Recess

A Harvard First

Recently we received an e-mail notifying us of the death of Harriet Rattray Gemmel, Ed.M.’31. In it, the writer inquired whether Gemmel could have been the first woman to receive a graduate degree from the Ed School. After a little research and an afternoon at the Harvard Archives, we discovered that that honor belongs not to Gemmel, but to Lorna Myrtle Hodgkinson, Ed.M.’21, Ed.D.’22. In fact, in addition to being the first woman to receive a doctoral degree from the Ed School, Hodgkinson was also the first woman ever to receive one from Harvard University.

Hodgkinson was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1887 and grew up in Perth. She spent the first decade of the 20th century earning her teacher’s certificate and working as an assistant at the Perth Infant’s School, where she first showed an interest in the education of mentally challenged children. By 1913, Hodgkinson had become a public school teacher, and she then took a position with the Department of Public Instruction as director of special work among feeble-minded children.

She was offered paid leave in 1920 to travel to America and attend the Ed School, where her degree application indicates that she pursued a special field called “education psychology,” and her coursework reveals the type of student Hodgkinson might have been: mostly As and only a few Bs.

“I can say she would have been extremely hardworking, probably a perfectionist and driven, which probably didn’t allow for too much more than having her head stuck in a book or research,” says Kathryn Hodgkinson, Lorna’s cousin twice removed. Kathryn has been researching Lorna’s life for the past few years and hopes to produce a feature film about her legacy. (Lorna never married and had no children of her own.)

It was upon her return to Australia that Hodgkinson’s career path dramatically changed. She assumed a new position at the Department of Public Instruction and, shortly afterward, publicly criticized Australia’s neglect of its “feeble-minded” citizens before the Royal Commission on Lunacy Law, earning the reputation of being an “outspoken lady doctor.”

By shedding light on this issue, she also drew the ire of her employer: The director launched an official inquiry into the validity of her admission to Harvard. In a letter to Henry Wyman Holmes, then-dean of the Ed School, Director S.H. Smith wrote that Hodgkinson was “not qualified to speak with authority” about issues of education and mental defectiveness, and suggested that the school cancel her degree, implying that she had exaggerated her credentials for admittance to Harvard. Despite these charges, Dean Holmes wrote to the commission offering his support and speaking to her proven qualifications. (Despite the support, Hodgkinson was removed from her position and her pay was cut in half. Her dissertation still has not been published in Australia.)

Hodgkinson decided to start a private school for mentally disabled children. The Sunshine Training Institute opened in 1924 with six students. In a January 1925 Society article on the institute, she explained why she founded it. “I had to because nobody else would do it, and there is not even a state institution to which such cases can be sent for proper treatment,” she said. Today, the school, now called the Lorna Hodgkinson Sunshine Home, supports more than 400 people with disabilities.

— Amanda Dagg, a 2009 Harvard graduate, is now teaching in Nashville with Teach For America.