Miss Emily Davies also found her work aided by the Commission. She was largely instrumental in the opening of Local Examinations to girls. The foundation of the first women’s college at a university was laid by her when, in 1873, the college she had opened at Hitchin four years earlier was removed to Cambridge, where it became known as Girton. This step was perhaps even less of a venture, though more startling to the public mind, than the first beginning at Hitchin. Of this Miss Maria Hackett had written to Miss Beale:— ‘The proposed Foundation of a College for the Superior Education of Women is another most important measure in the same direction. I had much correspondence about twenty years ago, with your dear father, Mr. Mackenzie, and Mr. Storrs, on the subject, but I did not venture upon so extensive a scheme.’ Public examinations for girls necessarily followed the work of the Commission, the opening of women’s colleges, and the establishment of public schools for girls. Head-mistresses were called upon to face all the difficulties and drawbacks of these, as well as to accept their advantages, and in some cases also to incur odium, as they worked with measures which they knew to be not in themselves the best, but only the best attainable. Miss Beale had her own vision of what a public examination for girls should be. She had said at Bristol in 1865 that parents ‘are afraid of popular outcry, afraid that their children should take a low place, forgetting that (if the examination be conducted without any of the improper excitement of publicity), it is also a test and means of moral training, since those who work from the right motives simply do their best and are not overanxious about results. I do not desire that there should be a system of competitive examinations, but a general testing of the work done, and if this cannot be responded to in a quiet, lady-like manner, it does not speak well for the moral training of the school.’ She had also said:—