“I have seen the Venerable Principal’s letter,” wrote a distinguished lawyer from Uig, “for even in these uttermost parts of the earth the Scotsman has reached me, and I need not say what I thought of it. I read also with great satisfaction your thorough demolition of the learned and venerable and inaccurate gentleman, and the Scotsman’s excellent punching of his head.”
S. J.-B. spent part of that summer holiday visiting Norfolk cousins, and she took the opportunity to read a paper on her special subject at the Social Science Congress at Norwich, under the auspices of her friend, Professor Hodgson, who was President of the Education Section.[[116]] Here she made two friendships of great value,—one with Miss Louisa Hubbard, whose sister, Lady Rendel, had been S. J.-B.’s schoolfellow; the other, even more memorable, with Miss Pauline Irby, who was just entering upon her heroic and self-sacrificing life work in Bosnia. In October S. J.-B. returned to Edinburgh to clinch the arrangements Mrs. Thorne was making for the winter session.
It is one more instance of the extraordinary, dogged perseverance of those women that during that winter session the lectures were delivered to women as before by Edinburgh Extra-Mural lecturers, the subjects being Materia Medica, Pathology and Midwifery. S. J.-B. attended these lectures when she could, and took honours in all of them; but she was already in correspondence with Dr. Anstie and others as to the possibility of opening some school for women in the larger and more impersonal milieu of London. As a matter of fact, the whole centre of interest had changed. The question was now potentially before Parliament,—not indeed as a question of practical politics to be decided by the rank and file, but as a matter for private discussion by a few men of courage and vision.
“It was necessary,” wrote Mr. Stansfeld in reviewing the history three years later,[[117]] “to appeal to a yet higher tribunal. Such appeal might have been made on the question of law to the House of Lords; but that would have meant further indefinite delay and further heavy expense, and then, if the result were favourable, a probable refusal of the university to act on their ascertained powers. It was necessary to secure the admission of women to medical study and practice, and not merely to ascertain that one out of nineteen examining bodies could admit them if it liked. Miss Jex-Blake and her friends determined to widen their appeal, to base it on the ground of right, and to address it to Parliament and to public opinion.”
As early as August 1872 Sir David Wedderburn (on behalf of Sir Robert Anstruther) had moved that the vote for the Scottish Universities should be reduced by the amount of the salaries of the Edinburgh Medical Professors. He explained that the motion was brought forward in order to lay before the House the course followed by the authorities of the University of Edinburgh, but that, in view of the fact that the Lord Ordinary, had, a few days before, given a judgment in favour of the ladies, he hoped the University would accept the decision as final and as indicating to them their duties in the matter; and he would therefore refrain from pressing the motion to a division.
When the University appealed against the Lord Ordinary’s decision, and got it reversed on appeal, Sir David Wedderburn, on July 29th, 1873, gave notice that he would, early in the following session, bring in a Bill to grant to the Scottish Universities the power they were now supposed not to possess, to educate women in medicine and to grant to them the ordinary medical degrees.
It was highly desirable, of course, to secure Government support for this Bill, and in October we find S. J.-B. in correspondence with the Home Secretary. There is a long letter marked “Private” in which Mr. Lowe (Lord Sherbrooke) expresses his view of the matter, and asks her to let him know what course she proposes to follow. Shortly after, we get the following:
“Secretary of State,
Home Department.
Oct. 13. 1874.