In 1964 Clara Rackham reflected on her life moving up through the ranks of local government and civic life. This from the Cambridgeshire Collection in the Cambridge Central Library. Our archives are a precious resource so if you want to make a donation to them, click here.
Early suffragette* still wants more for women
“Mrs Clara Rackham is 89 years old this year. As a Poor Law Guardian, a factory inspector, a magistrate and as an alderman of both the City and County Councils, she has played perhaps as great a part in the life of Cambridge over the last 60 years as any other living person.
“Today, with years of fighting for the cause of women behind her, Mrs Rackham can sit back in her room at the Meadowcroft Old People’s Home [formerly on Trumpington Road, since demolished for luxury apartments] and watch with some satisfaction the results of the tremendous efforts made by herself and the pioneers of the past to give women a position of greater importance in the world.
“But lest anyone should think that Mrs Rackham – a Classics graduate of Newnham College and an early Suffragette [*Note she was a suffragist – part of the non-violent group rather than the violent direct action suffragettes] -is complacent about the position of women in the world today, it should be immediately be stressed that there are plenty of fields in which she still wishes to see women take on a more prominent place.
‘Not Far Enough’
“A member of Cambridge City Council almost continuously from 1919 until 1957, and a member of the County Council from 1926 until 1957, Mrs Rackham would like to see women play a more prominent part in both central and local government.
“I certainly don’t think women have ventured too far into a man’s world. On the contrary I don’t think they have gone far enough.
I think they could do more in the legal and medical professions and I think that girls should be encouraged more to study scientific, technological and engineering subjects.
My generation opened the doors for them to do this and I want to see the girls of today going through”
One of the first women magistrates in Cambridge, Mrs Rackham served for 30 years on the Cambridge City Bench before retiring at the compulsory age of 75 in 1950. She is very much in favour of women working after marriage provided they do not neglect the children.
“With all the modern labour-saving devices there is really not enough work to fill the time nor is housework sufficiently stimulating to satisfy most women today
“There is a great deal of women power which isn’t being used. I want women to make the fullest ability and I think that women who marry young should think very seriously about training for a career”
Impact on Sport
An accomplished hockey player in her days at college, and a keen swimmer all her life, Mrs Rackham is glad that women have made such an impact on sport.
“If I had my life over again I would probably go into one of the professions but in my day women didn’t very often do that. They just went home if they were not obliged to work”
A great reader all her life – one of her dear friends was the late R.H. Tawney, author and historian. Mrs Rackham has been a strong supporter of the Workers’ Educational Association and has herself taken over 70 classes in the Eastern Counties.
Professing that she would not like to live anywhere else but in Cambridge, Mrs Rackham feels that local people would benefit from access to the upper river and a footpath from the bathing sheds towards Granchester Meadows.
New Library
“A new central library is already very much needed” [Finally delivered in 1974, and upgraded further in the mid-2000s] “for the excellence of the library staff cannot make up for the inconvenience of the building.
I should not like to see the sky scrapers projecting over the Cambridge skyline and I should really like to see the centre of Cambridge left as far as possible as it is at present”
A familiar and well-loved figure wherever she goes in Cambridge, Mrs Rackham gave up cycling about three years ago.
“I daren’t do that any more – there is too much traffic and it became to dangerous for me. But I still get about a good deal on my feet or in the bus, and can still do some visiting of bl-(?) and aged persons”
Lost Cambridge 