Sarah Woodhead

Sarah Woodhead (1851–1912) was the first woman to sit and pass a Tripos examination at Cambridge University.[1] She studied at Girton College, the first women's college to be founded at Oxford or Cambridge. As the physical college had yet to be built, she attended courses set up by Girton founder Emily Davies at Benslow House, Hitchin.

Woodhead's father was a Manchester grocer. As the family had long belonged to the Society of Friends, Sarah was able to attend Ackworth School, a Quaker school that accepted daughters of Friends as well as their sons.[2] Her mother's father, Joseph Cranstone, with whose family she lived prior to moving to Hitchin, was a prominent member of the Hemel Hemstead Society of Friends.

In 1873, Woodhead took the same Tripos examination as the male students, having already gained a first at Part I, and was classed equivalent to Senior Optime in mathematics. In that same year, she was the first of only three women to complete the course at Girton College[3] – and the only one to do so in mathematics. The three "honorary" (rather than actual) graduates became known as "Woodhead, Cook and Lumsden, the Girton Pioneers".[4]

Woodhead passed on her knowledge to the students of Girton during the first term after its completion, but was then offered the post of Head of Mathematics at the newly-opened Manchester High School for Girls.

After her marriage to architect Christopher Corbett, she ran her own school in Bolton. She then became the second headmistress of Bolton School, known then as Bolton High School for Girls.[1] After her husband moved the family back to Manchester to take over his family firm, she found employment as an inspector of schools.

Widowed in her fifties, she moved to Harrogate and died there in July, 1908, aged fifty-seven.[5]

See also

References
  1. Stephen, Barbara (1932), Girton College 1869–1932, Cambridge University Press, p. 194.
  2. Woodhead, David L., Sarah Woodhead: Trail-Blazer - Quaker Girl & Pioneer, self (see Girton College Library)
  3. Tuker, Mildred Anna Rosalie; Matthison, William (1907), Cambridge, A. - and C. Black, p. 321
  4. Megson, Barbara; Lindsay, Jean Olivia (1961), Girton College, 1869–1959: an informal history, W. Heffer for the Girton Historical and Political Society, p. 19
  5. Campion, Val (2008), Pioneering Women: The Origins of Girton College in Hitchin, Hitchin Historical Society Publication, p. 49
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