[1] The Society was established by James Edmunds, a physician at the British Lying-In Hospital in Holburn, and the social reformer Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury acted as its first president.
Professionals who lent support included physicians serving at a number of London hospitals, and William Buchanan, a former master of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries.
[1] Concerns providing the impetus for the foundation of the society included a desire to raise the status of midwifery such that it could be considered a profession for educated women; to respect the feelings of female patients who preferred to be tended by female practitioners; and to save lives, both by the effect of better training and practice, but also by reducing infections introduced by male physicians who in their wider work came into contact with disease, surgery and post-mortems.
[1] In 1864, the society founded the Ladies' Medical College, initially offering a course in obstetrics and supporting and related subject matter, with a somewhat broader curriculum by 1870.
Equally, James Edmunds spoke against the proposition three years earlier, and the society's main instrument, the College, was deliberately limited in its scope.