Hilda Lorimer
{{Short description|British classical scholar (1873–1954)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=November 2016}}
{{Use British English|date=November 2016}}
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| name = Hilda Lorimer
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| birth_name = Elizabeth Hilda Lockhart Lorimer
| birth_date = {{birth date|df=y|1873|5|30}}
| birth_place = Edinburgh, Scotland
| death_date = {{death date and age|df=y|1954|3|1|1873|5|30}}
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| education = High School of Dundee
| alma_mater = Girton College, Cambridge
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| discipline = Classics
| sub_discipline = {{hlist|Homer|Classical archaeology|Ancient Greece}}
| workplaces = Somerville College, Oxford
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Elizabeth Hilda Lockhart Lorimer (30 May 1873 – 1 March 1954) was a British classical scholar who spent her career at Oxford University. Her best known work was in the field of Homeric archaeology and ancient Greece, but she also visited and published on Turkey, Albania and the area that later became Yugoslavia. She took the position of vice-principal of Somerville College during the Second World War.
Family
File:The grave of Hilda Lockhart Lorimer, Warriston Cemetery.jpg
Lorimer was born on 30 May 1873 in Edinburgh, Scotland. She was the second of eight children born to Reverend Robert Lorimer and his wife. Her brother David Lockhart Robertson Lorimer was a lieutenant-colonel in the British Indian Army, a linguist and a political official in the British Indian government.{{citation
| url = http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/A2A/records.aspx?cat=059-msseur_13&cid=-1&Gsm=2008-06-18#-1
| title = British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections; Private Papers [Mss Eur F175 – Mss Eur F199]
| contribution = Papers of Emily Overend Lorimer, author, editor of 'Basrah Times' 1916–17, wife of Lt-Col David Lorimer, Indian Political Service 1903–27 Mss Eur F177 1902–1949
| author = Emily Overend Lorimer
| author-link = Emily Overend Lorimer
| publisher = National Archives (UK)}}[http://squirrel.soas.ac.uk/dserve/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=Show.tcl&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqPos=0&dsqSearch=(RefNo=='PP%20MS%2066') Lorimer, Lieutenant-Colonel David Lockhart Robertson, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Archive Catalogue] {{Dead link|date=January 2020 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} Her brothers Gordon and Bert worked in the civil administration in the Indian Political Service.{{cite book|author=Penelope Tuson|title=Playing the Game: Western Women in Arabia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sWX9GoHX46QC&pg=PA2|accessdate=23 May 2013|date= 2003|publisher=I.B. Tauris|isbn=978-1-86064-933-2|pages=2–}} Another, William, became Professor of Classics at St Andrews. Her sister Emilia became a notable poet, and her other sister Florence served as personal secretary to Aurel Stein at the British Museum. It was said that she could speak ancient Greek and Latin by the age of five.{{Cite web|url=https://www.soas.ac.uk/gallery/bakhtiari-kuch/eet/caricature-orientalists/index.html|title=Brunei Gallery at SOAS: Bakhtiari Kuch – Early European Travellers: Caricature Orientalists or just Men of their Time?|website=www.soas.ac.uk|language=en|access-date=2019-12-08|archive-date=8 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191208111108/https://www.soas.ac.uk/gallery/bakhtiari-kuch/eet/caricature-orientalists/index.html|url-status=dead}}Wang, Helen. "Stein's Recording Angel: Miss F. M. G. Lorimer." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series, 8, no. 2 (1998): 207–228. Accessed March 25, 2021. {{jstor|25183518}}
She never used her first name;{{Cite web|url=https://www.brown.edu/Research/Breaking_Ground/bios/Lorimer_Hilda.pdf|title=Hilda Lorimer|last=Waterhouse|first=Helen|date=|website=Breaking Ground by Brown.edu|access-date=7 December 2019}} her family called her Hiddo; and at Oxford she came to be known as Highland Hilda because of her Scottish background.{{cite ODNB|last1=Waterhouse|first1=Helen|title=Article Lorimer, (Elizabeth) Hilda Lockhart (1873–1954), classical scholar|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/48498|date=23 September 2004}}
Education
Lorimer attended the High School of Dundee in Scotland from 1889 to 1893, walking five miles daily from home in order to attend.{{rp|211}} She was granted a scholarship to Girton College at Cambridge University, where she earned a first.{{rp|211}} Her degree was only officially awarded at the first Cambridge degree-giving ceremony to award degrees to women, in 1948, fifty-five years after she had joined Girton as a student.{{rp|214}}
Career
In 1896, she became a fellow and tutor of Classics at Somerville College, Oxford, which is where she spent the rest of her career. At Somerville, she had little contact with colleagues. She was noted for her Saturday ornithology expeditions, which continued throughout her career in Oxford, and gained somewhat of a reputation for eccentricity and invincibility.{{cite book |last1=Brittain |first1=Vera |title=The Women at Oxford |date=1960 |publisher=George G. Harrap & Co. ltd. |location=London}}{{rp|91}}
She was a skilled Latin linguist, but at Oxford her interests turned toward archaeology. She took a sabbatical to attend the British School at Athens in 1901 and 1902. There she began focusing on Homeric archaeology, the study of ancient civilisations known through the poems of Homer.Helen Waterhouse, [http://www.brown.edu/Research/Breaking_Ground/bios/Lorimer_Hilda.pdf Breaking Ground: Women in Old World Archaeology], Brown University. In 1911, she participated in excavations at Phylakopi on Melos. Dorothy Lamb, Lillian Tenant and Lorimer were the first women to participate in an excavation conducted by the British School at Athens.{{cite book|last1=Hamilton|first1=Sue|last2=Whitehouse|first2=Ruth D.|last3=Wright|first3=Katherine I.|title=Archeology and Women: Ancient and Modern Issues|date=2007|publisher=Routledge|location=London|isbn=978-1-59874-223-7|pages=55–56|edition=2nd}} The excavation, led by Richard MacGillivray Dawkins, the director of the British School, was conducted from March to May 1911. The project was a supplementary excavation of a site that had been explored from 1896 to 1899.{{cite book|last1=Dawkins|first1=Richard|last2=Droop|first2=J.P.|title=Excavations at Phylakopi in Melos, 1911. The Annual of the British School at Athens, Volume 17|publisher=British School at Athens|location=Athens|pages=2–3}}
In 1916, she was working in the Naval Intelligence Department of the Admiralty;{{Cite journal|date=1919|title=War service of students of the school|journal=The Annual of the British School at Athens|volume= 23 (1918/1919)|page=viii|jstor=}} in the following year she went to Salonica as a nursing orderly in the Scottish Women's Hospital (the Girton and Newnham Unit).{{cite web|title=Somervillians in the First World War|url=http://blogs.some.ox.ac.uk/archive/2011/01/25/somervillians-in-the-first-world-war/|website=blogs.some.ox.ac.uk|date=25 January 2011 |accessdate=5 May 2018}}
Lorimer took an Oxford MA at the first opportunity, in 1920,"Degrees conferred at Oxford". Yorkshire Post, 15 October 1920. p. 5. and a Cambridge MA in 1948. She returned to Athens in 1922 and became a university lecturer at Oxford from 1929 to 1937, serving also at Somerville as tutorial fellow of Classics until 1934, and of classical archaeology from 1934 to 1939. In 1935 she gave a well-received paper for the Classical Association on "Temple and Statue Cult in Homer" at the Ashmolean.{{rp|188}} In the same year, she was elected the Lady Carlisle Research Fellow at Somerville.{{rp|194}} She retired in 1939, but remained an honorary fellow. She served as an A.R.P. incident officer in both Oxford and Southampton during the Second World War, despite her advanced age, training at the age of sixty-seven.{{rp|194}}
She died on 1 March 1954 and is buried with her siblings in Warriston Cemetery in north Edinburgh. The grave lies to the south-west of the now-sealed eastern entrance.
Publications
References
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Category:Scottish women writers
Category:People educated at the High School of Dundee
Category:Alumni of Girton College, Cambridge
Category:British women scientists
Category:Fellows of Somerville College, Oxford
Category:Scottish classical scholars
Category:Classical scholars of the University of Oxford
Category:British classical archaeologists
Category:British women archaeologists
Category:British women classical scholars
Category:20th-century British archaeologists
Category:20th-century British women writers
Category:Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service volunteers