Mary Paley Marshall
Mary Paley Marshall | |
---|---|
Born | Mary Paley 24 October 1850 Ufford, Soke of Peterborough, England |
Died | 19 March 1944 Cambridge, England | (aged 93)
Nationality | British |
Alma mater | Cambridge University |
Occupation | Economist |
Employer(s) | University College, Bristol, Oxford, Marshall Library of Economics |
Known for | One of the first women to study at the University of Cambridge |
Spouse | Alfred Marshall |
Mary Marshall (née Paley; 24 October 1850 – 19 March 1944)
Childhood
Paley was born in the village of Ufford, near Stamford, Lincolnshire, second daughter of the Reverend Thomas Paley and his wife Judith née Wormald.[1] Her father was Rector of Ufford and a former Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge.[4] She was a great-granddaughter of the theologian and philosopher William Paley.[1]
Education
She was educated at home, excelling in languages: in 1871, after performing well in entrance exams, she earned a scholarship to become one of the first five students at the recently founded Newnham College in Cambridge.[5] She took the Moral Sciences Tripos in 1874, and was classed between a first and second-class, though as a woman she was debarred from graduation. Paley sat the exam with Amy Bulley. They were some of the first women to take tripos examinations and they sat the exams in Marion and Benjamin Hall Kennedy's drawing room. Paley described Professor Kennedy as excitable, but he would sometimes doze whilst invigilating. The only evidence she was given of her work was a confidential letter from her examiners. Women sitting the tripos examination was a milestone for Cambridge University and the importance can be gauged by the people involved. The people who delivered Paley and Bulley's papers were Alfred Marshall, Henry Sidgwick, John Venn and Sedley Taylor.[6] She was to pass with honours but this did not entitle her to an official degree. Cambridge was to resist recognising its own women graduates; a restriction that was, later, to be supported by her future husband.[7]
Life
In 1875 she was a 25-year-old economics lecturer at Newnham College. Paley had established herself financially as she was the first women lecturer at Cambridge University. She was stylish and known for wearing clothes made from the fashionable prints designed by the Pre-Raphaelites.[7]
In 1876, Paley became engaged to
There is no record of her publicly disagreeing with her husband's support for the university's discrimination against women. She taught at Newnham and Girton until 1916 and the university did not recognise its own would-be women graduates, with a formal degree, until over 30 years after she retired.[7]
Mary was a friend of Newnham's principal
Mary's husband Alfred became increasingly obstructive to the cause of women's education, believing that women had nothing useful to say.[11] When Cambridge began to consider giving women degrees, he decided to object to the idea despite the views of friends and colleagues. Mary was nevertheless devoted to her husband, and an important unofficial collaborator in his own economic writings.[citation needed]
According to James and Julianne Cicarelli, who wrote a book entitled Distinguished Women Economists, she was listed by John Maynard Keynes in his Essays on Biography. The Cicarellis say that “Keynes held her in the highest regard and considered her an intellectual and thinker every bit as significant to the historical development of economics as her husband or any of the other economists about whom he wrote.”[3]
After her husband died in 1924, Mary became Honorary Librarian of the
Mary Marshall's reminiscences were published posthumously as What I Remember (1947).[15]
References
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/39167. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ "Mary Paley Marshall". www.hetwebsite.net. Retrieved 2 March 2019.
- ^ a b "13 women who transformed the world of economics". World Economic Forum. Retrieved 2 March 2019.
- ^ "Paley, Thomas (PLY828T)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ Mary Paley Marshall, One of Five Original Newnham College Students, Newnham College, ArtUK, Retrieved 20 February 2017
- ISBN 978-0-521-86155-7.
- ^ a b c Kennedy Smith, Ann (20 October 2016). "Mary Paley Marshall". Sheroes of History. Retrieved 22 November 2018.
- ^ "Professor Sarah Smith with Mary Paley Marshall". January 2000.
- .
- OCLC 271080917.
- ^ Rooms of Our Own | Lucy Cavendish College Archived 2011-11-21 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Frost, Simon (12 November 2011). "History of the Marshall Library". www.marshall.econ.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 3 May 2021.
- ^ "Lucy Cavendish College Site and Buildings" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 September 2011.
- ^ A Guide to Churchill College, Cambridge: text by Dr. Mark Goldie, pp. 62, 63 (2009)
- ISSN 0013-0133.
Further reading
- Cicarelli & Cicarelli (2003). Distinguished Women Economists. pp. 113–116.
- Marshall, Mary Paley (1947). What I Remember.
- Keynes, John Maynard (June–September 1944). "Mary Paley Marshall". Economic Journal. Reprinted in Keynes (1972, 2010)
- Keynes, John Maynard (2010) [1972]. Essays in biography.