On August 7th Miss Pechey writes:
“Has our Bill received the Royal Assent? If so, I suppose Mrs. Thorne and I might apply any time to Edinburgh, though I don’t suppose she would consent to say what I intend to. I mean simply to ask them whether now they have the power, they intend honourably to fulfil the contract they made with me in 1869. It does not matter to me when I send in the question, as we can’t be examined, I believe, till next April. Isn’t it so? But of course we had better not apply till the Arts Professors are back.
Ever yours affect.
E. P.”
Edinburgh, however, did not prove encouraging even to its own matriculated students, so Miss Pechey—accompanied by Miss Shove—went to Ireland in September to see what could be effected there. She was very cordially received, though many with whom she had to deal were quite unaware of the existence of the all-important Baby Act; and one can imagine the joy with which, after much labour, she wrote to report that both the Queen’s University and the King’s and Queen’s College of Physicians had consented to examine women, subject only to their complying with the ordinary regulations. “Miss Pechey has done wonders,” wrote Mrs. Thorne.
The University regulations required attendance at four courses of lectures in one of the Queen’s Colleges (at Cork, Belfast and Galway), and four professors at Galway agreed to deliver these; but, owing mainly—as happened so often!—to the opposition of one influential man, the Council of the College interposed and vetoed the arrangement.
Fortunately the Irish College made no difficulties, and to that body belongs the credit of being the first to grant to women—and above all, to these women—the long-deferred privilege of Registration. “I cannot realize,” wrote Mrs. Thorne to S. J.-B. a few weeks later, “that an examining body is absolutely open to us.” “You have been the mainspring of the seven years’ struggle, and to you we are all deeply indebted for the result.”
Before passing on, we must record one pleasant distraction which that summer had afforded in the appearance of Mr. Charles Reade on the scene, deeply interested in “the fight,” and very anxious to obtain materials for his Woman Hater. There are numerous letters from him to S. J.-B., asking information about this happening and that: and he spent many mornings at her house, studying the archives. The novel achieved no small success by running its course in Blackwood’s Magazine, within the very gates, so to speak, of the enemy’s citadel.