Dear Miss Jex-Blake,
I have now been here nearly a week, and hoped to write to you before, but I wished before doing so to see Markby, Bonney, and one or two of the Medical Board, and, being overwhelmed with work, have only just managed to do so. I find that neither Markby nor Bonney estimate any higher than I do the chance of your request being granted. Professor Liveing, one of the members of the Board, is favourable, but shakes his head as to his colleagues. Doctors preponderate on it, and one, Dr. Humphrey, professor of Anatomy, whom I expected to find somewhat more liberal, is averse to women practising medicine, ‘mainly on their own account, because’—but you are familiar with the reasons.
I have not canvassed the others as you had a certain wish for secrecy. If you think it worth while, I will ask Liveing to broach the question at the Board, without mentioning your name, in order to sound opinion: or I will in other ways ascertain privately the views of the members. I do not however feel that this would be decisive, as they may not have considered the question and might yield to argument. However I feel almost sure that your appeal would be rejected without much discussion. Markby is of opinion that even supposing the Board consented to propose the change to the Senate, that body would certainly reject it. And he (M.) is inclined to think that it would injure the cause of female education here in general, to stir up hostility in the Senate on this particular matter. (I do not myself feel sure of this.) But he does not think application to the Board would do any harm. Bonney also thinks this course hopeless but harmless.
Even after consent of the Board and the Senate, you would have to be admitted as member of some college; but in the case supposed, that would not cause much difficulty....
I do not know whether you will think any thing more of us after this. If you do come to look for yourself at the ‘terrain,’ you will at any rate find a minority of sympathizers who will give you any aid in their power, among them
Yours sincerely,
Henry Sidgwick.
P.S. You will see that, on reflection, I am somewhat doubtful of the advantage of making the application. On the whole, however, I still think it would be a good thing.”
Meanwhile Professor Masson of Edinburgh University had written a letter to Mrs. Butler, from which S. J.-B. quotes the following extract in her diary:
“It will give me much pleasure to see Miss Jex-Blake (whose name is well known to me); Sir James Simpson will be very glad to see her also.... I fear however that at present the chance of the throwing open of professional education and degrees are not so great with us as Miss Blake seems to imagine” (!)—The exclamation point is S. J.-B.’s.—“But who knows what may happen or how soon?”