"A Lab of One's Own": The Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women at Cambridge University, 1884-1914

The Balfour Biological Laboratory for Women was established at Cambridge University in 1884 to prepare the students of Newnham and Girton Colleges to sit the Natural Sciences Tripos, first opened to women in 1881. For thirty years, until its closure in 1914, the Balfour Laboratory served as the central conduit for biological instruction for the women of Cambridge, introducing them to the new program of experimental biology developed by the physiologist Michael Foster and the embryologist Francis Maitland Balfour. Directed by distinguished women graduates, the Balfour Laboratory became recognized as the leading center for women's biological instruction in Britain. Its significance, however, extends beyond its nominal status as a teaching laboratory. It provided university positions for able scientists who otherwise would not have been placed, offered advanced students the opportunity to engage in independent research, and, most important, formed the locus for the scientific subculture created by women at Cambridge to compensate for their exclusion from the social community of science. Drawing upon college and university archival records, this essay offers institutional, social, and biographical research that broadens our understanding of the experience of the first generation of women to pursue a higher education in the life sciences at one of the world's premier universities.