| Administrative History | Miss Jenkins was a former Aberdeen University student. |
| Description | Interview with Miss Annie Jenkins on 5 September 1986, by Jennifer Carter
Transcript of Interview :
C Now I'm recording with Miss Annie Jenkins who came up to University and graduated MA in 1922. That's right is it Miss Jenkins?
J Yes, that's the right date. March 1922.
C You graduated in March at that time?
J Yes, the Classical people finished in March. I think the Modern Languages went on to June.
C So the University worked a two-term year for most people did it and a summer term only for some?
J For example the Modern Languages people would have been going on all the year up to June but every year we finished in March for some reason.
C So what did you do in the summer, it was a long break?
J When I went up first, you see I came from a poor family, and with the Training Centre to be a year later and somehow I got to know that I could combine university work with the Training Centre. We had classes only in the morning, the Latin and the Greek classes, so we had the afternoon free so I went to the Training Centre and went to classes there and sometimes I had practice teaching to do as well some afternoons.
C So by the end of three years you had a dual qualification.
J The classics took four years and then I didn't have to take an extra year to save my parents another year of me being away from home.
C I'd like to come back if I may later in our chat to this business of how people supported themselves. You mentioned your family was not well off. But first what brought you to the university, you seem to have come with a very clear idea of what you wanted to do? Was that school guidance or what?
J No very little guidance as they have now, nothing like what you've got now. When I was fourteen and I thought I was about to leave school there was a problem about what I was going to do and one of my parents, I can't remember which, thought I should go in for Post Office work. There was very little for girls in those days and I went as far as taking a correspondence course, having to do things every week and sending things away and then I told the headmaster that I was leaving and he got into a great fuss that I was leaving school. He said you could go on to university and I went home and told my parents and of course they were astonished that somebody from their family would think about university. However, they made up their minds and said all right you carry on at school. I was the eldest of five, my father was a railway guard so he didn't have much money and I often look back and think what deprivation the younger ones had to keep me at the university.
C Were you the only one who went on to university in the family?
J Yes. I had taken part in the bursary comp of course and I got a £25 bursary which was of course immense money in these days.
C What other help did you have apart from that? Did you have to find your own fees?
J At that time there was the Carnegie Trust provided money and somehow or other it seemed to be the accepted thing. You just heard about it somehow and you wrote away and the money was paid somehow.
C Did they pay your fees only?
J Yes just the fees and then the board and lodging had to come from home.
C So your £25 went how far towards that?
J Well it was paid in two halves, I got a bit in the summer holidays and a bit round about Christmas time.
C So it must have been a case of getting a little bit each week from your parents was it?
J Yes I think every fortnight I got money sent in.
C You got your postal order as it were. It must indeed have been very hard times. Did it make you feel that university was a struggle or were you just young and enjoying it?
J At the time you didn't think about it. We weren't conscious of rich and poor as we were growing up because there were wealthy farmers daughters in my class at school. Well looking back there were wealthy farmers daughters but there was no difference made. I was at the Grammar School and it catered for everybody - ministers sons and doctors sons.
C Where was that?
J At Keith.
C At Keith Grammar which of course goes strong still in a different form.
J I can remember Principal Taylor as a boy as school.
C Can you indeed?
J I would be in the first year or so and he was a big boy away up in the seniors, the top class.
C And he was presumably dux of the school?
J Yes, he was always getting medals.
C When you came to the top of the school were you dux as well?
J No I wasn't. There was a girl called Mary Riddoch. Her people were, he was a wood merchant in Rothiemay. The name is still going on and she was the dux. She went on to do medicine. She was a brilliant girl and very sadly she was in a motor accident and her back was broken. Principal Taylor got some kind of work for her to do in connection with the medical side I think. Then she had to give that up, she was deteriorating and she finally died. It was very sad.
C At school you were already studying the classical languages were you? You were strong at that before you came up to university?
J Yes I just took to Latin like a duck to water and then in the fourth year you had to change over and take something else. You had a choice between German or Greek or become what was known at that time as a junior student and they were the girls who would go on to the Training Centre, a sort of pupil teacher. So that was the only choice there was then.
C So you would have been how old when you eventually did come up to university? Would you have been just seventeen?
J Just turned eighteen. I was eighteen in September and came up in October.
C And a class of about how many would have been studying with you then?
J Well the Latin class seemed to be packed to the door, the first year Latin and the Greek not so many.
C You did Latin, Green and what else? Philosophy maybe?
J In the first year summer I took Zoology. The girl I roomed with was in the science side and somehow or other I took Zoology. She used to always be telling me about Professor J Arthur Thomson and so I took Zoology. And then the second year I did a French class and the third year the extra class had to be a science and I took Education.
C I see and that fitted in with your training at college?
J Yes that's true. Then in the fourth year of course we did nothing but our own subjects.
C So your choice was really fairly straightforward except for the Zoology which was a kind of casual choice almost?
J Yes. It was just because at that time Professor Arthur Thomson was a very great name, very popular, everybody liked his style of lecturing.
C What was your impression as a non-scientist coming to his lectures?
J I enjoyed it too of course. Being brought up in the country you knew a lot about animals and things like that but here we used to have to dissect of course and that was something very new.
C You weren't tempted to change over and become a science student instead?
J No not really, I didn't think about it at that time.
C Which other of the teaching staff particularly do you remember at university?
J Well of course our Latin Professor was Professor Souter. He was rather an aloof sort of man but he was a very nice gentleman. And then Professor Harrower of course he was a professor of Greek.
C And his name is perpetuated of course in the Geddes Harrower lectures.
J Yes that was our home from home was the Geddes Library. He had some very funny traits really.
C Like what sort of thing? What made you laugh?
J Well the Greek room, I don't know if you know King's?
C I don't know what the geography was in those days.
J As you come in at the gate it was on the right. The sacrist was in one door and he was at the other side and Logic was upstairs.
C They're very nice rooms, they are.
J They'd put in new heating for some reason or another and of course things would wrong and pipes would bang. I remember one day he was very angry and he sort of swept his robe round his back and said something like 'they speak about the beastly old things what about the beastly new things' and we were swept upstairs to a Divinity room away from this awful noise that he was making.
C You got a lot of your instruction just from the one professor did you?
J No, we had a Miss Robertson in Greek. I suppose they called her a reader, we just called them lecturers. I don't think there was anybody else and then with Professor Souter we had a Mr Baxter. He went on to be a professor in St Andrews I believe. He took Divinity afterwards and went on to be something in St Andrews. And there was another man called Weir, well he was known as Bobby Weir.
C Bobby Weir suggests you knew him fairly well then if you were using first names as it were?
J No I wouldn't say we knew them well because we didn't have tutorials like you have in the English, at that time anyway, I suppose now it's a different sort of thing. You just listened to lectures all the time and wrote down things. There was no discussion much, I can't remember any discussion like what I think a tutorial must be.
C Did you get any contact with your professors and lecturers when you did written work, I mean when they gave you proses and things back?
J No they just handed things back with marks on.
C So the amount of personal contact was really quite small?
J Very little really.
C Even with the younger staff?
J I'm not very sure about the others, I really can't say.
C There was probably quite a strong feeling among the members of the class, you were probably quite good friends were you?
J There was three women and there was about a dozen men and a lot of them were from around Aberdeen and had been at Gordons and the Grammar School and Central School. One boy was Professor Thomson's son and there was another boy McKinnon, his father was in the midwifery. They were Aberdeen people.
C Did you spent a lot of time together as a class? Did you have social contacts as well as meeting in class?
J No, we three women did but we never had anything to do with the men.
C Was that just your style or was that normal for women students then, there must have been very few of them in the university in fact or am I wrong about that?
J I just can't say. We were just this little group and we didn't mix much. We had the smallest class. I believe the French and maybe the German were bigger classes and had much more contact amongst each other. At least I have a friend who was in the French class two or three years below me and they seemed to have more fun one way or another amongst themselves.
C Your class was a bit serious was it?
J I don't know. Any free time there was in afternoons I had to go to the Training Centre and the other two I think they met more often. We kept up together. I still keep with with one. She became headmistress in the ministers' daughters college in Edinburgh.
C How interesting, what became of number three?
J The other one became classical mistress in Belle Baxter's School in Coupar in Fife.
C So you all went in to teaching, all three of you?
J Yes.
C Did you lodge together at all?
J No we were all separate. I had a friend you see who came in from Keith.
C Yes the one who did Zoology. Whereabouts did you have lodgings was it near the university or away across town?
J We seemed to be very unlucky. We always seemed to have to change every year and go to new digs and my father being in the railway could get what was known as a privilege ticket for me and I could get for half price so of course I had always to go in and look for rooms in the summer time for the two of us to go back to in October.
C The friend you shared lodgings with was a friend from home was she?
J Yes, we went to school together. She became a doctor of science and did very well. She finished in the Natural History Museum in London.
C What sort of digs were available? You got what, a bedroom?
J We just got what a grand title nowadays would be study/bedroom. The bed was there and there was no fuss about twin beds in these days, you just slept together.
C Was there anywhere to work there or were you expected to …?
J No we just had a table and you worked there and had your meals there and everything went on in the one room.
C Your landlady provided the food did she, you didn't cook for yourself?
J No we didn't cook. I think there was one place where we used to bring in something, but I've a vague notion about that, I can't remember quite. I would need to ask my friend, to corroborate.
C Whereabouts in town did you stay, you say you moved about a good deal?
J I can't remember where we were the first year.
C At any rate not near the university by the sound of it?
J Well always within walking distance, it was the tram cars in these days and you walked and walked and walked. Once we were up in Rosemount, and another time we were in Rosemount. Then our last year we were nearer here, a place called Sunnybank Place.
C I know just up the road, you can almost see it from where you're sitting.
J Yes, we used to cross an open space and come down College Bounds.
C The landladies you stayed with, were they people who specialised in taking students or did they take other kinds of lodgers?
J Yes they nearly all did. [i.e. specialised in taking students]
C Did they look after you or impose rules which you had to keep or were you pretty free and easy?
J Quite free. I suppose these days you didn't kick over the traces so much and being in other peoples' houses I suppose you knew that you would have to toe the line or something. I can't remember any difficulty like that with anybody at all.
C Did you have your own key or did you knock on the door?
J No, the door was always open.
C The door was always open was it, like in the country?
J Yes. There was no worry about locked doors in these days.
C So what would be your sort of daily pattern? You would come down for classes in the morning, go home for lunch or would you bring a piece with you to eat?
J No we would go home and then I would go off to the other place or occasionally I might be free and go back to King's and go to the Geddes Lecture room.
C And your main meal would be provided by the landlady in the evening would it?
J Yes. I can't remember much about how the meals went really.
C You had your mind on higher things?
J Oh I don't know if it was that either, it's just faded away over the passage of years.
C Were you worried about money? You spoke at the beginning about coming from a poor family?
J Yes sometimes it seemed to be tight, so it was a question of writing and asking if they could possibly give me a little bit more.
C Which would be a pound or two or something like that.
J Yes, but I can't remember a great deal about it really.
C Of course in those times a lot of people were badly off so you probably took it much more for granted. Did it limit the number of things you were able to do outside class, I mean how did you amuse yourself? Did you go for walks or go to dances?
J We walked and walked Saturday morning. We used to walk long distances, of course there was nothing else. Friday night was always of course the Society night.
C Societies were active were they?
J Yes, very. I started with the Classical at five and then there was a Literary at six and I think maybe there was a gap or something I can't remember. I sometimes went to my friend's scientific things. Professor Soddy was the great man at that time and so I think out of curiosity I would go and see Professor Soddy. Then 8 o'clock was the Debating Society and of course that was the big thing on Friday evening.
C So you could really go to four society meetings on one evening?
J Yes we just filled in the evening and Friday night was a free night.
C Terrific energy. What did you do the other evenings? Were you always working?
J I suppose we were working one way or another.
C What about the weekends?
J We used to come to Chapel of course Sunday mornings always and then go for walks in the afternoon or study. I can remember Saturday mornings walking and sometimes we might have had an odd sixpence to go to the theatre.
C And then of course you had those very long summer vacations if you finished in March? How did you spend your time then?
J At that time there wasn't a tradition of students working in the summer time so I was at home and helped my mother in the house.
C No opportunity for paid work presumably at all?
J I suppose there might have been it was just not thought about. I remember by father coming home once and saying there's a young man whose father was an invalid and they were badly off and he came home to tell my mother that he saw this boy shovelling coal into the steam engines. And that was his summer job and he would have been paid for that and that would take him back to the university.
C But that was considered fairly remarkable that somebody should get an actual paid job?
J They never suggested that I would do anything at all.
C Did you study during the vacations?
J Yes I would take books home from the library and study. There was young children running after me so I was more or less looking after them and joining in their things.
C And giving your mother a bit of a breather?
J Yes.
C Looking back to those days, the early 20s. When you were up at university how much interest did you take in the world outside the university, I mean in the political events of the time and so on?
J I've discussed this with my friend that I told you took modern languages and I'm aghast at the things that were going on at the time and now I read of them and think well I never knew that. I remember in the final exam we had to write something in Latin, do a Latin essay and I can't remember what the other subjects were but my memory is that one of the subjects was to discuss the Irish question 1921/22 and I chose that and I said to this friend of mine I cannot understand how I knew about the Irish question, I can't remember reading anything except on the morning of the exam I happened to read, I suppose it had been the Press & Journal, and I remembered things from that but I couldn't make an essay out of what I got in the Press & Journal I'm sure. I really can't tell you. We didn't buy newspapers and the prevailing one up here of course would have been the Press & Journal. I don't remember getting a loan of a paper in the houses but I suppose we must have read something I can't think.
C But looking back on it, how you see it now is that you must have been politically pretty naive then and fairly unconscious of what was going on?
J Yes. I can remember more of things that I read at home before I went up to university in the papers that my father took home. There was a publication called John Bull, there was some hair raising things in that, crimes and so on and I used to read this avidly. That was my literature at that time. My mother belonged to Inverness and so we got the Inverness Peoples Journal so we scraped something out of that. Really very, very ignorant.
C In a way it was a rather sort of, I suppose from that point of view a rather sort of innocent life as a university student?
J Yes. As you were saying we were in digs all the time we didn't have the communal life that they have now.
C The sort of idea of a student life really didn't apply to you then?
J No not really.
C You were just a private individual who went from the place you lived to your classes and to the college and back again.
J I suppose it's something like where the university is in a city nowadays and people live at home, they just go home and they don't mix so much with the university life.
C Did you get a sense of belonging to a community when you went to the chapel for example?
J Yes, that was different. There again of course it was not everybody who went, it was a small place and you just knew the people who were going and you would meet them.
C Was it very much expected of a student to go to chapel or was it left entirely to yourself?
J I don't think so, no. We just liked the walk on the Sunday morning to go down there and take part in the chapel. There were always different preachers. Every Sunday there was a different minister.
C Did the Principal attend every Sunday?
J Yes he was always there and he often took the service. George Adam Smith in my day.
C Did you have any impression of him as a person?
J Yes a nice gentleman.
C He was supposed to have been a great orator. Did you feel that?
J At that time we were hardly thinking in terms like that but looking back I can believe that's the impression that he must have made.
C Did he know the students personally at all or did you just say good morning Principal and walk away?
J I don't think so. We just sort of sheepishly nodded to him.
C Did you have to wear academic dress at all? Did you wear the toga?
J No. I came up at the end of the war and I think it had been given up during the war. People weren't buying it or something. It started again after the war, lots of them started wearing the toga.
C Does that mean that some of your contemporaries were ex-service men who were a good deal older, who had been in the wars?
J Yes. As time went on they were beginning to come back. My first year there weren't any, the second year there were one or two, in the third year there were still some other people coming in.
C Did that affect the way in which the class operated, either for good or ill?
J I don't think so. I've sometimes looked back and thought now so and so was much older than us and I just can't think … we three women sat at the front and the men were at the back so we weren't paying any attention to who was there we just said oh there's so and so. There was one man called Peter Noble I think he went on to do good things, Principal of King's College, London and his wife was the year above me, Miss Stephen [Mary Stephen] she was at that time.
C It sounds as if the women students felt a bit isolated. Would that be a fair comment?
J It was just that we were just three at that time and I think there was only two in the year above us, this Miss Stephen and another girl. I suppose yes.
C Was it before or after Mary Esslemont was president of the SRC, I've forgotten exactly?
J It was after, yes I think so.
C Were you conscious of her having been the sort of principal student?
J Yes, there again Marischal was Marischal and we were King's and never the twain shall meet. When I went to do Education in Marischal it was just an unknown place except for Friday night and we would meet in the various societies.
C I hadn't appreciated how different it must have felt, that's interesting. What about when you finished university and graduated was it relatively easy in 1922/1923 to get a job as a teacher?
J No, I was a year before I got anything. Looking back I discovered the classical things were men's departments, it's a tradition I think in Scotland for a dominie to be a Latin teacher or a Latin teacher to finally become a dominie of some kind and the appointments were greatly for men students.
C So you had a bit of a wait before you could get your first post?
J Yes.
C Well that's a super series of reminiscences, very interesting talking to you. Is there anything else you would have wanted to say that I haven't asked you about?
J The thing I was remembering most was Principal Taylor being a boy at school and when he used to come back at holiday time to see the headmaster, of course the headmaster would be teaching Latin, and we were terribly delighted when Tom Taylor walked in to see the headmaster and he went away then with him and we were left to our own devices. We liked when the big boys came back again.
C He was quite a local hero?
J Yes he was.
C Well its been very, very nice talking to you and thank you very much indeed for that.
J Very disjointed I'm afraid.
C Personal memories always are but they're none the less valuable for that.
End of Interview
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