ABSTRACT

Studies have identified many close personal and professional partnerships among the pioneering generations of women in higher education, and there has been much debate over whether sexual relationships should be viewed as homoerotic, lesbian liaisons. After leaving full-time employment, Margery Fry's was able to deepen her commitment to the furtherance of women's rights by taking up a national post in the suffrage movement. Some of the decisive military engagements of the First World War took place while Margery was adjusting to her independent life in 1914. By the autumn, around thirty relief workers – some Quakers, some young male pacifists – had left England, but they were delayed in Paris, awaiting permits. Most women's colleges and hostels in the twentieth century were hotbeds of suffragism – as well as centres for the promotion of women's rights more generally – and there is no reason to believe that University House was any exception.