Mary Hutton: a biography

© 2002 Dr. Josephine Dolores GrayThis thesis is an exploration of Mary Hutton's life and her career in the Victorian Education Department. It presents an outline of the woman as teacher, headmistress and principal. It traces the origins of the Melbourne Continuation School, the Collingwood Domestic Arts School, and MacRobertson Girls' High School as a context for her remarkable career. In 1899 Mary Hutton joined the Education Department as a pupil-teacher, the worst possible time for a woman to become a teacher. Victoria was emerging from a harsh depression and the resources of the Education Department were severely curtailed. Teachers' careers were disrupted and legislation ensured that, as a woman teacher, Mary Hutton would be confined to a career path separate from and unequal to that of her male counterpart. She would be denied access to most headships, be paid at best four-fifths of the male rate and be subject to informal and formal marriage bars. In spite of these constraints Mary Hutton was one of an emerging professional class of "scholar spinsters" who made it to the top of the State secondary teaching service. Hutton was a success story within the possibilities of her time. Her career spanned fifty years with the Victorian Education Department and her contribution to Victorian education was significant. Whilst not possessing the status of the private school headmistress Mary Hutton was a high-achieving, scholarly woman who became the first woman to have the title of principal in the State secondary system. Mary Hutton is little known and little written about yet she had a passion for education which, shaped her life. In spite of the limited access that women have had to educational leadership her contribution to the education of girls, given that she was in charge of two schools at particularly difficult times, deserves recognition