Mary Arnold is a third year Fine Art student whose main medium is photography. When she began researching the recent exhibition - Living her own Life: the experience of women at University College Dundee & the Technical Institute/School of Art, 1883-1909 - she had no idea of the fascinating discoveries she would make.
Such as - three years before the founding of the School of Art, the St Andrews-based artist Patti Jack began teaching in the University College Dundee Department of Fine Arts. Was she the first woman on the teaching staff, or does she share that distinction with Etta Johnstone, who in the same session (1888-1889) began assisting Patrick Geddes in the Botany Department?
Etta Johnstone - artist, chemist and botanist - was not untypical of the first generation of women students, a generation that included Mary Lily Walker. Nor was Agnes Wallace Hamilton alone in adding a BSc to her MA. Elizabeth H B McDonald added an M B, B Ch and an M D. She also found time to sit on the Students' Representative Council, become Vice-President of the Students' Union and look "very charming" in a "pretty gown of white silk with - touches of poppy red" in a student drama production. Not surprisingly, when she spoke in a debate in favour of the motion "Should the universities be opened to women", it was carried by 27 votes to 16.
But it was not the women's achievements which attracted the attention of the alternative student magazine, The Wheeze, whose articles concentrate rather on their hats, hairstyles and fashions ("her skirts swish about in the naughtiest way"), their skills on the hockey field and their no doubt heavily fantasised adventures on the golf course. But an underlying resentment at their presence surfaces perhaps in such features as Hints on etiquette for our women students.
But if sometimes resented, the women's presence was at least assured by the terms of Mary Ann Baxter's bequest. In contrast, Sir David Baxter's gift to the Technical Institute was aimed at "the education of boys and young men". Yet despite this male ambience, women did come forward to study, and win prizes, in subjects like mechanics, advanced practical chemistry, and plumbers' theory. These were working women, studying in the evening for professional development. The bare entries in the general registers hint at some intriguing life stories - like those of Winifred M Crosby, lady clerk, and Lizzie Donald, typist, who enrolled for the course on jute manufacture in 1907.
Strangely, the art students remain the most elusive group. Only three women have been identified as practising artists, and of the rest, the most committed prepared for the Art Class Teachers' Certificate. To date, Mary has discovered only one work produced by a woman student, a landscape painting by a student at UCD rather than the School of Art.
Mary Arnold would be glad to hear from anyone with an interest in this research; her email is m.e.arnold@dundee.ac.uk
'Living Her Own life' is part of University of Dundee Exhibitions Department programme, and is an excellent example of the use of original source material. It was shown in the Bradshaw Art Space in Crawford Building, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design during May 2003. An important part of Exhibitions Department remit is to support and develop student projects and to encourage students to utilise sources held by University of Dundee Archive, Records Management and Museums Services.