| Description | Interview with Miss Isabel Ross recorded on the 9 October 1986 by Colin McLaren.
Transcript of Interview :
M Now then Miss Ross, can we begin by talking about why you came to the university, what made you come to Aberdeen University?
R Well my father was a minister in Holburn West Church, Aberdeen. We had come from Inverness 4 years before. I had been in the High School for 4 years previously, and it seemed a natural thing to go the university because my mother was an Honours graduate of Aberdeen University, my father was a graduate of St. Andrews University and there seemed to be no other course open but to go to the university.
M But you might have gone to St Andrews, did you think of that?
R You know funnily enough, I didn't think of leaving home at that time, I was very fond of my home.
M Did you talk it over with your parents at all?
R I can't remember, it seemed quite a nice enough thing just to go to the University of Aberdeen in those days. No I hadn't thought of going to any other university, although I should have loved to have been at Oxford or Cambridge.
M Why was that?
R I don't know. I always had a great admiration for the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and a desire in a way to reach them, but I never did.
M Is this something you feel now or this something that you remember feeling then?
R No, I remember feeling it then because some people at that time used to go to Oxford and Cambridge after taking their degrees from Aberdeen, but by the time I had taken my degree, I felt that I should prefer just to go on and do a career.
M How did you come to settle on the subjects that you would follow at the university?
R Yes, well that's quite interesting. At that time, people were finding it very difficult to find work if they were taking English or even Modern Languages or anything like that and …
M Work as teachers or work generally?
R Well particularly work for Honours graduates. I knew one or two very distinguished English graduates and they couldn't get jobs at that time, first class Honours graduates. I should have preferred to have been a doctor, but we couldn't afford it, because there were three of us, and we were quite close together and the fees for the medical course were too expensive. My father was a minister you see with a salary of about £500 a year I think and that was quite good at that time, and it was impossible to pay about £250 a year for my fees, and there were very few bursaries and no Carnegie fees really, at least I think the Carnegie fees came in about a year or so after I began, I think I did have Carnegie fees towards the end of my course. I think part of my course. So it had to be an arts course. I was no good as a scientist.
M The decision about the medical fees and so on, was this something that was discussed openly within the family?
R Yes, yes.
M So you had a chance to express an opinion?
R Yes, oh yes, I had. In fact so open was it that after some years when I had been a teacher for some years I thought of beginning again, beginning as a doctor but then somehow or other I didn't, and it just lapsed. Well, we all talked about what I could study, it was unusual you see but might be quite good for a job of some kind, and we thought about Geography, and I must have been very amenable to every suggestion I think because I said, "Oh well alright I'll go in for Geography".
M Had you been taught Geography at school as a complete subject?
R No, I finished Geography in my third year. Yes, no Geography in fourth, I'd taken Higher English, French, German, Latin and Mathematics, but no Geography. I had to start from scratch.
M Did you go to the university and find out what the course was like or did you just take it in on trust?
R No, I took it on trust. I took it on trust. I went to work frightfully hard because we were the guinea pigs you see, we were the first students and Mr MacFarlane was the reader as such, he wasn't a professor and he made us work extremely hard. I took subsidiary economics and that was for two years, the ordinary economics class and advanced economics under Sir Alexander Gray, a very great man. That was most enjoyable and then I had to take Geology under Professor Gibb, and I had studied also English, I had English and History and what else now, that was all I think, yes, Geology.
M Now you've mentioned one or two of your teachers. Can you describe in a little more detail saying what it was that impressed you about them?
R Well Sir Alexander Gray impressed me greatly. He was a very distinguished man. He had a great sense of humour, he was a good lecturer and an interesting lecturer and we all enjoyed his lectures. He, I think was my outstanding lecturer.
M And Mr MacFarlane who was wresting presumably with this new course. How did he perform?
R Well, he was very very conscientious and extremely hard working and kept us working terribly hard. When I think of what the students have to do nowadays, we covered a tremendous lot of work. We used to have to write an essay in our final year every week and he would give us books to read, just hand us out certain books and we had to read them willy nilly and produce essays you see and we became experts at reading very quickly and we had a very heavy course.
M When you say he gave you books, was the library well stocked with text books for your course or ?
R Oh yes, the library was quite well stocked, oh yes we had everything we required, oh yes, very well stocked.
M How many of you actually went through to take Honours Geography on that course?
R Two in the first year. My class consisted of two, Norman Hendry and myself. Now Norman Hendry who died last year of cancer in St John's College, Cambridge spent all his working career in St John's College, Cambridge. He took a degree in Geology after taking the Honours degree in Geography and became a specialist in Russian Petrology and had spent his entire working career in St John's College, Cambridge. I became a teacher first. I was offered a job in Kirkcaldy High School as a Geography specialist. I went there and enjoyed it very much and then I had been awarded the McGregor prize for teaching in the Training College in Aberdeen which was the prize for the best graduate of all the year, teaching and in the practice and the learning …..
M The practice and the theory
R And the theory, that was what I was trying to say, the theory of the teaching was well. Well, I came back to Aberdeen and spent six years teaching in Aberdeen and then during the beginning of war, at the beginning of the war, I wondered whether I should go into the Wrens or whether I should continue with teaching and I saw an advertisement for a post in Edinburgh Ladies College and I applied for that instead of going into the Wrens and I won it, I was appointed there, so I taught in Edinburgh Ladies College as Head of the Geography Department during the war. At the end of the war, I applied for a job in Jordan Hill Training College in Glasgow, and there I was appointed there, and while I was there, I enjoyed the work very much indeed, had very very hard work. I had to teach many of the young men who came back from the war, there was a great many young men who applied to be teachers and 5,000 applied to join Jordan Hill Training College and 2,000 were appointed, were allowed to come and I taught quite a number of them, very hard work but awfully interesting. At the end of two years, my Head of Department was going to retire and it was likely I'd be appointed Head of Department, but in the meantime I had heard of a job in Exeter, and this particular post was very suitable as far as I was concerned, and I applied for it and I gained it. I was appointed a warden of one of the big halls of residence and lecturer in Education.
M Can we just pause at that point because we followed your career through and we've also shown I think that the two first members of that Honours geography course attained …?….(interrupted by Ross) but can we now just go back to your early days at Aberdeen University. Can you try and recall for me what your first days at the university were like? How did you feel?
R I think I was very shy. I enjoyed the university very much in many ways. I used to take part in everything, well not in everything, no, no. Perhaps I was a little isolated because you see our Geography classes were away up at the top of one of the towers in Marischal College, and we had to climb all these stairs, no lift, climb away up and we were sort of isolated there for the rest of the day. But I was interested in debating and speaking and I became the Vice-President of the Debating Society. I always attended the Debater it was called every Friday evening, and I went to the Celtic Society, enjoyed that because I was a Highlander you see.
M Do you think your shyness that you mentioned earlier arose in any way from your being a Highlander?
R Yes I think so, I think so, yes.
M Were you aware of a growth of friendships and fellow feeling amongst those who were at school in Aberdeen and of Aberdeen?
R Yes, I was very friendly with …… We'd a small sixth form class in the High School of 11, only 11 girls and I think quite a number of them came to the university, yes but they were in different classes from me. I lost most of them. My special friend Amy Nichols, she was a classicist, and she took a degree in Classics and then she went to Cambridge and she became a don in Newnham. I was you see mostly with men, not with the women, I lost the women so to speak because I was enlisted in Marischal College where it was mostly medical students and science students who were mainly men.
M How did they treat you?
R They were very polite. I think they just regarded me as a shy specimen. We didn't fraternise very much, no, we didn't. I think my interests lay in my father's church you see and possibly that occupied more of my time. I didn't seem to take much interest in the university activities except the Celtic Society and the Debating Society.
M Can you describe what the Debating Society was like, who were the leading lights?
R The leading lights were John Allen, Catherine Gavin, now they were a little older, they were older than I was but they were very very fine speakers. I remember them and I can't remember the others.
M What was a meeting of the Debater like?
R They were very very interesting. They were quite formal, always an excellent attendance.
M This would be on a Friday evening?
R On a Friday evening. It was really a major society. Everybody of note went to the Debating Society and we were quite formal on the platform and we had to prepare our speeches properly and if you spoke from the floor you had to speak very clearly and properly.
M Were there rules about who could speak and who was not entitled to speak, I mean juniors perhaps not being entitled to speak?
R No, I don't think so. Anyone could speak as far as I remember, yes, I think so, yes. But it was very well conducted and there was no rowdiness.
M Was there rowdiness generally in the university at the time? Were you aware of it in classrooms or anywhere?
R No, the only thing is when a lecturer, you know if he did something a student didn't approve of, they sometimes scraped their feet on the floor a little bit, that was the extent of the rowdiness.
M What about in other faculties, in the medical faculty, was there ever a tradition of rowdiness there or ragging?
R I suppose a little more you know in Charities. The medicals were more obvious than the other students, we all took part in Charities Week by the way. We dressed up you know and went round collecting. Yes I think the medical students certainly shone in Charities Week and then the women often were really interesting when they took part in the plays and the concerts and so on. I didn't go in for any of these.
M Do you remember who did? Who were the leading ….?
R No, I don't remember. Oh Charlie Simpson, I think he used to direct some of the concerts and the plays.
M Now you were also a member of the Celtic Society. Were you a Gaelic speaker?
R No.
M Can you describe what sort of meetings it held?
R I can't remember. You know I was trying to think, I can't remember the meetings of the Celtic Society, no.
M Was it primarily composed of Highland students?
R Highland students, yes. And again you see, as I had left the Highlands I wasn't quite of them either, you see.
M But there was no, or was there any element of nationalism?
R No, none. Oh well now, wait and I'll think about it. I was you know, I was Vice-President of the Debating Society and on one occasion we had a parliamentary debate and I had to go down to Glasgow, and I was chosen to speak as a Scottish Nationalist and I knew nothing about Scottish Nationalism, so I swotted up all the necessary information and delivered my speech in Glasgow. I remember I got a terrific reception to my great astonishment because you see here, there wasn't any national sentiment but down there, oh my, there seemed to be a great deal of it. But it didn't convert me to Scottish Nationalism. In fact I'm very much against it.
M Where did you live?
R Oh I lived in Great Western Road.
M At home?
R In the Manse, yes.
M Was this in any way inhibiting as regards your social life at all?
R I don't think so. Of course my social life was concerned more with friends that probably weren't in the university you see. My brother and sister had friends and we had a lot of friends. We'd a great many friends, we had plenty social life, I assure you. But it wasn't mainly connected with the university. Although when I think about it quite a number were my brother's friends and the church friends too.
M So you had this twin allegiance - the university and the church?
R Yes.
M What about your working conditions, did you have a room of your own at home?
R I had a bedroom of my own.
M And you worked there?
R No, I worked mainly in our dining room. I had to write a thesis you see. In these days, we began our thesis the first year and we finished in the last year. Now it wasn't a dissertation, it was a proper thesis. I wrote on Lower Deeside, a geographical analysis of the geography of Lower Deeside. Geology, communications, everything, you see. I had to visit the countryside and examine it and find out all about the farming and so on and so on. Well it took me four years like my compatriot Norman Hendry and in the end it was over 300 type pages and we had to take photographs and we had to draw maps. So it was a lot of work and I did that all in the dining room on a large table.
M Had you gone on field trips as part of your course so you were quite used to making them?
R Yes, yes. We went on field trips. We had quite a lot of field trips, yes.
M Organised by Mr MacFarlane?
R By Mr MacFarlane, yes.
M And how did you travel, did you go out by car or?
R I think we went by coach if I remember rightly.
M This would be the two of you and some of the junior classes?
R Well yes, the junior classes you see. We were not alone.
M When you were at home, did you parents take an interest in the progress of your university career?
R Yes, I think so. Yes they did indeed.
M But without in any way interfering?
R Oh they never interfered in it, no. You see my parents were both graduates themselves, they'd been accustomed to studying. When you have parents like that, they know exactly how much work you have to do. They never intrude. It was a wonderful rule when I think about it. They were very very hard working themselves and they really enjoyed helping all the members of the congregation and really it was a very happy home. We never had any sort of rules and regulations, we just had a very happy life indeed. When my father went to that church, there were over just about 400 members and when he retired in 1942, there were 1689 members. Yes, It was marvellous, wasn't it. They were a wonderful couple.
M Did he make you an allowance or…?
R No, now I was thinking about finance recently. We never thought about money. I can't tell you what money I had. I never seemed to be short of money, I must have just asked for money. I always seemed to have enough money.
M Later on you had the Carnegie grant which helped, I think you mentioned, did you not?
R Yes. Do you know when I look back on it, I can't think of money at all. I think we didn't seem to need an awful lot of money.
M Yes, what would you have used to for in fact? Did you eat at the university?
R No. I ate at home as far as I remember. Yes, I ate at home and I can't think what money I needed. I didn't get a special amount of money as far as I can remember. I must have though.
M Did you go to any of the Saturday Hops?
R Occasionally, but I never enjoyed them very much.
M Why was that?
R I don't know. I just didn't terribly like them.
M Were you aware of students who were……
R By the way, that was the one funny thing. My father, the only thing he was strict about, is if I were at a Hop you see, I was supposed to be home by 12 o'clock but I was always very pleased to come home long before that. I very rarely went to one because I didn't really enjoy them. I just can't tell you why, I didn't. No, I never enjoyed them. I didn't go very often.
M Were you aware of students who were in more straightened circumstances who didn't have very much money? Was there any sort of gulf between the richer students and the poorer students?
R You know, I never thought about that either. Isn't it terrible? I expect there were poorer students than I was but it didn't seem obvious.
M It didn't affect mixing or ….?
R No, we were all on the same level, we never thought about money like that.
M Now, most of your classes I think you said were at Marischal towards the end certainly. You would just walk home would you for your meals?
R I took the bus, I think, the neatest was the tram. I took the tram down to Marischal and then I think there was a bus between Marischal and King's.
M Now you've mentioned the speech you made without very much conviction but very successfully about nationalism. But generally speaking when you and your friends got together and talked, did political and current events form subjects of concern, for example the depression, the situation in Europe, were these things commented on ?
R I don't think so.
M How would you characterise your sort of, the student community, and its interests?
R Possibly not so intense as they are today. We used to have our rectorial elections and I used to take part in the fights in Marischal College quadrangle and threw bags of soot and flour and things like that, but I can't say that our convictions were very startling, and as for being Tories or Labour or anything like that, it never entered our heads. I don't think we bothered. Of course when did the votes come now when I think about it
M I think you would have had to vote by then but …
R Not at 18.
M Not at 18?
R No. I can't remember. We weren't very politically minded until later.
M Well yes, when you say later, you mean..
R As the war began to approach you see. We began then to realise and I was travelling abroad then and realised that Germany was arming and was very much against the peace processions because I'd been in Germany twice and I saw their arming much quicker and much more thoroughly than ever in our country. It was quite frightening.
M Were these travels made during vacations?
R Yes, during the vacations.
M This is how you spent your vacations?
R Yes, going abroad.
M As a family or with friends?
R Well, first as a family and then I went with the National Union of Students.
M And this is when you saw the preparations sort of being made?
R Yes. Well I saw the preparations being made when we were there as a family in 1936. That was three years before the war began. We were in the Rhineland my brother and sister and I and we saw the Nazis - the young soldiers exercising with spades, they were the labour camp men and with their gleaming metal spades, like metal spades, they were using them like rifles and drilling away you see and you saw they were preparing for something and everybody raised their hands and said Heil Hitler and they were all so military minded and oh dear it was quite a …….and my letters were opened. When I returned home I found that my letters had been opened before they reached home.
M You mentioned the relationship you had as a woman student with the men you encountered. Generally speaking, how would you describe the position of women students in the early thirties.
R Well, we were on a perfectly equal footing.
M In the eyes of the staff as well as your co-students?
R I'm not so sure about that. I think we were still in the days when men were more important than women. It didn't seem obvious to us. We were treated very courteously and very kindly, but I think behind in their minds you know, the professors probably thought the men's careers were really far more important than ours.
M Were there any individual professors who you felt particularly represented this attitude?
R Possibly my own, Mr MacFarlane, but not Sir Alexander Gray and not Professor Gibb, no. They were very fair minded, very clever.
M Did you meet them socially at all outside the lecture room?
R Yes, yes.
M On what occasions were they?
R Well they used to invite us to their houses. They were very nice to us, very nice indeed.
M What would happen on those occasions?
R Well I think they gave us some food and talked with us and chatted away just as most people do.
M If you had a problem, any sort of anxiety about your course work, to whom would you take it?
R Well I suppose I would take it Mr MacFarlane but I don't think I ever did take it. I didn't seem to have any problems with my work. I just mastered them myself anyway.
M Had the Women's Students Union been established then?
R We had a women's section of our …..where…..a cloakroom now, is there a women's union?
M Well there was I think that Lady Adam Smith set up in Rubislaw Terrace, wasn't there a separate women's union?
R Oh well, we didn't have that.
M You didn't have that, no. When you went to the Training Centre, what differences did you find between life and work there and life and work in the university?
R Well it's really very different. There in the Training Centre, we had students from all faculties, and we were lectured too in big classes and I'd come from a very small class you see, a very small class altogether and we were in a great group of some hundreds and we had a great variety of lecturers who had taught all sorts of subjects. Ethics, philosophy, mathematics, all sorts of things. It was very interesting and I found it quite a variety, much less depth you see, a little of everything, but we were very well trained practically.
M Did you receive do you think the same respect perhaps that you had as a student or was there in any sense an attempt to treat you more in a school like manner?
R No. They did respect us as students.
M I'm merely voicing one or two other opinions I've heard about it at different times.
R Now of course that's the difference between English training and Scottish training. The Scots do grumble and say that when they come from the university to the Training College, they go back to school. Well, I can understand how they feel about that because it's a different establishment and they're talking about school work and they're doing a lot of practical work. Certainly in England we get away from that because we are still in the university and the department where they trained Honours graduates are trained in the university itself so they don't leave the university. But no, I didn't feel it and I had very fine lecturers in the Training College, some of them were very good. In fact, the woman who lectured to us in ethics and philosophy had triple Honours, she was a very distinguished woman. A good lecturer too, so that really we were quite lucky.
M You mentioned that you had strong allegiance to your father's own church. To what extent then were you involved in religion within the university?
R Not at all.
M You didn't use the chapel ?
R Well occasionally I went to chapel. Yes, I went to the King's College Chapel sometimes but I feel I didn't belong to any of their religious societies, no.
M Were you aware of any strengths of religious feeling amongst the student body generally?
R Really I don't think I ever discussed it with them funnily enough, no. I think there was quite a lot of religious enthusiasm at that time, yes. But you see, I belonging to my father's church didn't feel it necessary to join the society, no.
M Did you participate in any sport?
R No, not any at all.
M Were you aware of a separate sporting side to the university?
R Yes, yes. I didn't have time I think you know. I was terribly busy. I seemed to have a tremendous lot of work to do. Mr MacFarlane, because he had such a small class kept us very very busily occupied and then we had other work you see. We had subsidiary geomorphology and we had geology and we had just a tremendous lot of work to do.
M I should have asked you earlier but I'll ask you now. When you were being taught geography and geology, were you shown what I imagine would then have been lantern slides. These teaching aids were all in use were they, and wall charts?
R Yes.
M And did you have a chance to examine the specimens in the museum's collections?
R Yes.
M You remember doing all that?
R Yes, and the geology department was very good in fact. Professor Gibb was very good.
M Now we brought you up in terms of your career as far as Exeter when you were appointed. I want you now if you would to try and think of your time in Exeter of lecturing in education to those who were going to teach geography and economics and also as a warden of Lopez Hall Can you try and bring out for me the comparative or indeed contrasting characteristics of the two sorts of university. Aberdeen where you had been trained and Exeter where you were then based?
R Well, in Exeter I was in touch with all the universities of England which was a great privilege. You see we had graduates from Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, Durham, London, everywhere. And that gave us a breadth of knowledge and interest, perhaps it was lacking in Aberdeen because there weren't so many students from other places in Aberdeen at that time. It was quite a parochial university, there weren't so many overseas, well I expect there were a few, yes there were some overseas students. But not so many English students. In fact, I don't remember meeting any English students at all. So that, on the whole I'd say my time at Exeter was a much more - we had a much wider horizon.
M Did you find the students there, though obviously years have elapsed and we're talking about a slightly different period. Did you find the students there were perhaps more responsive to current events and social events?
R Yes, I think so, yes. After all I was there during the swinging sixties, but they were very charming students, delightful. I learned the differences of all the areas in England. The northern students are different to the southern students you see. The southern students are much more gentle and delightful voices. The northern students are more like the Scots in they're full of grit and determination, perseverance, but I can't generalise, they vary, but I had delightful students. I enjoyed every minute of my time at Exeter.
M Would you say, or how would you characterise the difference between the two sorts of courses offered at the Scottish universities and the English universities? What does it mean in terms of the end product, student at the end of it all. How would you describe the differences between the students?
R Well, I think really on the whole there wouldn't be a great deal of difference because the professorial staff in Scotland is as good as the professorial staff in England, and I think the courses are equally good and after all the courses for an Honours degree are four years but of course the difference is that the students in England go in at a later stage and they have only three years. On the whole, I am afraid I must admit that I think English education certainly caught up with Scottish education and was at my time even a little better than infant Scottish education. But I think Scottish education is going through a revolution at the moment and will catch up again you see.
M In what way did you think the English education was slightly better?
R Well, it's difficult to say. I think the A level examinations were very good and the sixth form teaching was excellent. So taking the schools as a whole, I feel that the Scottish schools would have benefited by having had A level examinations. Apart from that, the Scottish schools are excellent and I must say that in Edinburgh when I was there and in the Merchant Company schools, there were no better schools to be found anywhere in the UK than in Edinburgh. But, I do feel that the A level examinations are very, very searching and they do train the students up to a very high level, the pupils. Once they've gone through the A level examinations, they're very well trained.
M Are there any points you yourself would like to make either about your time at the university or the value of the university to you?
R I think the university is a very fine university. I am very sorry at present that it is going through a troubled period when the finances are straightened and so on. It's an ancient university, it's a proud university and it's an excellent university and I do say as my final word that if anyone runs it down, I quote the old motto "They say what say they let them say". It's a splendid university.
M Thank you very much indeed Miss Ross.
END OF INTERVIEW
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