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Dear Jill
Thank you for the reply. It would be necessary to know what the sources of your information were (the original sources, not the secondary ones) to know how reliable the evidence of Mercy or another female being a "judge" in India was.
I guess you know the history of Homerton College at Cambridge already, but for others' benefit I have taken this from a website : Founded as a dissenting academy in 1730 by the Congregational Fund Board and the King's Head Society, Homerton College took its name from Homerton in East London in 1823. [it was founded originally to give young men from dissenters' families - i.e. non-Church of England families - a chance of a higher education as they were not allowed to enter Cambridge or Oxford Universities in the 18th and early 19th centuries. It then changed to train Congregational Church ministers for the ministry]. By 1850 its theological training became the work of London University and the Congregational Board of Education then combined its training colleges for men and women teachers at Homerton College, which in 1894 moved [from London] to the old site of Cavendish College in Cambridge. [So in 1901 it was really a teachers' training college]. It is now an independent specialist college within the University of Cambridge, with an emphasis on education courses.
I would be looking at the following to see how reliable such a "judge" story is: the Indian Civil Service records among the collections of the old India Office Library - now held as part of the British Library. You could look the place up on the Internet as they have a website, probably part of the huge British Library website. There should be a postal and email address for enquiries. Some if not all of their collection catalogues are on the Access to Archives website, and that is where I turned up the information about Ernest Ashworth's appointment. The other avenue to chase up, is that of the history of training for the Bar - ie the education of women in law and their admission as barristers, and when that became possible. That was/is a precursor to becoming a judge - a proper judge, that is. Being a judge is a quantum leap from being a teacher training student or lecturer at a teacher's college. Are you sure that a confusion has not been made between a role as a local magistrate or justice of the peace and a judge? They are quite different. Though I am still unclear about the eligibility of women for even those lesser roles, especially in India. The 1901 census [full entry not the index necessarily] should list Mercy as either pupil or teacher at Homerton, if there is doubt about which she was?
Jan Wood
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