Somerville College, Oxford, Oxfordshire

Photograph taken 1895 © Reproduced by permission of Historic England Archive ref: cc50_00694

A group of four ladies at a tea party within the grounds of the college. The tea party was an important part of college social life in the late Victorian period. The first women's colleges opened in 1879 but the University refused to grant women degrees until 1920.

Location

Oxfordshire Oxford

Period

Victorian (1837 - 1901)

Themes

The Comptometer room at the Stratford Co-operative Society, showing girls and boys working on model 'E' comptometers. The comptometer, invented in 1887 by American, Dor Felt, was the first successful manual calculating machine. Many of the boys and girls look very young to be at work. The school leaving age was only raised to 14 in the Education Act of 1918 so they could well have been younger than that.

Somerville College, Oxford, Oxfordshire

Location

Period

Themes

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