THE PROGRESS OF EVENTS

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2726, 22 March 1916, Page 3

THE PROGRESS OF EVENTS

NEW OPENINGS FOR UNIVERSITY , WOMEN. It used to be a common subject for lament that teaching was almost the only important profession open to women who had received a University education, states the "Queen. Gradually this has ceased to be tho case, and the powers which a liberal education has developed have been utilised in many different employments. But the war has further stimulated tho progress of this movement, 1 and it is quite remarkable to find from the latest report ot Newnham College howumany kinds ot important work are being performed by women who have been at Cambridge., The principal of Newnham, Miss Stephen, states in her report that Miss N. Bancroft has taken a man s place in the National Physical Laboratory, and is standardising and testiug instruments for various Government Departments; Miss H. Borchardt is engaged m training women as bank clerks to take the place of men who have enlisted, and in her capacity as accountant has placed many war societies on a sound financial basis; Miss E. Dutt has assisted in the tabulation of machinery returns for the Ministry of Munitions. Then we have evidence of the utility of the newer educational organisations of women in the fact that the high mistress of St. Paul s School (Miss F. R. Gray) has, with other headmistresses, formed a Union of Schools for war work, which enables girls of the schools to send help of various kinds to the soldiers. A former lecturer at Newnham, Miss H. G. Klaassen, after serving as forewoman of a cartridge factory, was appointed ' to the charge of a shooting range at the same factory where the cartridges are tested. Miss B. D. Newcomb is an employment manager in some munition works at Manchester. Miss K. Rathbone organised' parties of educated women as fruit pickers, and.also acts as captain and adjutant of the Women's Volunteer Reserve in Sutton Coldfield, while Mrs. Rackham, the Cambridge Poor Law Guardian and formerly chairwoman of the Executive committee of the . National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, has boen appointed temporary factory inspector, and is at present hard at work in the manufactivf- , ing districts at Lancashire. Tho scientific and medical training of Cambridge women is finding its rightful appreciation, and the Government has given employment which must not bo. 1 more definitely specified to one lady who : took high honours hi the _ Natural ■ Sciences Tripos, making chemistry hor i speciality. Miss M. B. Webb is serving i as honorary doctor to Army dependents, I replacing a surgeon 'who 'has gone ■ abroad, and Miss M. M. -M'Arthur is 1 working in the Press Translation Bureau > of the War Office. Girton College could

probably toll a similar story, although it has not given so full an account of the war work of its former students-. But it is to an old Girtonian, Miss Ethel Sargant, Hon. Fellow of tho College, and. formerly president of the • Botany Section of the British Association, that educated women are indebted for the valuable register of their_ names and qualifications—a register which has been extensively used by the' Government authorities in making recent appointments. It is also a Girtonian, Miss Hermia Durham, who has been chosen to fill the new post (carrying a salary of £700 a year) of Chief Woman Inspector in the Labour Exchanges and Unemployment Insurance Department of the Board of Trade. _ After the Insurance Commissioncrships, for which the remuneration is £1000 a year, this is, we believe, the best, post under Government that a woman can hold.

. Nurse Donald, formerly ■ Plunket Nurse in Napier, has booked her passage to England by the Arawa. It is her intention of taking up 'nursing wdrk on the Western front. It is eight years since she was appointed Plunket Nurse in Napier, and m the interim 800 babies have passed through her hands.

Mr. and Mrs. J. Blnndell, formerly of Carterton, left early in the week for Wairoa.

An interesting personality, Mrs. David Shaw, senr., of Tauwhare, Waikato, died at the residence of her daughter, Mrs., George Walker, Ardniore, recently.' Mrs. Shaw was 94 years of age, and had a varied and stirring life. With her husband she went first to Valparaiso, but conditions in South. America were unbearable, so they returned to Scotland. Mr. and Mrs. Shaw came to New. Zealand by the Viola over fifty-one years ago, and took up land on the Otau Settlement, near Clevedon—then called Wairoa Southon the'banks of the Wairoa River. Then cames the Thames rush, to which she and her husband responded, but, not liking lifo on a goldfield, they returned to Oleredon and took up land. Afterwards Mr. and Mrs. Shaw removed to Waikato when the district was opened upland resided there ever since. Her husband pre-deceased Mrs.; Shaw 28 years ago. She was a splendid specimen of the old pioneer, and thought, nothing in the early days of dividing a hundredweight of flour with her daughter and carrying l it for miles through the bush to her home, or. <rf cooking food for her'husband and carrying it sis or seven miles to him at his work on contracts. She had five sons and one daughter, with 45 grandchildren and 89 great-grandchildren; of these descendants, 137 are still alive _ and in Ivew Zealand;.

Mrs. Hickev, whose death occurred at Thames last week, was acquainted with Pukekohe in its earliest days when the site of tho present township was covered with dense bush. She was born in 1843 in Dublin, Ireland, and at an early ago went to South Africa, where she spent a couple of years. From Cape Town she came to r>ew Zealand, landing in Auckland in January, 1865. A month later she married Mr. Jeremiah Hiqkey, whom she had met in Cape Town. Mr. and Mrs. Jlickey proceeded direct to Pukekohe and settled on what was then known as the Cape Settlement, in the vicinity oi the present lloman Catholic Church, where they have ever since lived. Mrs. Hickev is survived by her husband and bv a 'grown-up family of three sons and three daughters, three sons having predeceased her. There are U. grandsons and one grand-daughter living The funeral took place in the Pukekohe Roman Catholic Cemetery m the presence of a largo gathering of old settlers.