UA31316 Lumen Spring 2024 Final Digital - Flipbook - Page 9
Your stories
First
among
equals
Edith later wrote: “Dr
Stirling said that if I were
successful, and he was
convinced that I would be,
I would gain the distinction
of being the first woman
graduate of the Adelaide
University, and the first
woman to graduate in
science in Australia.”
Edith completed her
degree in 1885, with the
Vice-Chancellor, Chief
Justice Samuel Way,
remarking she had not just
done honour to the
University, but had
“vindicated the right of
her sex to compete”.
By Mark Douglas
The daughter of a German immigrant horse-trader, Edith (Edie)
Emily Dornwell was far more familiar with the stables than the
Manor House and was certainly not born to a life of privilege
and ease.
Yet, her parents clearly supported her, and her obvious intellect,
sending her to school at the State Central Model School.
There she won a bursary, one of six from the State Government
that year, to continue her education at the Advanced School for
Girls. Edith shone, passing with honours in French, German,
animal physiology and modern history.
It was the study of physiology, an unusual choice for anyone at
the time, which proved momentous, and she was encouraged to
study science by Edward Stirling, who taught the subject at the
school, and lectured at the new University of Adelaide.
The timing was in her favour, the University having recently
won an international academic battle on two fronts – the right to
create a science degree, and also to admit women on an equal
basis to men.
In a letter to a friend, Edie said: “I have the happiest memories
of the work under such brilliant professors. Although there was so
much prejudice in those days against the advancement of women,
and against their entry into universities, I had every reason to be
grateful to professors and students. They evinced no objection to
the presence of a woman among them, and without exception did
their best to make my position easy and comfortable.”
After graduating, Edith became a teacher at her old school,
later moving to become a teacher at Methodist Ladies College,
Hawthorn, Victoria, and subsequently headmistress at Riviere
College, Woollahra, NSW.
In 1893 she married “charming English gentleman” Lionel
Charles Raymond, sailing with him to Fiji where he took up a
position with Commonwealth Sugar Refineries.
In The New Women – Adelaide’s early women graduates (1986
Wakefield Press) author Alison Mackinnon asks: “How easy was
it for this independent, able, woman to give up the benefits of her
chosen career and throw herself behind her husband’s career and
her children’s upbringing?
“We shall never know. Her family remember her as a woman of
tiny stature and strong political views. She was a humanist, not a
church goer, who read a great deal.
“Those neighbours in suburban Epping (NSW), who knew
Mrs Raymond in her eighties as a keen gardener and devoted
family woman, may not have suspected that in 1885 she was the
toast of Adelaide.”
Mark Douglas is Editor of Lumen.
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