Margaret Tuke

Dame Margaret Janson Tuke (13 March 1862, Hitchin, Hertfordshire, England21 February 1947, Hitchin) was a British academic and educator. She was the youngest child of the philanthropist James Hack Tuke. She was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1932. Education Tuke was educated at home until she was 15, then for two years at St John's School in Withdean, now part of Brighton. She also went to Bedford College in London one day a week in Michaelmas term 1879. In 1885 she became one of the first women to go up to Cambridge University, where she read Modern and Medieval Languages at Newnham, gaining the equivalent of a first class honours degree in 1888. As women were not awarded degrees by Cambridge at the time, her BA and MA were conferred upon her by Trinity College, Dublin in 1905. (Women could only receive Cambridge degrees after 1948.) Career Tuke began her academic career at Newnham College and taught French there, as a staff lecturer in modern languages, from 1890 to 1905. She then moved to University College, Bristol, to take up the position of tutor to the women students and a lectureship in French. She remained a Fellow of Newnham from 1905 until 1936.