The Medical Profession
The rejection of Miss Elizabeth Garrett and other women candidates by the Apothecaries and other medical corporations is unsparingly condemned in the issue of February 22, 1868; but the history of the campaign is written at length in the Life of Sophia Jex-Blake. It may suffice here to add the most notable, and, allowing for a little pardonable optimism, the sanest of Punch's contributions to the controversy in the period under review in this volume. It appeared in March, 1870, in the form of a letter, but here, as elsewhere, the views are clearly editorial:—
The necessity, Sir, of persevering study will, alone, we may be sure, suffice to keep all women out of the medical profession, but a very few. There is therefore no sort of occasion for the opposition to the movement on behalf of their eligibility to be members of that profession, offered, conceivably, by no men out of it but fools, and by none in it but trades unionists. Assuredly, Mr. Punch, rather should every encouragement be given to women desirous to enter the profession of medicine. Paterfamilias is a goose if he do not encourage any daughter of his, endowed with intellect, industry and resolution, who may evince a turn that way. No daughter can Paterfamilias get so thoroughly off his hands as a self-supporting one.
OUR NURSES
Experienced Night Nurse (sternly): "Come, come, sir! You must stop that horrid noise. If you keep wheezing and snoring like that all night, how am I to get to sleep?"
The medical science, Mr. Punch, acquired by a lady doctor here and there might prove a leaven which would leaven the whole lump so to speak, with apology for calling the fair sex a lump. And the lump sadly wants leavening. When it had got properly leavened there would soon be an end to advertisements of "corsets," cosmetics and ways of being made beautiful for ever; also an end of low dresses in high life and high latitudes. The death rate from bronchitis and consumption would largely decrease.
There would likewise be an end of Daffy and Dalby, and all manner of domestic quackery in those upper regions where future men and women make the noises which pious Æneas heard, the first thing, in the lower. Moreover, we should hear much less of those noises.
And mark. Whilst the medical profession would be a resource for a clever girl, who, having to live somehow, would like to live single, or at any rate, having a soul of her own as well as a body, would hate to sell herself in the marriage-market, it would by no means debar such an one, matrimonially disposed, from matrimony. For what young medical man wanting a partner could do better than choose a medical lady duly qualified (in every respect) for partnership? And every non-medical man thinking to take a wife would find his account in taking a doctress who would know better than, by continually breaking the natural laws, to let herself in for everlasting headaches, faintings, hysterics, and other ailments, rendering herself a perpetual plague to a husband, and running him up doctor's bills. Finally, the father of a family of children, whose mamma was a medical gentlewoman, would enjoy the advantage, instead of suffering the expense, of having a doctor always in the house.
That the Legislature will compel the Medical Council to grant a diploma to every lady who can satisfy their examiners is the hope of
Yours truly,
Celsus Excelsior.
The question of the admission of women to the Bar had already attracted serious discussion. In June, 1869, Punch, generalizing from a particular case, expressed mock horror at the prospect:—
THE BAR FEMININE
(Respectfully but remonstratively recommended to the notice of John Stuart Mill)Is this, we earnestly ask, in the name of cruelty to legal animals, what Court and Clients must be prepared for when ladies are admitted to practice at the Bar?
The Shedden legitimacy case was resumed this morning for the fifteenth time before the House of Lords. The Lord Chancellor commented upon the extreme prolixity of Miss Shedden's address, which has now occupied fourteen days, and exhorted her to confine her remarks to the evidence. Shortly after commencing to address their Lordships this morning Miss Shedden swooned, and was carried out. Dr. Bond being sent for, testified that the lady was suffering from hysteria, brought on by nervous exhaustion. Their Lordships postponed the case till to-morrow, when, if Miss Shedden should be unable to proceed, her father will be heard.
Talk of "the Subjection of Women," Mr. Mill! Here's the whole force of Law Lords in subjection to one woman ... who, after fifteen days, talks herself into hysteria, and their Lordships into—but what single word can be found comprehensive enough to describe their Lordship's state of body and mind, under the peine forte et dure of this distressingly fluent female. Fancy a Bar of Miss Sheddens! The masculine legal mind recoils in horror from the idea!
The Suffrage Question
According to the D.N.B. Miss Shedden conducted her case for thirty days. But a few months later Punch, discussing the "Professions of Petticoats," approved of the contemplated innovation, and in 1870 wrote: "Open the Bar, forensic as well as tabernary, only insist on the wig and gown—the regulation gown—let the law of judicial vision be the same for female counsel as for male."
The advance in Punch's education in regard to the most controversial of all woman's claims—that to the vote—is much smaller, but it is an advance. He began in ribaldry and ridicule; but the persistence, the ability, and the high character of the advocates of Woman Suffrage converted him (intermittently) to seriousness, and even respect. The successive stages of this change are interesting to trace. In 1857 a Feminist Meeting at Leicester is merely the subject for chaff. We have noted in the previous volume that Mayfair held severely aloof from the Women's Rights movement in its earlier days. But in the summer of 1858, at the same time when Almack's was revived, the Marchioness of Londonderry and Lady Dysart proclaimed their adherence to Woman Suffrage. Punch, still somewhat democratic, was not moved by this social portent, and when it was announced that the Ladies' Gallery in the House of Commons was to be enlarged, unfeelingly suggested that it must be a concession to crinoline: otherwise there could be no reason for favouring "a parcel of chattering and giggling women."
In 1859 we find a burlesque account of a woman's meeting, convened to discuss the Suffrage question. But a slightly altered tone is observable in the early 'sixties. Women's indirect electoral power is recognized in the hostile criticism of the Realm, a recently-founded Conservative organ, in the issue of April 23, 1864, and when the question of Woman Suffrage came up before the Social Science Congress in 1866, it is significant that Punch abandons ridicule for argument:—