| Administrative History | Dame Margaret Drummond was a former University of Aberdeen student |
| Description | Interview with Dame Margaret Drummond (Edith Margaret Drummond, recorded by Colin McLaren.
Transcription:
M Why did you come to Aberdeen University in the first place?
D Well chiefly because I've family living here and I had also been at Aberdeen High School.
M And what made you decide to follow the courses you followed?
D Because I eventually hoped to read for the Bar and thought this was a good beginning.
M Was this an ambition you yourself had formed or was it something your family had been keen for you to do?
D No totally personal.
M Had your family been of a University generation in fact?
D No my father had in fact been a Professor of dairying but he had died so there was no academic background to make any decision for me.
M And did your school advise you in any way or guide you?
D No I was introduced to Professor Rex Knight who was the Professor of Psychology at the time and he said he thought either medicine or the law
M In fact you followed an MA course?
D Yes I did.
M Did psychology form part of the subjects you took?
D No, I felt it was better left for those who were going to specialise.
M Why did Professor Knight see you, were you being advised by him or what?
D I was being advised by him because I was doubtful about what course to take.
M So you followed the MA course, now who among the teachers impressed you?
D Particularly Professor Carol
M Why was that?
D He was a teacher who I respected greatly because of his insistence that we did what we had to do and he would be interested in our views.
M In which year did you have him, do you remember?
D First.
M Your first year. Which among the others impressed you?
D I can't remember his name but he was a Professor of ... Reader, I think, in Constitutional Law and History.
M See if you can identify him. We have identified the teacher as James Cruickshank, now why did he impress you?
D Partly because he knew I was very interested in his subject with a view to going on to do the Law afterwards perhaps, and I found him very stimulating.
M Teaching was mainly by lecturing and you wrote essays?
D Indeed.
M Did you have much contact with the staff outwith classes?
D Practically none, in fact hearing of those who were in universities with tutorials, it was a far cry from how we were taught.
M Do you feel you lost something by this?
D I suppose so, yes I do.
M What do you think you might have gained from it?
D I think we might have got a - partly - a tooing and froing of knowledge from our tutors and also we would have got to know them better. They were all very remote on the whole at that time.
M Yes, were you ever invited to their houses, were there ever teas?
D Never, there was no contact outside whatever.
M And did the students hold the staff in awe or was there just a gulf of non - disinterest?
D I think both: I think some who were interested in the subjects, in these days you see we had to do certain things as you know, and they were rather looked on as well you went and did it, but if you were interested in your subject then you did have a deep respect and awe of someone with so much knowledge.
M Where did you live when you were a student?
D I lived in Aberdeen with a couple who made me welcome in their home because I had lost both my father and mother. My sister was married to a scientist at Craigiebuckler, which I think has now gone.
M Yes possibly.
D And I didn't want to live with them because they were newly married, but I saw a lot of them.
M Were the couple with whom you were living, regular hosts to students?
D Oh yes and my sister and brother in law were too. Their home was always open.
M Whereabouts in Aberdeen were your lodgings in fact?
D Rubislaw Den South.
M I imagine from what I have heard that this was not an area heavily populated by students?
D No.
M Did you find yourself rather cut off from the main student body there?
D No not really, because I was involved in various things in the University.
M Well what sort of things were you involved in?
D Well I was involved always, in these days, we put on big shows at the theatre which I was involved [in] not in a performing
M What did you do?
D I helped the business manager always.
M I see, this was the legal brain of yours coming out was it?
D No just fairly orderly I suppose and I was involved with the Cairngorm Club, the mountaineering club and used to go up into the hills walking quite a lot.
M But living out at Rubislaw, when did you socialise with the other students then?
D I suppose after classes.
M Do you remember where you went?
D Offhand no, the Union I think.
M What about Political Societies and Debating Societies, did those attract you?
D Not at all.
M Why was this?
D I don't think I am a debater by nature, I think you have got to enjoy the sound of your own voice, and I didn't.
M When you were living, were you on some sort of grant or had you a bursary?
D I had nine pounds a year from the Carnegie Trust for books, which sounds rather strange now.
M And that was it?
D That was it.
M So may I ask you, did you find yourself straightened for money, I mean?
D Oh yes.
M Can you remember roughly how you, what you spent money on?
D I don't think I can really, I suppose we had various commitments in the Union and clothes and going up into the hills. You had to have the proper gear for that, I suppose that was it, and books, of course.
M Were your classes mainly at King's or at Marischal?
D More at King's latterly.
M And how did you get from Rubislaw Den to King's?
D Part walk, part bus.
M Was this rather on a 9-5 basis? You would go there for your first lecture and stay at King's until the end of the day?
D More or less because I wasn't clever enough, not to have to do a lot, quite a lot of study.
M So where did you do your studying?
D Sometimes in the Library.
M What was it like to work in the Library then can you remember?
D I don't think there was anything special. The books were there and it was quiet.
M Is that where most students went?
D Yes I would have said so.
M Because presumably in lodgings it would have been quite difficult?
D No it was made easy, it was made very easy for me.
M How often did you see your parents? No your parents were dead of course. How often did you make contact with the rest of your family?
D Oh I could go there absolutely anytime, I wanted. But at weekends chiefly and all my friends were welcome.
M So a group of you might go?
D Oh easily, yes indeed.
M When you got together as students at the Union or perhaps at one of these weekends, what sort of things did you talk about, can you remember?
D It is too long ago.
M Well let me put it another way, were you aware perhaps of social or political matters engaging students attentions? I am thinking for example of the great depression, of the imminence of war, of political matters of that sort.
D I think the possibility of war had cropped up in a lot of minds, it certainly had in mine because I had been to Germany and stayed with a German family and I was in Rostock which was not far from a very big Messerschmit factory where they were working 24 hours a day and that impinged on my mind and I found that rather unnerving to think this was going on, so I think the possibility of war was very real.
M What had taken you to Germany?
D I had stayed with a family in France one summer and I wanted to go to Germany to see them....
M Had this been fixed up by the University in any way or was this purely your own initiative?
D It was fixed up by my old French teacher in High School.
M I see. And having seen this sort of thing in Germany, was it the sort of thing that coming back you would have talked to your friends about?
D Oh indeed, we were very aware of this.
M Were you aware of perhaps elsewhere in the student body, an active concern on matters such as this, the Spanish Civil War?
D No that didn't touch me at all until I read about it.
M How would you describe the, well let me ask you another question first. Were your friends mainly amongst the other women students or were they distributed evenly?
D Oh good mixture.
M What would you say the position of women students was then in the University at that time?
D I don't think we really thought of ourselves as different, I think it was a student body, but I don't think we felt we were any different.
M Do you think the professoriate regarded you in any way as different?
D No I don't, I think we were students.
M And took equal part in, you didn't debate, but other people would have debated.
D No I don't think there was any feeling of discrimination.
M Was there any sort of gulf or gap in the social sense between the richer students and the poorer students in terms of mixing?
D I would have said slight. One was aware of those who had come from the country, not quite with a barrel of oatmeal and herrings but a little bit of great sacrifices had been made to send them and they weren't able to join in everything for this reason
M Partly because of financial reasons, partly because they were working?
D Both, I recall that very clearly.
M Can you try and define for me how you felt towards students of that nature? I am asking because one might nowadays feel great admiration.
D I think it was admiration, yes.
M What happened to them when they finished and taken their degrees, were you aware of what happened after that?
D I don't know because you see I went immediately to London to do a secretarial course, with a view again to reading for the Bar in the south and then the war came.
M Now you could have done an MA LL.B here, I think at that time and got your law qualification here, what decided you against doing that?
D I think I felt I wanted a slightly wider training and by having a secretarial training gave me time to sort out.
M Then the war came, and you went into the WRNS?
D Not immediately.
M What did you do before that?
D I was a typist with what was then Central Electricity Board, for nine months, and we were living in great comfort, we had been evacuated to the country, living in great comfort, and as I had no dependants I felt I ought to be doing a bit more
M Had there been any, or the equivalent of the modern cadet force, OTC organisation at the University, you didn't mention it as one of your interests?
D It was alive, not at all.
M So it was only during the war that you became interested in the WRNS. To what extent do you feel that your university experience had equipped you first of all, for the legal career, or the proposed legal career that you envisaged. Did you feel that you were confident of embarking upon it?
D Yes because I think I had been given a very good grounding here and I think I was taught to think logically, which I felt a good beginning.
M And when you were in the WRNS, did you find again that the experience here paid off in any way?
D Oh yes.
M In what ways?
D Again, a width of interest which I think is terribly important if you are in the service, to have a width of interest.
M Were you aware of the value of this breadth of studies that you had when you were a student?
D I would say not entirely.
M Did you find the effort of following a group of subjects, as opposed to pursuing just one, as one might do at another University, stressful?
D No.
M But you did say you had to study quite hard to keep up?
D I did, because I wasn't particularly clever.
M So the realisation of the value of this breadth of studies was something that you only realised when you were in fact performing and making use of it?
D I think initially, in these days, we weren't very aware of the things that they are aware of today, and I think it came to us much more slowly.
M In your capacity as a very senior, as a director of the WRNS in London, a number of people came through your hands, girls came through your hands, were you in any way able to spot those who had a similar sort of past, who had this broad Scottish University, does it distinguish people do you think?
D I do think it distinguishes people, but when I went South, I found it very advisable to keep your mouth shut.
M Why was that?
D About having a degree.
M Why?
D You were looked on in these days as something slightly strange.
M Because you were a woman with a degree, or because?
D A woman with a degree.
M So even if there was no feeling about women students at the University itself, outside the University?
D Not in Scotland
M It was purely a southern thing?
D Yes very very marked.
M Just going back to the period when you were a student and you were socialising with the students, you said there was something of a view of awe, of the professoriate, one has heard from other sources of a certain amount of ragging that went on in classes, largely in the Medical School, but were you ever aware of it on the Arts side?
D No I think one heard that it was very much on the Medical side, but not really in the Arts side, not to my knowledge.
M Thinking of the friends you made and the ones you took to your family and so on, were they from your own, people following the same subjects as yourself, or were they spread across?
D No spread across, because I had quite a few friends in the Medical Faculty. No I would have said it was a fairly cross section of people.
M Is there anything now that we haven't covered that comes to mind, that you think might be relevant?
D Just really that I count myself very fortunate to have had the opportunity of coming to Aberdeen University. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I feel it laid the foundations for a lot of my good fortune.
M Dame Margaret thank you very much indeed.
Footnote: The Professor Carol to whom she referred was John Antony Carol, Professor of Natural Philosophy
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