Item #16090 Educational Advocate for Non-White South African Students, Mabel Atkinson Receives a Recommendation for her Very First College Appointment. Atkinson, Non-White South African.
Educational Advocate for Non-White South African Students, Mabel Atkinson Receives a Recommendation for her Very First College Appointment

Educational Advocate for Non-White South African Students, Mabel Atkinson Receives a Recommendation for her Very First College Appointment

ALS : Autograph Letter Signed

Henry Jones. [Mabel Atkinson] ALS, July 18, 1901--Letterhead of The University, Glasgow. 2 pages on both sides of a single sheet. Jones was a professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University. Only recently, the University opened the degree to women. The top student to graduate in a cohort of over 100 Moral Philosophy students for the year 1900 was Mabel Atkinson, who went on to become a prominent suffragette and professor before moving to South Africa where she taught African and Indian students and advocated for the expansion of their educational opportunities. This letter shows how the very first glimmer of educational opportunity for women quickly led to further advocacy and education of underserved populations.

“Miss Mabel Atkinson informs me that she is a candidate for the Office of Lecturer in Political Science at the University College...and I have much pleasure in supporting her application. Miss Atkinson was a student in both the Ordinary and Honors classes of Moral Philosophy and the excellence of her examination work and her essays placed her in the first rank of students in each of these classes. She completed the course in Moral Philosophy by graduating with Honors of the First Class. She had already taken Honors in Classics, and she was awarded, at the close of her career at this University, the Loyan Medal & Prize, given to the most distinguished graduate in Arts of her year (1900)....Taken as a whole, the honours gained by Miss Atkinson at the University are greater than those allowed by any other Woman Student. And they testify at once to Miss Atkinson’s mental ability, power of application & attainments in her subjects. She has had, both here and in London, ample opportunities to acquaint herself with the problems of Political Science, and she has mental grasp & force of character. I believe she would be a most excellent Lecturer; well-informed, able to express herself readily & clearly & effective as to all that she undertakes.”

Glasgow University graduated its first female student with an Arts Degree in 1898 (a few women earlier had been allowed to graduate with medical degrees). The first women teachers were not appointed until 1908. In 1900, Mabel Atkinson graduated as top student in a Moral Philosophy cohort of 112, almost entirely men. Although this letter implies she ranked first among only the girls, she in fact surpassed the entire class, male and female. She became a research student at the University, at the London School of Economics and at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and published Local Government in Scotland in 1904. Atkinson became a college lecturer in Durham and then with the Workers' Educational Association and King's College for Women in London, and she was active in the campaign for women's suffrage and in the Fabian Society. In 1914 she married Andrew Palmer (1886-1948) and moved with him to Australia after the First World War, but the marriage was not a success. She went to South Africa and became a lecturer in Economics and a political activist. In 1945 she was appointed Director of the new non-European section of the University of Natal. She dedicated the remainder of her life to championing college education for non-white students of South Africa. This letter has the usual folds, with mild soiling at folds, creasing to corners. Otherwise very good. A very early letter recording the beginning of the career of a prominent female professor and educational advocate.

Item #16090

Price: $280.00