If owt’s been dunn ‘ere, Miss Punnett’s dunnit: The Punnett Hall

Li Wei, Director and Dean of IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, at the launch event for Punnett Hall. He stands in front of a slide with a picture of Margaret Punnett and the text “IOE Events”. Credit: IOE Communications.

22 October 2024

By Georgina Brewis

As IOE celebrates one of its founding leaders, Margaret Punnett, in the naming of its space, Georgina Brewis, Professor of Social History, reflects on the path of pioneering women in the early 1900s and their recognition in the fabric of university campuses today.

Margaret Punnett (1867–1946) was born in Lincolnshire in 1867. She was born just at the right time for middle-class women to receive a better education than their mothers – she was educated at South Hampstead High School and went on to take a University of London BA in German and Mathematics in 1889. Again, this was good timing, as the University had only opened its degrees to women in 1878.

In 1892 Punnett moved to the Cambridge Teacher Training College for Women as a ‘Gilchrist Scholar’. This is quite important to note, as it speaks to the importance of new sources of funding that enabled the spread of women’s education. The Gilchrist Educational Trust, founded in 1865 in the will of John Borthwick Gilchrist, was a pioneering and significant source of funding for women in higher education.

Punnett received her teacher’s certificate with distinction in 1893 and obtained a University of London teacher’s diploma in the same year. She took a post at Saffron Walden Training College for elementary teachers and won a second Gilchrist grant, the Gilchrist Travelling Studentship.

Punnett returned as principal of her old college, the Cambridge Teacher Training College for Women, in May 1900. However, her lack of teaching experience in secondary schools and the pressure of succeeding the brilliant founder, Elizabeth Hughes, made Punnett’s three years in charge challenging. The difficulties were compounded by a falling student roll. She resigned in 1902, under pressure from the college council.

Aged 34, Punnett was then appointed as mistress of method at the newly established London Day Training College (LDTC) in 1902 – later to become the Institute of Education (IOE), as it is still known today. In 1905, along with that of her male counterpart, the ‘master of method’, Punnett’s title was changed to vice-principal.

Margaret Punnett (front row, centre-right), other staff, and students of the London Day Training College, c1910. UCL Special Collections, Records of the Institute of Education, IE/PHO/2/15.

Punnett was to serve as deputy for 31 years, working closely with both the LDTC’s first principal, John Adams, and his successor, Percy Nunn. Her role at the LDTC was crucial. She undertook the bulk of the lecturing, in subjects including methods of teaching, arithmetic, psychology, and scripture, alongside taking on responsibility for women students and a heavy administrative load.

Punnett still found some time to pursue her love of mathematics. In 1913 she published The Groundwork of Arithmetic—A Handbook for Teachers, which was accompanied by a book of practical exercises.

Punnett took a close personal interest in the welfare of her students at the LDTC. She was warmly remembered by former colleagues and students as wholly unselfish and constantly busy, apparently spending much time ‘covering the tracks’ of her male colleagues John Adams and Percy Nunn.

Margaret Punnett, who served as deputy for 31 years, with John Adams (centre) and Percy Nunn, c.1905. UCL Special Collections, Records of the Institute of Education, IE/PHO/2/46.

This commitment was recognized in the words of a student song: ‘If owt’s been dunn ‘ere, Miss Punnett’s dunnit’. On her retirement in 1933 the responsibilities of her post were judged so onerous that they had to be divided up into two separate roles. Her principal contribution was described by IOE historian Richard Aldrich as being to the ‘personal and professional development of countless students’.

Margaret Punnett died in 1946 and there is an obituary of her by James Fairgrieve, a colleague, in the Londinium, the IOE’s student magazine. In subsequent years she featured repeatedly in various profiles of IOE women. She was warmly remembered in the 1952 jubilee history of the IOE, while a 1975 issue of the Institute Newsletter listed Punnett at the head of its ‘portrait gallery of Institute women’. Punnett has more recently been featured in similar pieces and IOE blog posts, and written about in student essays – I marked an undergraduate dissertation about her in 2017.

In 1975, after many building delays, IOE staff and students finally moved into the IOE’s new home at 20 Bedford Way, where it still resides today. The main halls were named after former directors: Nunn, Clarke, Jeffery and Elvin. The very largest, Logan Hall, was named after Sir Douglas Logan, then Principal of the University of London, of which IOE was part. The IOE has given the name of its first director to the hall of residence John Adams Hall and two rounds of John Adams Postdoctoral Fellowships. When, in the 1990s, the IOE’s library relocated to Bedford Way it was named after former director, Peter Newsam.

But for 50 years there was no space named after a woman. It was a review of naming of spaces started in 2018 that began the process that has led to us formally opening the Punnett Hall in 2024. Of course, Margaret Punnett did not serve as director or principal of IOE so that’s the easy explanation for why she had no hall named after her. Though it would not have been possible for her to head a co-educational institution at that time, and in fact, IOE had no woman as a director until the appointment of Becky Francis in 2016.

Georgina Brewis and Li Wei cut the cake at the launch event for Punnett Hall. Credit IOE Communications.

Moreover, as an unmarried woman without children – as nearly all academic women were before the Second World War – Punnett had no family left to continue relationships with IOE, and no legacies to leave, as other directors have had.

All of these structural inequalities explain why IOE, and many other higher education institutions, have very few spaces named after women, even in the 2020s. Naming, de-naming, and re-naming are political acts and we know that the names of buildings on campus and lecture halls do matter to our students and staff. This is especially true in a faculty where most staff and students are women.

Many IOE colleagues and students have played a part in gaining due recognition for Margaret Punnett. They have told her story through IOE’s archive or in their scholarship, tirelessly championed the case for space named after a woman, and, finally, navigated the process for naming Punnett Hall. Let this be the first example of many more.