The Edinburgh Association for the University Education of Women (EAUEW), originally known as the Edinburgh Ladies' Educational Association (ELEA), campaigned for higher education for women from 1867 until 1892 when Scottish universities started to admit female students. For nearly a quarter of a century it arranged its own classes for women with lecturers from Edinburgh University, and it was connected with a wider campaign across Europe to open universities to women students.
The ELEA was founded by Mary Crudelius, with Sarah Mair and others, in 1867 just before Sophia Jex-Blake started pressing Edinburgh University to admit medical students. Jex-Blake's campaign, covered by the press in both London and Scotland, made Edinburgh a visible part of a nationwide movement demanding higher education opportunities for women. Crudelius wished to keep the ELEA separate from the controversy raging over the women aspiring to become doctors, and she built up support amongst male academics, with strong encouragement from David Masson, Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature, [1] who offered the first university-level lectures to Edinburgh women in 1868, and whose wife Emily Rosaline Orme Masson was a leader in the women's suffrage movement in Edinburgh. The lectures were well-attended and within the next five years the association had arranged for several more subjects to be offered, including science subjects.
In August 1867 the University of London had been given powers to hold special examinations for women. In 1868 the university drew up plans to grant them certificates, although it would be another ten years before women could graduate with full degrees.
One of David Masson's earliest ELEA lectures in 1868 responded to this news:
"Is it to be borne that our Scottish Universities are to be Universities for only the men of the land, while other Universities are Universities for the men and women of the land? Is it to be borne that those of Scotland's daughters, be they few or be they many at present, who desire not to be behind any of their British sisters in culture, shall have to look for encouragement and aid to the Universities in England ... ?" [2]
Although Crudelius was often successful in avoiding confrontations of the kind which erupted around the women medical students, she did not entirely avoid tensions between the university and the association.
In 1873 Mary Russell Walker joined the group and she was said to "the intellect" in the group and she was good at administration. [3] In 1874 a university certificate was offered in arts subjects and the association's classes were listed in the university calendar from 1877. The first ELEA member to sit exams for the university certificate was Charlotte Carmichael, who became the first woman in Scotland to receive a university acknowledgement of upper education. [4]
In 1877 the Aberdeen Ladies' Educational Association and the Glasgow Ladies' Educational Association were formed. [5]
Nonetheless, while support for women's educational rights was growing and a system of recognition for educational achievement was in place, the universities were still officially closed to female students. Further campaigning and public discussion led to the Universities (Scotland) Act 1889, after which universities started to make arrangements for women to study and graduate on the same terms as men. The first female undergraduates at Edinburgh were admitted in 1892 and eight graduated in 1893, all of them having previously studied in EAUEW classes. All classes were mixed except those for medical students. By 1914 a thousand women had degrees from Edinburgh University.
The valuation roll of Edinburgh 1885-86 mentions the Edinburgh Association for the University Education of Women being at 15 Shandwick Place. [6]
Once women were admitted as students, the EAUEW turned its attention to providing facilities for them. Louisa Stevenson and Margaret Houldsworth were leading figures in raising funds for the Masson Hall (named to honour Professor Masson's support) which opened in 1897 with accommodation and a library, overseen by the warden, Frances Simson, one of those first eight women graduates. Hopes that it might become a women's college similar to Girton College, Cambridge were not realised, but for many years the Hall was a community of women within the wider university. Masson Hall was relocated in the 1960s when the University redeveloped its site in George Square, and the EAUEW was wound up in the 1970s.
The equivalent organisation in Glasgow was the Glasgow Association for the Higher Education of Women which brought about the establishment of Queen Margaret College. In 1892 the college started to amalgamate with Glasgow University but kept its own identity for some time.
Aberdeen University also opened its doors to women in 1892 with the first 20 female students matriculating in 1894.
At the University of St Andrews, women could be undergraduates from 1892, and on-campus board and residence was available for them from 1896. From the 1870s, St. Andrews had offered women a special diploma qualification, like an external degree called the LLA: Lady Literate in Arts.
Influential members of the EAUEW included:
Lecturers for the EAUEW included:
The founder members were:
Sarah Mair was present at the meeting when the Association was founded, but the Association did not consider her a founder member, presumably because she was unmarried and rather young.
Sophia Louisa Jex-Blake was an English physician, teacher, and feminist. She led the campaign to secure women access to a university education, when six other women and she, collectively known as the Edinburgh Seven, began studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1869. She was the first practising female doctor in Scotland, and one of the first in the wider United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; a leading campaigner for medical education for women, she was involved in founding two medical schools for women, in London and Edinburgh, at a time when no other medical schools were training women.
The Edinburgh Seven were the first group of matriculated undergraduate female students at any British university. They began studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1869 and, although the Court of Session ruled that they should never have been admitted, and they did not graduate or qualify as doctors, the campaign they fought gained national attention and won them many supporters, including Charles Darwin. Their campaign put the demands of women for a university education on the national political agenda, and eventually resulted in legislation to ensure that women could be licensed to practice medicine in 1876.
St George's School is an independent girls' school situated in the Ravelston district of Edinburgh, Scotland.
The Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women was founded by Sophia Jex-Blake in Edinburgh, Scotland, in October 1886, with support from the National Association for Promoting the Medical Education of Women. Sophia Jex-Blake was appointed as both the Director and the Dean of the School. The first class of women to study at the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women consisted of eight students, the youngest of whom was nineteen years of age. Throughout its twelve years in operation, the school struggled to find financial funding to remain open. A rival institution, the Edinburgh College of Medicine for Women, set up by Elsie Inglis with the help of her father John Inglis, attracted several students of Jex-Blake, including Martha Cadell and Grace Cadell. St Mungo's College and Queen Margaret College in Glasgow also accepted women medical students and when the Scottish universities began to do so the Edinburgh School of Medicine could no longer compete. The school closed in 1898. 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.
Flora Clift Stevenson was a British social reformer with a special interest in education for poor or neglected children, and in education for girls and equal university access for women. She was one of the first women in the United Kingdom to be elected to a school board.
Louisa Stevenson was a Scottish campaigner for women's university education, women's suffrage and effective, well-organised nursing. She was the co-founder of Edinburgh’s Queen Margaret University.
Mary Crudelius was a British campaigner for women's education who lived in Leith, Edinburgh in the 1860s and 1870s, and was a supporter of women's suffrage. She was a founder of the Edinburgh Association for the University Education of Women.
Dame Sarah Elizabeth Siddons Mair was a Scottish campaigner for women's education and women's suffrage. She was active in the Edinburgh Association for the University Education of Women and the Ladies' Edinburgh Debating Society, which she founded before she was 20.
Margaret Marshall Houldsworth was a British campaigner for women's education and a philanthropist.
Charlotte Brown Carmichael Stopes, also known as C. C. Stopes, was a British scholar, author, and campaigner for women's rights. She also published several books relating to the life and work of William Shakespeare. Her most successful publication was British Freewomen: Their Historical Privilege, a book which influenced and inspired the early twentieth century British women's suffrage movement. She married Henry Stopes, a palaeontologist, brewer and engineer. They produced two daughters, the eldest of whom was Marie Stopes, known for her advocacy of birth control.
Masson Hall opened in 1897 as the first 'proper' hall of residence for women attending the University of Edinburgh. It was established by the Edinburgh Association for the Education of University Women (EAEUW) at 31 George Square. This site is now part of the University of Edinburgh Library.
The Edinburgh National Society for Women's Suffrage was a leading group for women's rights in Scotland. It was one of the first three suffrage societies to be formed in Britain.
Frances Helen Simson (1854–1938) was a Scottish suffragist, campaigner for women's higher education and one of the first of eight women graduates from the University of Edinburgh in 1893.
Grace Ross Cadell was a Scottish medical doctor and suffragist, and one of the first group of women to study medicine in Scotland and qualify.
Madeline Margaret Daniell was a Scottish educationalist and campaigner for women's rights to higher education.
Frances Helen Melville, was a Scottish suffragist, advocate for higher education for women in Scotland, and one of the first women to matriculate at the University of Edinburgh in 1892. She was president of the British Federation of University Women from 1935 to 1942.
Alice Stewart Ker or Alice Jane Shannan KerMRCPI was a Scottish physician, health educator, and suffragette. She was the 13th woman on the registry of the British Medical Association.
Phoebe Blyth was a Scottish philanthropist, educationist and a leading campaigner for opening up opportunities for women in professional employment.
The Edinburgh College of Medicine for Women was established by Elsie Inglis and her father John Inglis. Elsie Inglis went on to become a leader in the suffrage movement and found the Scottish Women's Hospital organisation in World War I, but when she jointly founded the college she was still a medical student. Her father, John Inglis, had been a senior civil servant in India, where he had championed the cause of education for women. On his return to Edinburgh he became a supporter of medical education for women and used his influence to help establish the college. The college was founded in 1889 at a time when women were not admitted to university medical schools in the UK.
Mary Walker was a Scottish teacher who was the founding head of the first Scottish teacher training college and the head of the first Scottish day school, St. George's High School for Girls to teach girls to pass university entrance exams.