Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women

Over the twelve years of its operation, the Edinburgh School of Medicine provided education to approximately eighty female students.

Of those eighty students, thirty-three completed the full course of medical training at the Edinburgh School while many others chose to finish their education at outside institutions.

Following this request, the faculty at the university voted to determine the fate of Blake and future women’s admission into their medical program.

After the initial vote granted Jex-Blake admission to the program, Claud Murihead, who worked with the Royal Infirmary, brought forward an appeal to overturn the decision.

Backed by a petition signed by approximately 200 students, Murihead’s appeal resulted in a reversal of the decision to admit Jex-Blake.

The argument that led to the decision was that men and women should be educated separately, and thus providing courses for a single female student would be inefficient and financially unconscionable.

With a greater number of female medical students, the university would have the resources to provide separate courses for women without producing a financial headache.

David Russel, who edited a local newspaper The Scotsman, was a friend to Jex-Blake and published the story regarding the admissions debate as well as Masson’s proposed solution.

[1] The “Edinburgh Seven,” consisting of Sophia Jex-Blake, Isabel Thorne, Edith Pechey, Matilda Chaplin, Helen Evans, Mary Anderson, and Emily Bovell were the first women to be admitted into the medical program in 1869.

However, the violence had sparked fear at the university and resulted in the decision to allow women to participate in the medical program to be revisited.

Thus, she did not include the price of housing in the proposed cost of tuition and books, as it was assumed that most students would be residents in the Edinburgh area and would be living at home.

As a result, Jex-Blake was forced to search for another institution for her students to be taught, and arranged for them to have clinical teaching at Leith Hospital.

When the two sisters—Ina (Martha Georgina) and Grace Cadell—won the court case challenging their expulsion, the bad publicity meant that both the school and Jex-Blake herself lost support, and some students moved to Glasgow, London and Dublin; the only other places in Great Britain or Ireland where women could study medicine at that time.

Jex-Blake applied for scholarships to support the institution, and The National Association for the Promoting of Medical Education for Women, along with some missionary organizations, helped fund the school.

For many years she practised medicine in partnership with Elsie Inglis, and later was a medical officer at the Edinburgh Hospital and Dispensary for Women and Children.