Ruby Davy 1883-1949

Caption:

Doctor of Music

Rita M Wilson's biography of Ruby Davy, Academic and Artiste (1995) is a touching account of an outstanding but little known Australian woman pioneer in academic terms.

Dr Davy won her Doctorate in 1918 from Adelaide University at the age of 35. There were no further women Doctors of Music for 58 years after. She was also awarded Fellow of Trinity College, London, the first woman outside that country to earn this honour.

She travelled to England at the beginning of the War in 1939 and played and broadcast lectures in the UK with much admiration. She gave a concert at the Wigmore Hall with Albert Sammons. On her way home via America she performed at Carnegie Hall in NY. Her career as a musician and performer were sadly cut short by the war time conditions but she continued in her chosen field teaching for another 30 years in Melbourne and her home town of Stirling. Her pupils remembered her with much affection and she dared to teach differently from the norms of the conservative standards of her day.

She had a mastectomy aged 64 which must have curtailed an otherwise brilliant pianist even more. She is quite beautiful in some of the fine photos in this little book*. Of course she had to make the difficult choice at that time between marriage or music. She chose music.

*Bridget McKern Jessie Street National Women's Library

Rita M Wilson, Ruby Davy - Academic Artiste, 1995 Salisbury and District Historical Society Inc, South Australia

Themes: Gallery WHM 2006 - Musical Belles, Musicians, Education

Related bio information available for Ruby Davy