The Edinburgh Seven
In 1869, the first women admitted to any British university began studying medicine at Edinburgh. They fought hard to be allowed to study at all and excelled in their courses, but in 1873 they were denied the right to graduate. Most of them went on to study elsewhere in Europe and returned as some of the first women doctors in Britain. So who were these pioneering women, and how did they end up becoming the country’s first female medical students?
Sophia Jex-Blake
Sophia Jex-Blake in 1865, by Samuel Laurence. Public domain image.
The story starts with Sophia Jex-Blake. She grew up in Hastings in England and pursued education throughout her life, despite her family’s misgivings. Eventually she took a job as a maths tutor at Queen’s College in London, educating girls and young women. In the 1860s she travelled to the United States to research women’s education over there, where some colleges were already admitting women.
By the time she returned to Britain in 1868, she was resolved to study medicine. She even published a paper titled Medicine as a Profession for Women, where she argued that women were not intellectually inferior to men, and that it could be settled by giving women equal access to education and then seeing how they did in the same exams as the men. That sounds like an absurdly obvious thing to say in 2021 – the majority of Edinburgh’s medical students are women now! – but it was a very radical thing in 1868.
Edinburgh University
At that time, none of the universities admitted women to any of their courses, and most certainly not to the bloody and scientific world of medicine. The Scottish universities had a reputation for being a little more free-thinking than the English ones, so Sophia applied to Edinburgh. The medical school here was (and is) one of the most respected in the world, but it had never had a female student before. Her application was denied on the grounds that they couldn’t make arrangements “in the interests of one lady”.
That did not deter Sophia Jex-Blake. She placed adverts in national newspapers and recruited six other women to apply with her: Matilda Chaplin, Edith Pechey, Helen Evans, Isabel Thorne, Emily Bovell and Mary Anderson. The university could no longer make the same excuse, and even in stuffy Victorian Edinburgh the women had supporters. In fact, James Young Simpson, one of the city’s most celebrated doctors and a former president of the Royal College of Physicians, wrote a letter in favour of their admission. They were finally allowed to matriculate in 1869 and began studying alongside their male peers.
As you can imagine, all of these women were intelligent and driven – it took serious guts to be the first in this extremely male-dominated world. Their academic performance was exceptional from the start: out of the top seven students in the 1869 matriculation exam, four were women. The following year, when they sat their first exams in chemistry and physiology, four of them got honours in both subjects and all of them passed. Edith Pechey came top of the year in the chemistry exam, which should have entitled her to a scholarship award. But the women’s success was making some of the men at the university angry, and it was given to some male students who got lower marks instead.
Surgeons’ Hall Riot
On the 18th of November 1870, when the women arrived to sit an anatomy exam at Surgeons’ Hall, that anger boiled over. A crowd of men had gathered – Sophia Jex-Blake later referred to them in a letter to the Glasgow Herald as “some dozen of the lowest class of students at Surgeons’ Hall, and a considerably greater number of the same grade from the university” – and pelted them with mud and rubbish, denying them access to the hall. Eventually some other male students offered “kind and manly support” (Sophia’s words again!) and snuck them in a different gate.
Surgeons’ Hall, which is now a museum. Image my own.
Even during the exam, some male students had to be ejected for hurling abuse at the women, and a live sheep was apparently released into the hall to cause havoc. Of course, the women sat their exam and passed it, because they were used to rising above things at this point. The event came to be known as the Surgeons’ Hall Riot, and if anything it increased support for the Edinburgh Seven. Many male students were outraged by the behaviour of their peers – some would even act as the women’s bodyguards, escorting them to and from classes.
Despite their continued academic excellence, in 1873 the university refused to let them graduate. They even ruled that the women should never have been admitted to begin with, and it wasn’t until 1892 that any more women were allowed to study at universities in Scotland. So what became of the Edinburgh Seven after their time at the Edinburgh medical school?
Sophia Jex-Blake after 1873
Sophia moved to London to campaign for women’s education and set up the London School of Medicine for Women, which six of the original Edinburgh Seven attended. Women still couldn’t become licensed doctors here, so Sophia eventually went to Switzerland to get her medical degree. In 1877, she finally became the third licensed female doctor in Britain.
The former Bruntsfield Hospital and Sophia Jex-Blake’s home, where she lived with Margaret Todd. It’s now been converted into flats. Image my own
She returned to Edinburgh and set up practice as the city’s first woman doctor at 4 Manor Place in the West End. She would also go on to open a clinic for poor women on Grove Street in Fountainbridge, which provided affordable care to locals and practical training for female doctors. The clinic expanded over the years, moving to Bruntsfield and becoming the Edinburgh Hospital and Dispensary for Women. It was the first hospital in Scotland entirely staffed by women and providing care for women. You can still see the building today on Whitehouse Loan.
In 1886, Sophia established the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women. Her disciplinarian management and teaching style led to disagreements with staff and students, including a lawsuit by a pair of sisters who said they’d been unfairly expelled. In 1889 a rival women’s medical school was established by Elsie Inglis (more on her here) and a number of students left to go and study there instead.
Margaret Todd in 1902. Public domain image
Despite these difficulties, Sophia’s medical school brought someone important into her life: Margaret Todd. She was one of the earliest students and the two women became romantic partners. They lived together for the rest of their lives, retiring down to Sussex in 1899. Margaret was both an author and a woman of science, who coined the term “isotope”. She published several books during their life together and wrote a biography of Sophia Jex-Blake after her death in 1912.
Matilda Chaplin
Matilda Chaplin gained a midwifery certificate in London in 1874 – the only formal medical qualification available to women at the time. She then accompanied her husband to Japan, where he had a new job, and she established a midwifery school for women while they were there. She also published numerous articles in British newspapers and magazines about life in Japan and wrote anthropological research papers, often with a focus on family life and childhood.
Matilda developed tuberculosis in 1877 and had to return to Europe. It didn’t prevent her from finishing her medical degree in Paris in 1879 and becoming a licensed doctor the following year. Unfortunately, there was no cure for TB back then. Her health continued to get worse until she died in 1883, aged just 37.
Edith Pechey
Edith Pechey also sought a midwifery qualification, and she seems to have worked informally at a hospital despite not officially being a doctor (for reasons that were 100% down to misogyny and 0% down to Edith’s ability). Like Sophia Jex-Blake, she eventually got her medical degree in Switzerland in 1877. She returned to England and practised medicine in Leeds for the next six years, working especially with women and children.
Edith Pechey. Public domain image
In 1883, Edith took the job of Senior Medical Officer at the Cama Hospital for Women and Children in Mumbai (then Bombay). She worked in India for over 20 years, offering medical care to women, campaigning for equal pay and education, and pushing for social reforms like ending child marriage. Edith married Herbert Musgrave Phipson in 1889, but she continued to work as a doctor until ill health forced her to retire, despite the fact it was then usual for married middle- and upper-class women to work. Edith and her husband returned to England in 1905, and she became actively involved with the suffrage movement.
Helen Evans
While the Edinburgh Seven were at university, Helen Evans married Alexander Russel. He was the editor of the Scotsman and a big supporter of the women’s campaign, but Helen chose not to continue her medical studies after they married. Nonetheless, she remained actively involved in promoting education and medical care by women, for women. She was on the committee of both Sophia Jex-Blake’s medical school and her women’s hospital, and later sat on the St Andrews School Board for fifteen years.
Isabel Thorne. Public domain image
Isabel Thorne
Like Helen, Isabel Thorne chose not to pursue her medical degree elsewhere and dedicated her career to medical education. She became Honorary Secretary of the London School of Medicine for Women, a position she held for nearly 30 years, and was intimately involved with the running and expansion of the college. By the time she retired in 1908, there were hundreds of female students. Her own daughter, May, qualified there in 1895 and succeeded her mother as honorary secretary.
Emily Bovell
Emily Bovell finished her medical studies in 1877 in Paris, where she met her husband. He was also a doctor – and a big supporter of women’s education – and they set up practice together in London. Emily’s health began to decline in the 1880s, so they moved to Nice in the south of France for a warmer climate. Emily set up her own practice there as the first woman doctor in town, primarily treating female patients, and died there a few years later.
Mary Anderson
Mary Anderson was the only Scottish member of the Edinburgh Seven (the others were English or Irish), and like all of them she left Scotland in the 1870s. She went to Paris, where she completed her medical degree in 1879, before moving to London. She worked there as a senior physician at the New Hospital for Women in Marylebone.
Legacy of the Edinburgh Seven
Despite the obstacles put in their way, five of the Edinburgh Seven became practising doctors, and the other two remained involved in medical education throughout their lives. They may not have been allowed to get their degrees in Edinburgh, but their presence and perseverance opened doors for others to follow. By 2016, 61% of the students at Edinburgh were women. Today’s students are continuing the legacy of excellence left by the Edinburgh Seven, and in 2019 seven modern-day medical students finally accepted the original women’s degrees on their behalf – 146 years after they were prevented from graduating.
***
If you enjoyed learning about the Edinburgh Seven, check out last week’s blog on Edinburgh medical history.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or suggestions for topics you’d like to see me write about here. If you enjoy reading these posts, please consider sharing them with other people and following me on instagram. You can also leave something in my tip jar if you’re able. I’ll be back with another post next Friday! Hannah x