Dr. King Chambers spared himself no trouble in the matter.
“I have got over the chief difficulty,” he writes, “viz., that of engaging the Anatomy lecturer, Mr. Arthur Norton, to undertake a class of ladies. There is also a room they could have for dissecting, and arrangements may be made with the porter’s wife to take care of their cloaks and attend to their comforts. The other lecturers shall be approached in due course, but I think Mr. Norton is the chief one to be considered. What number of ladies can you get to form a class?”
A fortnight later, however, he is obliged to write:
“Dear Madam,
I fear you will be disappointed with the result of my application to the School Committee of St. Mary’s. It was a full meeting which had been already called on another subject; so I took the opportunity of getting as many of my colleagues as possible to freely state their opinions. And the result is my agreeing with the idea you expressed in your note, that the most insuperable of your difficulties lay in the direction of the students—to which I may add their parents and guardians; of whom, as customers, private firms in the position of the medical schools of London, must stand in awe. Such a sort of partnership is essentially opposed to change, as, if even a minority object to a novelty, their colleagues shrink from forcing it upon them.
It seems hard that British women should be sent abroad to get that of which there is such abundance at home, but circumstances seem to render this inevitable.
Repeating my regrets that I should have deluded you with false hopes, I am
Yours faithfully,
T. K. Chambers.”
It is pleasant to note that, if S. J.-B. failed to get from Dr. Chambers the thing she wanted at the moment, she had at least found in him a lifelong friend and helper.