Thomas Carey

The American educator Martha Carey Thomas (1857-1935) was a proponent of woman's rights and president of Bryn Mawr.

Carey Thomas was born in Baltimore, Md., on Jan. 2, 1857, the oldest of 10 children of Dr. James Carey Thomas and Mary Whitall Thomas. Both parents were active members of the Society of Friends. Her intellectual development was strongly influenced by the militant feminism of her mother and her aunt Hannah Whitall Smith, a renowned preacher and reformer.

After attending private schools, Carey Thomas entered Cornell, then the only eastern university admitting women, as a junior, graduating in 1877 as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Although admitted to graduate study at Johns Hopkins University by special vote of the trustees, she was dissatisfied with the policy that prevented her from attending seminars. In 1879 she went to Germany to continue her philological studies. She spent 3 years at Leipzig, which refused to grant degrees to women, as did Göttingen, where she also tried. Finally Zurich accepted her dissertation, and her brilliant defense won her a doctorate summa cum laude in 1882.

In 1884 Carey Thomas accepted the post of dean and professor of English literature at Bryn Mawr, then about to open as a college for women. She desired to build it into an institution that would encourage women to follow careers without having to face the difficulties with which she had struggled. Convinced that women deserved exactly the same education as men and needed even higher standards than men to succeed, she molded a curriculum that offered more advanced work than that given in many men's colleges and upheld the highest academic standards. She helped recruit an outstanding faculty which permitted offering graduate work modeled after that at Johns Hopkins. In 1894 she became president of Bryn Mawr, a post she held until her retirement in 1922. Her addresses to the student body were vividly remembered by many alumnae, inspiring them to strive for success in the professional careers that she had done so much to open to them.

Carey Thomas also helped open the Johns Hopkins Medical School to women by raising substantial sums on condition that no sexual discrimination be followed. She was active in the fight for woman's suffrage, helped organize the Summer School for Women Workers in Industry, and was the first woman trustee of Cornell. She played a major role in the League to Enforce Peace.

Carey Thomas never married. She died in Philadelphia on Dec. 2, 1935.

Further Reading

Barbara M. Cross, ed., The Educated Woman in America (1965), contains informative selections from Carey Thomas's addresses along with a perceptive introduction. An excellent biography, clearly presenting Carey Thomas's ideas and activities, is Edith Finch, Carey Thomas of Bryn Mawr (1947).

Additional Sources

Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz., The power and passion of M. Carey Thomas, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.

For other persons named Thomas Carey, see Thomas Carey (disambiguation).

Thomas Campbell Carey

Thomas Campbell Carey (1832 or 1833–4 September 1884) was the surveyor to whom John and Alexander Forrest were apprenticed, and was later a Member of the Western Australian Legislative Council.

Thomas Carey was born in Ireland in 1832–33. Little is known of his youth, but he was employed as a draughtsman commanding the Engineer's Office at Chatham, and later in an Ordnance Survey as Land Agent and Surveyor. In September 1853, he married Eliza Shields Stewart.

In 1862, Carey emigrated to Western Australia, where he became an assistant surveyor for the colony's Survey Department. Over the next eight years, Carey was at various times stationed at Albany, Wellington and Bunbury. In November 1863, while stationed at Bunbury, Carey accepted as his apprentice a young John Forrest. Forrest graduated after two years, entering the Survey Department. In 1869 Carey apprenticed Forrest's younger brother Alex. He also became a Justice of the Peace in that year.

In May 1871, the new Surveyor-General of Western Australia Malcolm Fraser reorganised the Survey Department, promoting John Forrest and dismissing a number of surveyors including Carey and Alex Forrest. Carey then became a contract surveyor for the department, and also ran a private practice. He also began to get involved in public affairs, becoming a member of both the Bunbury Town Trust and the Bunbury Municipal Town Council in 1871, and Chairman of both later that year. His first wife died in October 1871, and he was remarried in April 1874, to Rose Strickland.

On 25 June 1872, Carey was elected to the Legislative Council for the seat of Vasse. From 8 July 1873 until 28 October 1874, he was Chairman of Committees. He was defeated in the election of October 1874 by Robert Gale, but won the seat again in a by-election in March 1878, holding it until his death in 1884. In 1874, Carey was an unsuccessful defendant in a libel case. In August 1879, he suggested in Parliament that Forrest had made improper use of crown land, then followed it up by writing a letter to the Herald listing the land that was held by members of the Forrest family. The accusations generated much discussion, but most members of the Council supported Forrest, and no evidence of any wrongdoing was ever uncovered.

Thomas Carey died in Perth on 4 September 1884. He was survived by his second wife, four sons by his first marriage, and four daughters from his second.

References

• Black, David and Bolton, Geoffrey (2001). Biographical Register of Members of the Parliament of Western Australia, Volume One, 1870–1930 (Revised Edition ed.). Parliament House: Parliament of Western Australia. ISBN 0730738140. 
• Crowley, Frank (2000). Big John Forrest 1847–1918: A Founding Father of the Commonwealth of Australia. Nedlands, Western Australia: University of Western Australia Press. ISBN 1-876268-44-1. 

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