Mary Bennett (academic)

Mary Letitia Somerville Bennett (9 January 1913 – 1 November 2005) was a British academic, best known for her tenure as Principal of St Hilda's College, Oxford between 1965 and 1980.

Born Mary Letitia Somerville Fisher, she was the daughter of historian H. A. L. Fisher and Lettice Fisher, the founder of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child.

She was educated at

In 1955, she married senior civil servant John Sloman Bennett, who would be happy to take a back seat when she took over as Principal of the women's college, St Hilda's, from Kathleen Major in 1965.

She was not the obvious choice but she proved ideal. Student power was on the increase and Bennett resisted making protest difficult. It was said that students were encouraged by her to join demonstrations. She resisted the move to mixed colleges as she thought that the men's colleges just wanted to cherry pick her best students. As a result St Hilda's was behind the curve when it finally admitted men as well.^[1]

In retirement, she wrote up her researches into family history. St Hilda's commissioned Jean Cooke to paint a portrait of its principal.^[2][3]

Publications

• The Ilberts in India, 1882–1886: an Imperial Miniature. London: British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia. 1995.
• Who was Dr Jackson? Two Calcutta Families, 1830–1855. London:
  ISBN 978-0-907799-78-8
  .
  • Vogeler, Martha S. (11 July 2014). "Bennett, Mary. Who Was Dr Jackson? Two Calcutta Families, 1830–1855".
    JSTOR 4054289
    .
• Mary Bennett: an Autobiography. Oxford: St Hilda's College. 2006.