Did you know that the first woman to achieve first-class honours at Cambridge University was a Welshwoman named Elizabeth Phillips Hughes?
She achieved far more than just that, too, being one of the most crucially important figures in securing equal education for girls and women.
Who Was Elizabeth Phillips Hughes?
She was born on this day (12 July) in 1851 in Carmarthen. In those days, education was grossly unequal and lacking all over with only the upper classes being able to secure education for their children. For girls, especially, it was worse and Elizabeth Phillips Hughes herself received little education as a child, though did eventually attend private school in Cheltenham before becoming an educator at Cheltenham Ladies’ College, under the mentorship of suffragist and reformer Dorothea Beale.
Her time as a teacher at the college ultimately led to her studying at Cambridge University, where she would become the first woman in the university’s history to achieve first-class honours. Even more, she would become the first principal of the Cambridge Training College for Women – a college built for training women teachers. Her success led to the college being renamed “Hughes College”, a name it maintains to this day.
Following retirement in 1899, she became even more active in initiatives for promoting education for girls and women, becoming a prominent member of the Association for Promoting the Education of Girls in Wales, for which she wrote essays, articles and pamphlets. In 1920, she was the only woman on the committee which founded the University of Wales, Swansea, and she received an honorary degree from the institution.
She remains one of the most significant women in Welsh history, for me, and her name should not be forgotten.
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Niklas is the founder, owner, manager, editor, writer, video creator, voice over artist, and so forth, of Welsh Histories. He is passionate about the preservation of Welsh culture; the rejuvenation of the Welsh language and the promotion of Welsh history. Niklas currently resides in Pune, Maharashtra, with his beloved wife.