The Surgeons' Hall Riot (18 November 1870) was a defining moment in the campaign of the Edinburgh Seven, a group of women fighting for the right to train and practice as doctors. It created a groundswell of support for the women's campaign, and also led to a well documented libel case against Sophia Jex-Blake.
On 18 November 1870, the women were to attend an anatomy exam at Surgeons' Hall in Edinburgh. As they approached the building, they were confronted by a large crowd of students and several hundred onlookers. They were verbally abused and pelted with refuse, and the gate to the building was slammed in their face. They were eventually able to gain access to the hall — some resources state that access was facilitated by helpful janitorial staff, [1] while others assert that the women were assisted by sympathetic male students. [2] Several disruptive students were ejected from the building to allow the examination to proceed, however it was further interrupted when a live sheep — the pet sheep of the college known as "Poor 'Mailie" [3] — was let loose in the room through a back door. [4] After the close of the examination, a group of Irish students known as the "Irish Brigade" escorted the women out of the college in safety, although they were by this time well spattered with mud. [5]
The riot represented the culmination of months of harassment and bullying that the women faced during their studies; they had obscenities shouted at them in the streets, doors slammed in their face, and dirty or threatening letters were sent to them as part of this campaign of abuse. [1] After the event, Sophia Jex-Blake was to claim that responsibility for inciting the riot lay with a student named Mr Craig, which led to his filing a defamation writ against her in January 1871. [2] It has further been suggested that the students who instigated or took part in the riots did so with the support of medical faculty, [1] particularly from Professor Robert Christison, for whom Craig worked as class assistant and who was explicitly opposed to the presence of women in medicine. [2]
Jex-Blake defended herself against Craig's writ of defamation in court with her colleagues serving as witnesses, and although the court found in favour of the claimant they awarded him just one farthing instead of the £1000 he had requested; the result has since been described as a victory for the Edinburgh Seven. [2] Following the riots, the media condemned the actions of the rioters, with The Scotsman writing of the event:
...a certain class of medical students are doing their utmost to make sure that the name of medical student synonymous with all that is cowardly and degrading, it is imperative upon all...men...to come forward and express... their detestation of the proceedings which have characterised and dishonoured the opposition to ladies pursuing the study of medicine in Edinburgh... [5]
The riots and their negative portrayal in the national media subsequently led not only to increased awareness of the Edinburgh Seven, but to a rise in public sympathy for the women and their fight to study medicine. [6]
In September 2015 a Historic Scotland plaque commemorating the riot was unveiled at the University of Edinburgh. [7] The nomination for the plaque was made by Learning Technology Senior Advisor Jo Spiller, of the University of Edinburgh. [8] It was unveiled by Fiona Hyslop (Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Europe and External Affairs for the Scottish Government at the time), [9] at a ceremony which was held at the University's Anatomical Museum. [10]
In September 2015, the riot was included in Wendy Carle Taylor's musical show What a Riot! A Celebration of Surgeons' Hall in Story & Song, performed at the Surgeons' Hall Museum. [11] The show was staged in celebration of the re-opening of the museum following refurbishment. [12]
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.
Sir Robert Christison, 1st Baronet, was a Scottish toxicologist and physician who served as president of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and as president of the British Medical Association (1875). He was the first person to describe renal anaemia.
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.
The London School of Medicine for Women (LSMW) established in 1874 was the first medical school in Britain to train women as doctors. The patrons, vice-presidents, and members of the committee that supported and helped found the London School of Medicine for Women wanted to provide educated women with the necessary facilities for learning and practicing midwifery and other branches of medicine while also promoting their future employment in the fields of midwifery and other fields of treatment for women and children.
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.
Isabel Jane Thorne was an early campaigner for medical education for women. Mrs Thorne, as she was known, was a member of the feminist Edinburgh Seven, who campaigned and succeeded in securing the right by statute for women to be educated to qualify as doctors. An exemplary Victorian, Thorne's dedication to duty and service was a precursor for the more violent campaigns of the suffragettes to achieve full enfranchisement for women.
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The University of Edinburgh Medical School is the medical school of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and the United Kingdom and part of the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine. It was established in 1726, during the Scottish Enlightenment, making it the oldest medical school in the United Kingdom and the oldest medical school in the English-speaking world.
Emily Bovell was a physician and credited as one of the original members of the Edinburgh Seven. After qualification she worked at the New Hospital for Women in Marylebone Road, London and in Paris. The French government award her the Officier des Ordre des Palmes Académiques for services to medicine. Her husband was the neurologist William Allen Sturge.
Mary Adamson Marshall was a physician and a member of the Edinburgh Seven, the first women to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh.
Helen de Lacey Evans was the fifth member of the Edinburgh Seven, a group of women who enrolled at the University of Edinburgh in 1869, and who sought to qualify as physicians. She married the editor of TheScotsman, Alexander Russel and was mother to the suffragist and feminist campaigner Helen Archdale.
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Henrietta Jex-Blake was a British violinist, and the principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, from 1909 to 1921.
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.
Extramural medical education in Edinburgh began over 200 years before the university medical faculty was founded in 1726 and extramural teaching continued thereafter for a further 200 years. Extramural is academic education which is conducted outside a university. In the early 16th century it was under the auspices of the Incorporation of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd) and continued after the Faculty of Medicine was established by the University of Edinburgh in 1726. Throughout the late 18th and 19th centuries the demand for extramural medical teaching increased as Edinburgh's reputation as a centre for medical education grew. Instruction was carried out by individual teachers, by groups of teachers and, by the end of the 19th century, by private medical schools in the city. Together these comprised the Edinburgh Extramural School of Medicine. From 1896 many of the schools were incorporated into the Medical School of the Royal Colleges of Edinburgh under the aegis of the RCSEd and the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (RCPE) and based at Surgeons' Hall. Extramural undergraduate medical education in Edinburgh stopped in 1948 with the closure of the Royal Colleges' Medical School following the Goodenough Report which recommended that all undergraduate medical education in the UK should be carried out by universities.
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