CHAPTER V

RE-OPENING OF EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY TO WOMEN

It seemed better in the previous chapter to explain at once that, after a brief run of prosperity, the history of the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women was chequered by a long fight against heavy odds; but no one who visited the stirring bee-hive at Surgeon Square would have guessed at the struggle that underlay its cheerful aspect. And, fortunately, there were many strands in S. J.-B.’s life besides the struggle for her School. In a doctor’s experience there must always be much to interest and cheer, and S. J.-B.’s range was wider than that of the ordinary doctor. Editors were no less glad of her work than of old. In the autumn of 1887, she wrote to the Editor of the _Nineteenth Century_, offering him a paper on Medical Women which should supplement the one contributed by Mr. Stansfeld ten years before. Mr. Knowles replied immediately that he would be delighted to receive such a paper from her, and “the sooner the better.” The article duly appeared in November of that year.

At her little hospital she had a series of residents, some from the London School and some from her own, whom one can fairly describe as picked women,—keen and competent and loyal; and she enjoyed and appreciated these as they deserved. More and more, too, people sought her opinion and advice on every subject of real human interest. One doctor—a complete stranger—even wrote from far wilds to ask whether there was any lady studying in her School who she thought was likely to make him a suitable wife. He was coming home, but his leave was short, and he would be glad if she would save time by paving the way for him as far as possible. I am afraid the students never even heard of this opportunity!

How far she was from discouraging a true marriage may be gathered from the following letter to one of her former residents for whom she had designs in the way of more ambitious work, and who wrote in some trepidation to confess that she was engaged to be married:

“May 30, 1895.

DEAR MISS ——,

I was very glad to get your letter of March 10th, and very much interested in all your news. I may set your mind at rest by saying at once that I am not going to scold you about your engagement. I hold most strongly that ‘Love should still be Lord of all,’ and that if two good people love each other heartily in the right way, they ought to marry under almost all circumstances. I don’t believe in vows of celibacy for medical women any more than for any one else. Women are women before they are doctors.

At the same time I am afraid you are rather sanguine in hoping that you will be of more use in your profession married than single. It is not the husbands that are the obstacles to practice, but the babies. If a woman becomes a mother, I certainly think nothing outside her home can have, or ought to have, so much claim upon her as her children.

However I think it constantly happens that we plan out one kind of life for ourselves, and then that another is shaped out for us, and we must believe, if we believe in a God at all, that the wisdom that decides for us is greater than our own.

So long as we act up to our highest light, I think we need not trouble ourselves about results....

With all good wishes, believe me,

Yours sincerely, S. JEX-BLAKE.”

That this was no new attitude on her part we learn from a letter written many years before to Miss Bertha Cordery. “You are quite right in thinking that I do not by any means as a matter of course congratulate people on their marriage, but when you say that ‘having met, no other result was possible,’ I think you express the essence of a good marriage with the terseness worthy of the distinguished historian.[155]”

Footnote 155:

The “distinguished historian” of course refers to Miss Cordery herself.

This seems the best place to say one word about the special interest S. J.-B. took in her Hindu students. The first of these, Annie Jagannadham, was a young woman of such fine and finished character that her early death, soon after her return to her native land, was a matter for infinite regret, but scarcely for surprise. When she qualified as a doctor, S. J.-B. wrote to the _Spectator_ to point out the desirability of sending back Hindu women educated in England to minister to their own countrywomen; and her letter called forth a gratifying response from Mr. James Cropper of Ellergreen (who had been interested in S. J.-B.’s first application to the University of Edinburgh many years before) offering to found a scholarship for Hindu women at her school. This was accordingly done, and a series of Hindu students was the result. Differing from each other in many respects, they were alike in one thing, and that was a real gift for understanding and appreciating their Dean. They seemed to find the Mother side of her by a sort of instinct.

“I cannot tell you,” wrote one who had failed in an examination abroad, “how much your kind letter comforted me. When I was happy I wrote to other people; but when I was in distress I wrote to you and was soothed, for failure did not seem so hard when you were satisfied with my work.”

When Rukhmabai came to Edinburgh for her Final Professional Examination, she was S. J.-B.’s guest, and a strong mutual admiration and friendship was the result.

* * * * *

In accepting the chairmanship of the School, Dr. Balfour had made it almost a stipulation that S. J.-B. should personally undertake the teaching of Midwifery, and, in consequence of this, she was the first woman to be recognized as a lecturer in the Extra-Mural School. As a matter of fact, her special technical training was necessarily out of date. Dr. Balfour probably looked upon Midwifery mainly as a subject that successful physicians leave behind them, and did not realize that greater strides had been made in the teaching of this subject than in any other. However, S. J.-B. was a born teacher, as we know: she worked hard: and she had the able coöperation of the late Dr. Milne Murray, whose attitude towards her in this connection was one more of the splendid loyalties bound up in the story of her life.

And one cannot talk of loyalty without recalling a characteristic letter from Dr. Pechey, written when she received the news of S. J.- B.’s appointment:

“Hip Hip Hooray!! Hip Hip Hooray!!! Hip Hip Hooray!!!!!

In the very place where we were stoned and beaten 18 years ago. Well, I am glad to have lived to see the day. Just when your paper came, I was feeling life a burden.

Do you think they would let me lecture on something—Shakespeare or the musical glasses—when I come home _if_ ever I do. When you want an assistant let me know.

I don’t know when I have felt so pleased and elated and especially that it should happen to _you_, it is so appropriate. Isn’t Mrs. Thorne very pleased and everybody else?...

Dear Sophy, I _am_ so pleased, more than if some one had left me a million of money, though I do have to look hard at every anna now before letting it go!”

“Thanks for your very hearty congratulations,” S. J.-B. wrote in reply,—“... Selfishly, I regret it very much, for I have no idea how to find either the time or the strength (or knowledge) for the course, but I suppose I must just do the best I can.

Of course if you were here you could have the pick of the lecturerships in the School, and after one precedent, they couldn’t refuse to recognize you: but the pay would hardly keep your Highness in hairpins.”

The idea of having her old friend in Edinburgh dwelt in her mind nevertheless, and some time later—in May 1890—she wrote:

“By the bye if you do decide to leave India next year, and if it could possibly be made to fit in with Mr. Phipson’s plans,[156] I wish with all my heart that you could see your way to come and settle in Edinburgh, and take up with your splendid energy the very wide field in Scotland that is almost ripe to harvest. My strength is about spent, and besides you have elements of social success that I never should have. You are far more of a woman of the world and a far more able diplomatist. My Hospital will never develop in my tired hands, but I believe you might make a splendid thing of it; and at the same time I believe you would have a capital west-end practice almost immediately, and of course a lectureship if you cared to have it. Think this idea over thoroughly before you decide against it.

Yours sincerely, S. JEX-BLAKE.”

Footnote 156:

Dr. Edith Pechey had married Mr. H. M. Phipson of Bombay.

The feeling that her time of work was drawing to an end was intensified by the news of the death of her friend, Dr. Lucy Sewall. This was the last heavy bereavement she had to face, and she took it hard. To her friend, Mrs. Brander, her “eldest daughter,” she had written a month or two before the above correspondence with Dr. Pechey:

“Feb. 27. 1890.

DEAREST BEL,

For the second time I have to send you terribly bad news. My dear friend, Dr. Sewall, has been as you know in bad health for the last 4 or 5 years, and last month she was seized with a very severe attack of bronchitis, from which she never regained strength, and she passed away ‘very peacefully’ on Feb. 13th.

Though I have seen so little of her for some years back, it is a great blow to me,—the greatest I have felt since 1881.

_How_ I hope that she is again with the mother and father she loved so very dearly. Indeed she has never really rallied, I believe, from her father’s death (at 90) a year ago.

A whiter sweeter soul never lived, and her memory ‘smells sweet and blossoms in the dust.’

I cannot write more today, but I could not let you hear it from anyone else.

I hope you got the little book I sent you at Christmas. I could not write but it carried much affection to you.

Yours affectionately, S. J.-B.”

For the _Englishwoman’s Review_ she wrote an account of this “strong and gentle soul,” quoting the lines Whittier had written about her ancestor. “I enclose the whole verse about Judge Sewall,” she says to the Editor, “in case you have room for it. It might almost word for word have been written of his far-away descendant.

‘Walks the Judge of the Great Assize, Samuel Sewall, the good and wise. His face with lines of firmness wrought, He wears the look of a man unbought, Who swears to his hurt and changes not; Yet touched and softened nevertheless With the grace of Christian gentleness, The face that a child would climb to kiss! True and tender and brave and just, That man might honour and woman trust.’”

S. J.-B.’s hands might be tired, but the eye on the bridge was as keen as ever. She had been aiming from the first at some sort of reinforcement from St. Andrews, and in 1888 Lord Lothian’s Bill had seemed to open a new door of hope.

“May 10th. [1888.]

DEAR MR. STANSFELD,

The Bill of which I wrote is the ‘Universities (Scotland) Bill,’ which has been introduced in the House of Lords by Lord Lothian. I believe it has not yet come down to your House, but I am very anxious, when it does so, that attention should be directed to the clauses about women and about ‘affiliation of Colleges,’ which latter might solve our problem, e.g. if our Edinburgh School were affiliated to St. Andrews.

I shall be most grateful if you will talk about it beforehand with members likely to be interested, and if possible speak on it also.

Yours always gratefully, S. JEX-BLAKE.”

The previous day she had written,

“May 9th.

DEAR LORD ABERDARE,

I am extremely obliged for your very kind letter, and shall be _most_ grateful if you can make Lord Lothian’s acquaintance, interest him in our subject, and introduce me to him. I am very anxious to secure his favourable attention, and that of the Commission, and I am sure that your introduction would give me the best possible chance. I am most anxious not to lose the present opportunity to bring our needs to the front.

With renewed thanks, Yours very truly, S. JEX-BLAKE.”

When the Bill was passed and Commissioners appointed, she laid before them a memorial in support of the desired aims, and in June 1891 she was summoned to give evidence in person. On June 28th she wrote to Miss Du Pre:

“I had to appear before the University Commissioners last Wednesday, and if possible I will send you a proof of my examination. It was very satisfactory, as the Chairman (Lord Kinnear) said they were satisfied that it was desirable and necessary to give medical degrees to women in Scotland.”

To another friend she had written a week earlier,

“By the bye you will like to see the enclosed proof of my evidence last week before the Universities Commission. Miss E.-L. made me tell my class about it next day, and they clapped warmly; and then, after the lecture, as I was going out, they gave me another round. I stopped and said,—‘Oh, is that for Univ. Commission?’ ‘For _you_, Doctor!’ shouted Miss Moorhead.”

The whole matter, as is usual with such things, ran a leisurely course, for on April 27th, 1892, she writes again,

“... I had one very amusing experience on Monday. The Scottish Universities Commission has been issuing some ‘Ordinances’ to which serious objections are taken, and among others a flaw has been found in the Women’s Ordinance, which we want to have remedied. All the objecting bodies were to meet together, so Dr. Balfour and I were summoned by enclosed solemn document to appear to represent our School, and it _was_ amusing to find myself an invited delegate, at whose entrance the Chairman rose and came forward with outstretched hand, in the awful University Court Room, where our case had over and over again been tried by a hostile authority, and lost, without an opportunity for a word in our own defence.

Sir Robert Christison looked down from the wall, and it made me almost chuckle to think what _he_ would have said!

Sic transit! _How_ the world moves!

I have just heard this morning of a legacy of £100 for our Hospital, and probably something for the School though (from vague wording) that is less certain.”

At this time the great hope—as so often in the past—lay in the direction of the University of St. Andrews, but the hope proved illusory once more. In reading the history, one feels again and again as if St. Andrews University had been surrounded by some strange magic circle, for it happened on numberless occasions that when everything seemed settled, and every difficulty had been laboriously overcome, some unsuspected link in the chain gave way, and endless exertion was rendered null and void. So it seems to have happened now, for in June 1894 we find S. J.-B. writing again to Miss Du Pre:

“I have been desperately busy this week, chiefly at the University or with University people, as circumstances have led to my very suddenly applying to have our School recognized by the [Edinburgh] University Court, which really seems possible, Calderwood and Watson both being members of it. The story is a long one, arising out of complications at St. Andrews.

I enclose a copy of my Memorial,—please return it. It comes up tomorrow before the Court.

Watson said so very kindly that he hoped it would pass, if only that I might have rest from my long labours,—wasn’t it sweet of him? A quarter of a century _is_ a long time!”

So the old warrior gathered herself together once more and made a last appeal to the University Court of her own Alma Mater to grant to other women the privilege that could never now be her own. She reminded them that in 1869 the same Court had conceded the principle of admitting women to graduation in medicine, that that principle had never been disallowed by them, and that the problem of its practical accomplishment had been under the consideration of the Court ever since.

It cannot be said that hope ran high even now. It had always been a saying among Scottish students that Edinburgh would be the last stronghold to yield; but the tide everywhere was on the turn. After full consideration of the subject, the Court rose nobly to the spirit of the resolution passed by their predecessors in 1869, and in October 1894 made public their determination to admit women forthwith to graduation in medicine.

* * * * *

The National Association for Promoting the Medical Education of Women, which had done such excellent service after its foundation in 1871, had for some years ceased to exist; “At the present time many of its members had passed away, and others were widely scattered, but it seemed desirable to those women who had always been members of it, and who were still resident in Edinburgh, that some congratulation should be offered by them to Dr. Jex-Blake, for the great victory that had been achieved by her in the opening of the degrees of the University of Edinburgh to women after a struggle extending over exactly five-and-twenty years.”[157] So on Saturday, November 3rd, 1894, these honourable women met together and presented the following address:

“We, the undersigned, women members of the original National Association for the Medical Education of Women, resident at this time in Edinburgh, desire to offer to you our warm and hearty congratulations on the brilliant success you have achieved in securing the opening of the Edinburgh University medical examinations and degrees to women students. We know that it was largely due to your great ability and knowledge that the enabling Bill of 1876 was passed, which put it into the power, if they so willed, of each of the nineteen examining bodies of the United Kingdom to admit women to qualifying examinations, and which was the foundation of the success on which we congratulate you to-day. Many who worked with and under you in the old days have passed away. We who are left take this opportunity of expressing to you our appreciation of the great sacrifice you have made of time, and strength, and money, to win for younger women in their own country a complete medical education crowned by a degree. To have done this in Edinburgh we regard as a success of which you may be justly proud. (_Signed_)—Elizabeth Pease Nichol, Anne H. Calderwood, Grant A. Millar, Flora C. Stevenson, Phœbe Blyth, Sarah E. Siddons Mair, Emily Hodgson, Charlotte Geddes, Agnes Craig, Anne B. Foster, Hannah Lorimer, M. G. Paton, Priscilla Bright M‘Laren, Elizabeth Stuart Blackie, Elisa Carlile Stevenson, Mina Kunz, C. M. Charteris, Margaret Wyld, Eliza Wigham, Jessie M. Wellstood, Euphemia Millar, Eliza Scott Kirkland, Maggie A. Rose, Augusta G. Wyld, Helen Brown, A. A. Skelton, C. M. Edington, A. Edington, Amelia R. Hill, Mary Burton, Louisa Stevenson.—_9th October, 1894._”

Footnote 157:

The quotation is from Miss Louisa Stevenson’s speech in presenting the address.

Before leaving the subject of S. J.-B.’s active life in Edinburgh, it may be well to sum up some of her main characteristics as a doctor and as a citizen, though to a great extent these have already become evident.

First, was her great deftness in any kind of manipulation. It was interesting to see her outshine in this respect so many of the trig and dainty women who at one time or another, worked under her.

Second, was her readiness in emergency. The grass never grew under her feet. It is on record that she had finished some minor operation before her anaesthetist knew that she had begun. An amusing instance of her readiness occurs in a chance episode with her carriage- builder. It was not unusual for her to have little rubs with this man. He and his subordinates had difficulty in living up to her ideas of punctuality, and no doubt they considered her a bit of a nuisance.

One day she called to remonstrate about something and found “the Governor” in great distress from a splinter of steel which had become imbedded in his eye.

“I’ll take it out for you,” she said, and, turning to the men, added, “Bring a chair.”

The chair was placed by her direction in the best light obtainable, _i.e._ on the gallery surrounding the carriage yard, in full view of the men and horses below. She made the patient sit down, and, standing behind him, produced a surgical needle from her instrument case and with its curved convex edge deftly removed the splinter.

It was all done in the twinkling of an eye. Very simple, but very characteristic.

And it would have been awkward if she had failed.

Third, was her refusal to let a patient die. No doctor wishes to lose a case, but with S. J.-B. it was a matter of definite personal struggle.

One day in the comparatively early days of practice, she came in very late to lunch, having been urgently detained with a private patient. She was anxious about a case in her little hospital—a surgical case which had developed medical complications—and she sent a messenger down for news.

“Just sinking,” was the pencilled reply from the resident. “Dr. —— and Dr. —— [the consultants] have been here, and have given her up. We have ceased to worry her with food.”

“_Ceased to worry her with food!_” One saw the summer lightnings on S. J.-B.’s forehead. “Tell Charles to bring the brougham round immediately.” Within half an hour the beef-tea was being administered by her own hand; and there was no more talk of “not worrying the patient with food.” She was worried until she not only rallied, but got her foot on to the ladder of a slow and sure recovery, a recovery that meant just everything to the husband and children who were anxiously awaiting the mother’s return to the little home.

As a neighbour and citizen S. J.-B. had certain outstanding _qualités_, which, with their corresponding _défauts_, have never tended to make the possessor of them universally popular. She considered it a public duty to uphold as far as lay in one person’s power the general standard of proper behaviour and efficiency in the community. She had no use for sluggards and shirkers. “Here’s the Doctor,—mind yersel’!” a cabman was heard to say when he and a gossiping mate had allowed their vehicles to sprawl right across the highroad just as the familiar pony-chaise came in sight. No postal service ever deteriorated in her vicinity. If lesser officials failed to listen, she appealed to the Postmaster-General, and she accomplished many minor reforms by which her neighbours profited as much as she did herself. Assuredly she was no grumbler, but she considered that those who make it their aim to slip smoothly through life, leaving to others all the irksome work of protesting, are—to say the least—acting an unheroic part. She agreed that all things come to him who waits,—and come through the exertions of those who have not been content merely to wait. The callow upstart official was apt to fare badly at her hands, but if the official happened to be an elderly woman at—say—some isolated country post office, one saw S. J.-B. at her best. She would steer the way gently and patiently through some simple transaction that seemed involved enough in those wilds; and, if she was met by a flash of interest and intelligence, her appreciation was great. “Why we’ll make you Postmaster-General!” she has been heard to say, leaving a beaming face behind her as she gathered up the reins and drove away,—a visitant indeed from another world.