First among equals

The daughter of a German immigrant horse-trader, Edith (Edie) Emily Dornwell was far more familiar with the stables than the Manor House and was certainly not born to a life of privilege and ease. 

Yet, her parents clearly supported her, and her obvious intellect, sending her to school at the State Central Model School. 

There she won a bursary, one of six from the State Government that year, to continue her education at the Advanced School for Girls. Edith shone, passing with honours in French, German, animal physiology and modern history. 

It was the study of physiology, an unusual choice for anyone at the time, which proved momentous, and she was encouraged to study science by Edward Stirling, who taught the subject at the school, and lectured at the new University of Adelaide. 

The timing was in her favour, the University having recently won an international academic battle on two fronts – the right to create a science degree, and also to admit women on an equal basis to men. 

Edith later wrote: “Dr Stirling said that if I were successful, and he was convinced that I would be, I would gain the distinction of being the first woman graduate of the Adelaide University, and the first woman to graduate in science in Australia.” 

Edith completed her degree in 1885, with the Vice-Chancellor, Chief Justice Samuel Way, remarking she had not just done honour to the University, but had “vindicated the right of her sex to compete”. 

In a letter to a friend, Edie said: “I have the happiest memories of the work under such brilliant professors. Although there was so much prejudice in those days against the advancement of women, and against their entry into universities, I had every reason to be grateful to professors and students. They evinced no objection to the presence of a woman among them, and without exception did their best to make my position easy and comfortable.” 

After graduating, Edith became a teacher at her old school, later moving to become a teacher at Methodist Ladies College, Hawthorn, Victoria, and subsequently headmistress at Riviere College, Woollahra, NSW. 

In 1893 she married “charming English gentleman” Lionel Charles Raymond, sailing with him to Fiji where he took up a position with Commonwealth Sugar Refineries. 

In The New Women – Adelaide’s early women graduates (1986 Wakefield Press) author Alison Mackinnon asks: “How easy was it for this independent, able, woman to give up the benefits of her chosen career and throw herself behind her husband’s career and her children’s upbringing? 

“We shall never know. Her family remember her as a woman of tiny stature and strong political views. She was a humanist, not a church goer, who read a great deal. 

“Those neighbours in suburban Epping (NSW), who knew Mrs Raymond in her eighties as a keen gardener and devoted family woman, may not have suspected that in 1885 she was the toast of Adelaide.” 

Written by Mark Douglas, Editor of Lumen.