Louisa Lumsden

Dame Louisa Innes Lumsden DBE (31 December 1840 – 2 January 1935) was a Scottish pioneer of female education. Lumsden was one of the first five students Hitchen College, later Girton College, Cambridge in 1869 and one of the first three women to pass the Tripos exam in 1873. She returned as the first female resident and tutor to Girton in 1873.

From 1877-82, Lumsden became the first Headmistress of St Leonards School, Fife, and first warden of University Hall, University of St Andrews which opened in 1896. She is credited with introducing lacrosse to St Leonards.

In 1908, Lumsden was asked to become the President of the Aberdeen branch of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). When Scottish suffrage organisations organised the planting of The Suffrage Oak to mark some women getting the vote in 1918, Lumsden at age 78 was given the 'honour' of planting the tree.

Louisa was third daughter and youngest of seven children of Clements Lumsden, Aberdeen advocate and Writer to the Signet, and Jane, née Forbes. After her father's death in 1853, when she was 12, Louisa's mother moved temporarily to Cheltenham and Louisa attended a private school there, then becoming a boarder at the Château de Koekelberg, Brussels, which she left in 1856 for a smaller school in London. She returned to live with her family in Glenbogie, Aberdeenshire in 1857.

Lumsden attended classes of the Edinburgh Ladies Education Association from 1868 to 1869, with lectures by University of Edinburgh professors, though women students were still not awarded full degrees.

A college for women was established by Emily Davies in 1869 in Hitchin, 27 miles from Cambridge, as the first for women students studying for the Cambridge Tripos examinations on equal terms with men. As Girton College it moved to new buildings on its present site in 1873.

Louisa Lumsden was one of the first five students to be taught at Hitchin and one of the first three female students to sit unofficial University of Cambridge Tripos examinations in Lent term 1873, the others being Rachel Cook and Sarah Woodhead. The three were commemorated in song as the Girton Pioneers.

Louisa Lumsden is recorded as a student at Girton from 1869 to 1872, a tutor from 1873 to 1874 and recipient of the Classical Tripos in 1892. She resigned her post as tutor after conflicts with Emily Davies over neglect of student welfare.