Ever your loving Mummy,
M. E. J.-B.”
One is glad to know that the women students were having a course of lectures on Medical Jurisprudence from Dr. (afterwards Sir Henry) Littlejohn that term,—with all the delightful excursions, topographical and mental, which that course involved. No one who has had the privilege of the same experience can regard the history of that summer as a trial without compensation.
Meanwhile the lawsuit was dragging its weary course. One cannot be surprised that the University should have appealed against Lord Gifford’s decision. If appeal be made to law at all, one must get the last word of the law,—especially if, in the last resort, public funds are available to pay for it. There were still lurking possibilities in that little word “vir,” and it might yet be shown that the University had done an illegal thing when it admitted the women in the first instance. If that proved to be so—and it was the crux of the whole case—the University (so it was argued) must be held excused from all responsibility towards the women students themselves.
But, if one refrains from blaming the University, one cannot sufficiently admire the behaviour of the women students as a whole during those trying days of uncertainty. While the younger members of the little band were pursuing their education where and how they could, the seniors were striving on every hand to find some open door or to unlock one that was closed. Birmingham was at least discussed, with its possibilities; St. Andrews, Durham, and the various centres in Ireland were visited and worked diplomatically, and for a time not without apparent prospect of success. It is pathetic to go through the endless reams of correspondence—vital once with hopes and fears—that was destined to end, for the moment at least, in nothing.
In June S. J.-B. and Miss M‘Laren went on a mission to Newcastle, and they had scarcely left Edinburgh before Miss Pechey, who had just returned, sent the following report:
“15 Buccleuch Place,