Isabel Marion Weir Johnston

Isabel Marion Weir Johnston
Born Marion Johnston
25 November 1883
Derry
Nationality Irish
Alma mater Trinity College Dublin

Isabel Marion Weir Johnston (1883-) was the first woman to enter Trinity College, Dublin in January 1904.

Biography

DU Elizabethan Society Crest

Johnston was born 25 November 1883 in Derry City, County Londonderry in Ireland to a Presbyterian family. Her father John Barr Johnston (1843 - 1919) was a knight, a merchant, as well as an alderman, mayor and justice of the peace from Tyrone. Her mother was Isabella Weir from Donegal. She had an older brother, John Alexander, who studied law, an older sister Margaret Chambers who became a secretary and a younger sister Kathleen Maude.[1][2][3][4]

Johnston was the first woman to enter Trinity where she read English and French.[5] She was followed later the same year by the next women undergraduates, Ellen Tuckey and Avarina Shegog. She founded the women's debating society, The Dublin University Elizabethan Society, in 1905. Although "an active and able student" Johnston left before finishing her degree and married Fellow Stephen Kelleher, a mathematician and Catholic from Cork.[6][7] Keller was the only Roman Catholic Fellow in the university at the time.[8] Kelleher became the Erasmus Smith Professor of Mathematics in Trinity for 1914-1917.[9][10]

The family later moved to England where Johnston became a founder member of the London branch of the DU Women graduates association.

The women in Trinity were closely chaperoned when they started and unable to attend lectures were permitted only to sit the exams.[11][12][13]

References

  1. ↑ "Civil Records" (PDF).
  2. ↑ "Census records 1901".
  3. ↑ "Census 1911".
  4. ↑ "History of the family".
  5. ↑ "Women's hour at Trinity". The Irish Times. Mar 6, 2004.
  6. ↑ "census for Stephen Kelleher".
  7. ↑ "Census for married couple".
  8. ↑ "Election of new Fellow". The Guardian Newspaper. May 31, 1904.
  9. ↑ "List of Mathematics positions".
  10. ↑ "Birth of Stebphen" (PDF).
  11. ↑ Judith Harford; Claire Rush (2010). Have Women Made a Difference?: Women in Irish Universities, 1850-2010. Peter Lang. pp. 63–. ISBN 978-3-0343-0116-9.
  12. ↑ "Women's hour at Trinity". Irishtimes.com.
  13. ↑ E. Lisa Panayotidis; Paul Stortz (19 September 2017). Women in Higher Education, 1850-1970: International Perspectives. Taylor & Francis. pp. 81–. ISBN 978-1-134-45824-0.
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