After gaining first-class honours in the relatively new Historical Tripos in 1885, Ellen McArthur taught at Girton, holding various posts, including vice-mistress in 1895–6. She was the principal historian at Girton until 1907. The first woman examiner for the Oxford and Cambridge schools examinations board, in 1894 she became the first woman lecturer employed by the Cambridge local lectures syndicate. She had many supporters in Cambridge and in the profession generally. She collaborated on the school textbook Outlines of English Industrial History (1895) and published articles on medieval wage rates. When Trinity College, Dublin, offered degrees to the women of Cambridge and Oxford, Ellen McArthur was the first recipient of the DLitt in 1905, on the basis of her published work. Elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1906. Probably her best known article is her last: 'Women petitioners and the Long Parliament', in the English Historical Review of 1909, written during her close involvement with the suffrage movement as a means of understanding the origins of female political activism. Dedicated to preparing her students not only to pass examinations, but also to go on to advanced work in history, she taught a generation of influential historians: E. M. Leonard, Caroline Skeel, Lilian Knowles, Dorothy George, Alice Radice, Annie Abram, O. Jocelyn Dunlop, M. G. Jones, and Eileen Power. She personally ran a hostel for women postgraduate students at 3 Green Street for seven years (1896-1903), and also served on the council of the Cambridge Training College for Teachers from 1896 until her death. 1907-11, she headed the history department at Westfield College, London, and in 1908 carried the banner at the head of the university women in the historic suffrage march to the Albert Hall. McArthur left the bulk of her estate to Cambridge University to establish a prize for economic history.
