Patricia Allan
Patricia Allan lectured on American history in the Department of Modern History from 1971 to 1973 (while completing her PhD at Glasgow). She subsequently worked in the Law Faculty at the University of Glasgow. She wrote the following account of her St Andrews experiences for us in 2025.
I was appointed to a lectureship in the Modern History Department at St. Andrews in December 1970 with a start date just a month later. I was twenty-four, a Glasgow graduate (M.A. 1st Class Hons 1968) and doing my best to progress my Ph.D. That would have to wait. I have never worked as hard as I did in the frantic first months at St Andrews, keeping just one step ahead of the students, writing lectures a few hours before delivering them. It was a bitter cold January and after a scramble to find ‘digs’, I’d settled in to a room with a kindly, formidable landlady on terms of ‘eight pounds a week and no men’. The electricity was on a meter and the work of writing lectures was interrupted by feeding shillings into it. I didn’t know a soul. That first Saturday I walked along the West Sands, clad in purple maxi coat and grey fur hat (all the rage in Glasgow!) and wondered if academia was such a great idea.
But things got better. My senior colleague, Geoffrey Seed, could not have been a better mentor or kinder friend. He and his wife Nelda were a source of constant support and enlightenment on the affairs of town and gown. In addition to being a distinguished American historian Geoffrey was Warden of John Burnet Hall. We continued to meet up long after I’d left St Andrews. I loved my office at the Swallowgate, with its views over the bay. Marinell Ash in Scottish History was a near neighbour and always an inspiration. She died too young. The students were a delight. Many were close to my own age, including Thomas Munck, whose brilliance shone through one of the first essays I ever marked and who turned up later at Glasgow as Professor of Early Modern History.
In my first year I was teaching two classes in American History, one to Honours and the other to the Special class. Later I offered an additional Honours option on ‘Race in American History’ to a small group seminar of excellent students whom I remember affectionately fifty years on. My one regret is that I did not respond adequately to a student request. Two women students knocked on my door one day and asked if I had any plans to bring women’s history into the curriculum. One of them was Zoe Fairbairns who went on to become a distinguished feminist novelist. I was sympathetic, having become aware that in my seven years as a History student I had barely heard of women’s part in the past. I offered future interest but didn’t begin to explore the subject until long after leaving St. Andrews.
In the beginning I felt a bit daunted by the social confidence and cultured accents around me but I began to feel more confident when I had time to build up a base of lecture notes and acquire a group of good friends. After the first few months I moved out to David Russell Hall as a sub-warden. The accommodation there was wonderful and we met for sherry in the evenings before sitting down to some great food. The company was always lively and I remember Ann Kettle as an excellent ambassador for women’s history. The catering in Hall was so good that when I got married a couple of years later the reception was at David Russell. I had been asked at interview if I intended marriage (!) and gave an answer which was true on the day.
It was a short stay at St. Andrews but a very busy one. I finished my Ph.D. in the summer of 1973 and began making plans to return to Glasgow where I had been offered a part-time post in the Law Faculty. Although I had no qualifications in Law my doctorate was on American legal and constitutional history, apparently a sufficient bridge between History and Law to find a berth in the Public Law Department’s new Honours course. And there I remained for the rest of my career, lecturing on the U.S. Supreme Court and Civil Rights , developing a course on capital punishment and helping to expand experiential learning, including a project that gave students the opportunity to work in the United States. I particularly enjoyed student support, advising and admissions work. As in St Andrews the joy of the job came from the students. I continued to do as much research and writing as I could combine with raising a family.
I found more time for research in retirement, particularly after I volunteered to work in the Glasgow University Archives and became involved in a number of projects. An inspiring group of women in the Law School began the WILP ( Women in Law Project) to contribute to the centenary celebrations of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919. It is a privilege to work with them. We began by researching the life of Madge Easton Anderson, the Glasgow graduate who became the first woman solicitor in the United Kingdom and our interest has grown to encompass the history of women in the Law from the beginning of the twentieth century. One of its innovative features is its inclusion of creative and community events, for example an exhibition, creative writing workshops with a script writer, and the knitting of a blanket, each square representing the life of one of the first hundred Glasgow women law graduates whose careers I researched—it took 30 years to produce 100 graduates.
In both History and Law, I look back to a time when there were very few women. As a student at Glasgow I had never been taught by a woman lecturer. At St Andrews I discovered that I was the only full-time woman lecturer in Modern History, though I was very glad of the company of the lovely Anne Wright at departmental meetings. She had to divide her time between teaching and the many duties that she enthusiastically embraced as Warden of Hamilton Hall. At Glasgow, gender equality in the Law School also proceeded at glacial pace, and it was 1990 before the first women Professors were appointed.
Written by Patricia (Allan) Lucie, June 2025.