Sarah Butler

On 9th May 1914, the Polish anthropologist and Somerville student Marya Czaplicka applied for funds for an expedition to Siberia. Marya Czaplicka had arrived in England in 1911 to take the diploma course in anthropology at Somerville. Intelligent and charming, she was a mature student and accomplished scholar. Speaking Russian in addition to Polish and English, she was uniquely placed to… Read More »May 1914: The Launch of Miss Czaplicka’s Siberian Expedition

‘The hall proved ideal for dancing: the floor was all that could be desired.’          Somerville College Log Book, June 1914 Commemoration Week, the week after the end of Trinity Term, is a traditional time for balls in Oxford, and in 1914 Somerville held a Commemoration Dance in its new hall. The JCR sought permission for an end of term dance from… Read More »June 1914: The Commemoration Dance

‘Exactly a fortnight before the world as I had known it crashed into chaos, I went to Leek to take my Oxford Senior.’  Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth. The long vacation in 1914 should have been a time of rest, recuperation and preparation for students and Fellows. Many of the Senior Common Room (SCR) used the vacations to travel and work on… Read More »July 1914: The Uncertainties of the Long Vacation

In 1919, a student called Margaret Bunbury Foote came up to Somerville to read English. Her father was a clergyman and her mother a suffragette and member of the Women’s Social & Political Union. Amongst the papers Margaret Foote was later to leave to Somerville College was the travel diary she had kept during her summer holiday in 1914 when,… Read More »August 1914: “To Germany in 1914”

“It is impossible even in writing a college letter to pass over in silence the subject which is filling everyone’s mind. In Oxford we are reminded at every turn of the greater happenings…” Oxford Letter, Somerville Students Association Annual Report 1914 Initially, the outbreak of war had comparatively little impact on Somerville College; the long vacation was drawing to a… Read More »September 1914: the Contribution of Non-Combatants

In October 1914, thirty six new students arrived to begin their university careers at Somerville. Amongst these ‘freshers’ were Vera Brittain, the future author and playwright Muriel St Clare Byrne and another English exhibitioner, Una Ellis-Fermor, who would become a distinguished academic.  In her diary, Vera Brittain recorded the excitements of student life, her impressions of the University of Oxford… Read More »October 1914: Vera Brittain Arrives for the New Academic Year at Oxford

Between 1914 and 1915, over two hundred thousand Belgians were to flee to Britain and Oxford became one of many centres to offer accommodation and assistance to some of those refugees. As well as the widely held public sympathy for Belgium’s plight, academics had been outraged by the German attack on Louvain in August 1914, during which the University library… Read More »November 1914: ‘At Home’ to the Belgians

As Michaelmas Term ended in December 1914, Somerville ‘sustained an irreparable loss’ with the departure of Miss Lucy Kempson, the College librarian and Principal’s secretary. Leaving to join the war effort, she initially nursed with the Red Cross and later went on to work in the Intelligence Department of the War Office. Miss Kempson (pictured right) was one of many women who answered… Read More »December 1914: ”Go Home and Keep Quiet”; Early War Work for Women

1915 was to be a year of momentous change for Somerville College. Unlike the men’s colleges, life in Somerville had been largely unaffected during the first five months of the war, but by Hilary Term of 1915, the War Office was starting to cast covetous eyes on Somerville’s buildings which conveniently abutted the Radcliffe Infirmary.  For the time being, however,… Read More »January 1915: Dr. Maude and the RAMC

Debating, and particularly the discussion of political issues, had long been popular in Somerville. A women’s debating society was founded in 1882 and became the United Halls Debating Society (later the Oxford Students’ Debating Society, see February 1914 post) with the inclusion of members from Lady Margaret Hall and St. Hugh’s.  In the pre-war years, Somervillians were active in the suffrage movement… Read More »February 1915: Parliament and the Tub Thumpers; political debates in college