Unbridling the Tongues of Women - The University of Adelaide

Unbridling the tongues of women
was considered inappropriate, but because there were not facilities. It is not difficult
to imagine satisfaction and amusement in Edith Cook’s mind as she offered that
response to the commissioners.
A month before it opened, Spence had, in the press, been defending the state
Advanced School for Girls against charges of expense. 43 She probably regarded it as
a more important achievement than the admission of women to university degrees.
She complained that, since she regarded ‘special knowledge and special culture as a
means for advancing the culture of all’, except for women who graduated in medicine,
she found university women deficient in those ‘altruistic ideas’ which ‘complete
[the] development of the human being’. 44
She was, no doubt, highly delighted at the appointment of Edith Cook, a sister
Unitarian and family friend, to the post of the school’s headmistress, which she held
until 1885. 45 Although she had given up teaching in 1850, Spence continued to enjoy
the change of giving a lesson. The Laws We Live Under was used in the Advanced
School for Girls as well as in the elementary schools, and Edith Cook occasionally
invited her to take a lesson on the subjects it treated. Spence’s capacity for entertaining
children probably made her a thoroughly engaging teacher. One of her students
recalled a day which created an awe and excitement among the students that was
quite disproportionate to the shrivelled tissue of the written account. In talking
about local manufacturing, Miss Spence referred to the tweed factory at Lobethal.
‘One girl said, “My dress is made of Lobethal tweed”. Miss Spence replied, “Take
your fingers out of your mouth, Miss Lobethal tweed. We bow to you”, and she did’.
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