Frances Melville

Frances Melville

Frances Helen Melville was a suffragist and lifelong campaigner for women's education. Melville graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1897 with a first-class Master of Arts in Philosophy. She stayed on as a tutor for 3 years before working as a lecturer at Cheltenham Ladies' College. Following this, she moved to St Andrews to become the second warden of University Hall. Melville was the first woman to attain a Bachelor of Divinity in Scotland in 1910. She became mistress of Queen Margaret College, where she served from 1909 until its closure in 1935. Melville was awarded The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1935, recognising her work on increasing access to higher education for women.

greatthinkers,womensta,womenofstandrews

dr203@st-andrews.ac.uk

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Frances Melville

TEXT

Melville was born on October 11th, 1873 in Edinburgh, and was educated there at Geogre Watson's Ladies' College. She became one of the first women enrolled at the University of Edinburgh in 1892, and graduated in 1897 with MA of philosophy (Honours). She remained at the University of Edinburgh as a tutor in logic and psychology. She began her involvement in politics at the University of Edinburgh as president of the Women's Representative Committee and chair of the Women's Debating Society, moving to Cheltenham Ladies' College in 1899. She lectured there for a year before moving to St Andrews in 1900, when she was appointed the second-ever warden of University Hall. At St Andrews she attempted to bridge the gap between residental and commuter female students, while also becoming the first woman in Scotland to receive a bachelor's degree in divinity (1910). Melville was appointed mistress of Queen Margaret's College, Glasgow, in 1909, where she headed women's classes until the college closed in 1935. In 1927, Melville became the first woman in Scotland to receive an LLD, and in 1935 she was made an OBE. She retired to Dalry, Kirkcudbrightshire. Throughout her life, Melville played an important role in both the Edinburgh National Society for Women's Suffrage and the Scottish Universities' Women's Suffrage Union, as well as president of the Glasgow Women Citizens' Association and member of the Glasgow Society for Equal Citizenship. From 1906-1908, Melville was heavily involved in a case of female graduates trying to vote on university representatives in Parliament. Melville, along with four other women, appealed the case all the way to the House of Lords before ultimately losing the case.In 1938 she ran herself for a seat in the House of Commons and came in second out of four.

Melville wrote a collection of essays on the value and limits to women's education entiteled The Position of Women: Actual and Real (1911). In it she laid out the benefits and limits applied to women's education and stated that there was a false divide set up between domesticity and education, when in reality they could both occur in a woman's lifetime. She contributed to St Andrews for many future generations when she created the St Andrews Association of University Women in 1909 and represented all female university students as president of the British Federation of University Women in 1935. Frances Melville died on March 7th, 1962 in Edinburgh.