This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Linde Lunney. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Born: 31 March 1843, Ireland
Died: 13 February 1921
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: NA
Welsh, Elizabeth (1843–1921), pioneering woman academic and mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, was born 31 March 1843 in Co. Down, eldest among four daughters of John Welsh of Gransha, Kircubbin, Co. Down, a farmer on over a hundred acres, probably prosperous and possibly also a linen merchant, and Eliza Welsh (née Dalzell), who lived when widowed in Portaferry, Co. Down. The family was descended from Josias Welsh (d. 1634), presbyterian minister of Templepatrick, Co. Antrim, a grandson of the Scottish reformer John Knox. Elizabeth’s younger sister Mary married John R. Leebody. Elizabeth Welsh learned Latin and Greek from the Rev. James Rowan, presbyterian minister of Kircubbin, and attended a boarding school in Belfast, which taught her scarcely any mathematics or science. However, after receiving special mathematics coaching from the Kircubbin schoolteacher, she was successful in an unprecedented examination held in London in 1871 to award scholarships to attend what was then called Hitchin College, known as Girton College after its move in 1872 to new premises. It had been founded just three years earlier, as one of the first institutions for women’s higher education. Welsh read classics; women were not allowed to take degrees or attain full university membership in Cambridge until 1947, but in 1872 three women students, senior to Welsh, were permitted to sit the tripos examination. In celebration of their success, and of the resulting concessions on access to the tripos, Elizabeth Welsh wrote a poem, ‘The white sheet’, a clever parody of the familiar sea-song by Allan Cunningham, ‘A wet sheet and a flowing sea’. In this college song, Welsh laughed at the fulminations from the men’s colleges and rejoiced, perhaps somewhat prematurely, that the ‘struggle’s o’er, the victory’s won, Our heritage the “B”, The world of letters is our own, And merry maids are we’.
She qualified in the classical tripos in 1875, taught for a year in Manchester High School, and then returned to Girton as resident classical lecturer. She was a popular and successful teacher, and gradually assumed other roles in the college; she was vice-mistress from 1880, and was chiefly responsible for developing and maintaining the college’s gardens even before 1883, when she was appointed garden steward. In 1885 she became mistress of Girton, to the satisfaction of many who wished to see a Girton graduate in the post. She oversaw the development of a large extension to the grounds, from about 1886, and an extension to college capacity with the building of new rooms in the Tower Wing, and a chapel. Further extensions were constructed at the turn of the century, and in 1902 student numbers were almost double what they had been when she herself had been a student. In her early years in the college, she hosted biannual dances which were very popular.
Welsh retired in 1903, aged 60, after some years of deteriorating health; her portrait was painted by Sir John Lavery, and hangs in the college to which she had devoted a lifetime. She died 13 February 1921 in Morningside, Edinburgh, and was buried in Girton churchyard.