to try to secure "admission to the examinations for degrees of the University of Cambridge, and generally to place the College in connexion with that University." In the decided tone thus adopted we may trace the influence of Miss Davies, who, of all the committee, had the clearest conception of what she wanted and the most unflinching determination to secure it.
In the early days of the College some merriment was caused by the manner in which the details of college life were modelled upon the pattern of the hoary foundations of Oxford and Cambridge. However, though somewhat open to ridicule
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.