Oxford and Cambridge women sailed to Dublin to collect degrees their colleges withheld
Between 1904 and 1907, women who had studied at Oxford and Cambridge but been refused degrees crossed the Irish Sea to Trinity College Dublin, which granted them one. They were nicknamed the Steamboat ladies, and their fees helped pay for a women's residence, Trinity Hall. Trinity had admitted women as full members in 1904.
Queen Elizabeth I chartered the college in 1592 on the grounds of a priory that Henry VIII had dissolved, and its first provost, Archbishop Adam Loftus, named it after his old Cambridge college. It was meant to consolidate Tudor rule and for over two centuries served the Protestant ruling elite. An earlier, medieval University of Dublin founded in 1320 had struggled on at St Patrick's Cathedral before fading during the Reformation.
Religion shaped who could belong. Catholics could enrol from the start, but for a time graduating required an oath they objected to. That hurdle fell in 1793, earlier than equivalent reforms at Oxford and Cambridge, yet scholarships, fellowships and chairs stayed reserved for Protestants. In 1845 Denis Caulfield Heron won a scholarship on merit and was barred because he was Catholic, a ruling upheld on appeal. Religious tests were abolished in 1873, except for divinity. Then the Catholic bishops imposed their own ban on attending Trinity in 1871, which lasted until 1970 and became associated with Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, who enforced it from 1956.
The library, a legal deposit collection serving both Ireland and the United Kingdom, has held the Book of Kells since 1661 and the Trinity College harp since 1782, and more than two million people visit the grounds each year. Trinity claims the world's oldest chairs in French and German, both from 1776, as well as the oldest student society, The Hist, founded in 1770.
Its graduates range from Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker and Samuel Beckett to Sally Rooney. Alumni also invented the hypodermic needle and the steam turbine, pioneered seismology and radiotherapy, and coined the word electron.
Source: Trinity College Dublin
