Mill Lane Memories

The latest tale from the Mill Lane Days focuses on the topic of men and women. The social conventions which governed relations between the sexes in the Cambridge of the 1950s were strikingly different from those prevailing in the Cambridge of the 21^st-century. Moreover, the male members of the University were at this period far more numerous than the female, resulting in a variety of social complications unfamiliar to those who are young today.

A glance at the Cambridge University Annual Register for 1959-60 (p.522) shows that the number of men who matriculated across the University in the academic year 1958-59 was 2718, whereas the number of women who matriculated was exactly 300. Most of those who matriculated were undergraduates, but the figures include some graduate students. Of the 300 women, 115 were Girtonians, including the young Dorothy Walbank (now Dorothy Thompson). Another 108 women were members of Newnham College. Just 24 were members of New Hall, which at that time was based in Silver Street. Finally, 53 women matriculated at Hughes Hall which, like New Hall, was not yet a full college, and which was restricted to women graduates undertaking teacher-training. All the other colleges were strictly men-only, and sources of the period generally assume a male to female undergraduate ratio of at least 8 to 1.

In practice, as Dorothy has explained, male undergraduates reading Classics knew who all the women were, but the women undergraduates did not know who all the men were.

This house in Silver Street, formerly known as the Hermitage, and now part of Darwin College, was occupied by New Hall from its inception in 1954 until the move to the present site in Huntingdon Road in 1964. New Hall is now known as Murray Edwards College.

We have two excellent documentary sources. The Varsity Handbook was produced annually from 1947 by the same editorial team as the Varsity student newspaper, and advised freshers about Cambridge life. In the 1950s and early 1960s it regularly featured advice columns for men and for women. Jean Lindsay (Director of Studies in History,  Girton College, 1947-1960) wrote a guide for Girton’s freshers entitled: Say “Thank You”: A manual of University etiquette for young ladies. Quotations are taken from the commemorative edition published by Girton College in 1997. These weighty authorities allude to relations between the sexes, but occasionally from divergent perspectives.

Varsity Handbook 1958-59:

p.32: Girton. Guest hours for ladies and gentlemen: Weekdays 2 p.m.-10 p.m., Sundays 10 a.m.-10 p.m.; after 7 p.m. gentlemen must sign the book in the porter’s lodge; extension for parties and meetings in public until 10.30 p.m.

But the Girton guide leaves us in no doubt that, even in guest hours, the College was anything but ‘Liberty Hall’:

p.14: Young men should not be encouraged to cook meals or take baths in College. They should be actively dissuaded from trying to improve electrical installations or from removing or embellishing College property.

Varsity Handbook 1958-59:

p.40 [Advice to women]: You need have no lack of escorts, but do treat them well. About 80% are on government grants, which were not provided with you in mind. You might offer to pay half, but since most men here are gentlemen, this will probably be refused. The only alternative is payment in kind. Invitations to tea are usually acceptable (even as far as Girton)…

…do thank your host warmly and let him feel that you have enjoyed it – even if you haven’t. This should not need saying. Too many Cambridge men, however, assure me that it does.

But the Girton guide is less optimistic:

p.13 …at the beginning of term lecture rooms seem entirely full of men, but the fresher often finds it impossible to meet someone to invite to her College Ball in December. Methods of meeting young men vary. There is no need for a fresher to fall off her bicycle in King’s Parade…One might join a religious society, but there the young men are apt to have very honourable intentions and to want to become engaged at the end of the second year. One might join a political society, but here young women are often made responsible for the tea, in which case they meet no one…The Cruising Club, the Serenading Club, the Standfast Society, the Cloak and Dagger Society, the Footlights, the Hawks Club, the Pitt and the Union might provide just the contacts a fresher needs – if membership were only open to women. [The writer concedes that the Mummers and the A.D.C. are open to women…though actors are apt to be too busy to be able to attend balls].

And even an invitation to tea can present logistical difficulties. See the Girton guide, p.11:

One of the major problems confronting a fresher is how to boil a kettle on a gas ring half way down the corridor and keep up a flow of conversation with two shy male guests, one of whom is sitting on the bed and the other on a very collapsible pouffe. The correct solution is to turn an electric fire on its back and boil the kettle in the midst of the tea party – but this process often takes 90 minutes, and if the room is supplied with a space heater the operation is impossible.

Girton College: Woodlands Court.

Varsity Handbook 1958-59:

p.99 [Advice to young men]:

Dancing. Partners are difficult to find. Better men than you have been baffled, so take note that “those move easiest who have learned to dance”; don’t be content with the one-step you performed in the Sergeant’s Mess dance – it is not good enough… You don’t have to be an Astaire, but your success will be shortlived if you persistently mangle your partner’s feet.

Until 1957, men became liable for two years’ military service at the age of 18. The ‘call-up’ was managed by the Ministry of Labour, which permitted deferral if the young man was in receipt of a University offer. However, there is anecdotal evidence that some Oxbridge colleges took a stricter line! For example, Dorothy is aware that holders of a scholarship at one Cambridge college could defer, while those who merely had a ‘place’ had to do ‘National Service’ first: this may have been common practice. Young men who did military service straight after school would matriculate at the age of 20, rather than at 18. Dorothy notes: “This meant that for us girls (1958) male undergraduates were very mixed in both age and experience. Some had learned modern Greek (for Cyprus), Russian or even I think Chinese or Japanese during their national service.” The very last conscripts (all deferrals) began military service on 17^th November 1960, and were not discharged until May 1963.

Varsity Handbook 1959-60:

p.44 [Advice to young men]: Watch out too for the unchivalrous man in blue patrolling the Huntingdon Road on the lookout for unlighted swains returning from Girton [See above for Girton’s curfew times. The passage alludes to police officers intercepting bicyclists riding without bicycle lights during the hours of darkness].

Varsity Handbook 1960-61:

p.45: [Advice to women]: Admittedly there is a superstratum of eccentric intellect…but for the rest of us, a couple of visits to C.S. Lewis and a working knowledge of Winnie-the-Pooh are sufficient armour for the thorniest intellectual situation.

C.S. Lewis, although a quintessential Oxford man, was Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English Literature at Cambridge University from 1954 until his death in 1963, and was also a Fellow of Magdalene College. He lectured at Mill Lane…

The same: p.46: [Advice to women]: …if you must relapse into blatant Bohemianism, please do it becomingly and hygienically…your primary function here as elsewhere is to become an adult person. If you can do this decently, intelligently and sensibly, the evidence of third-year undergraduates suggests that you may not only enjoy life here, but get a first, a job and a husband into the bargain.

The same:

p.47-48 ‘Men Only’ [penned by ‘Les Third-Year Girls’]:

One of your most valuable Cambridge discoveries will be the fact that women are people too – and many a friendship has been hammered out in the common-or-garden atmosphere of a science practical. Artists have fewer opportunities for social shop-talk, since no girl looks or feels her best in the perpetual twilight of the Mill Lane Lecture Rooms…but there’s always the tea-room of the University Library…

…it is always preferable to write an invitation if you don’t know her well or for any important function, so that she can consider calmly whether she really wants to go or not.

And if you do decide you’ve found the girl you want to marry, do be prepared to have to work at loving her – no happy marriage yet was founded on mutual predestination.

But the Girton guide wisely counsels caution:

p.14: It is common prudence not to become engaged before the end of the May Week following one’s ninth term. In no circumstance should a young lady allow her heart to be broken in the Summer Term before either part of the Tripos, though as one Oxford don was heard to say, “We all had our hearts broken and broke those of other people but that never interrupted our work for Schools.”

Newnham College: the gateway in Newnham Walk.