“I had to appear before the University Commissioners last Wednesday, and if possible I will send you a proof of my examination. It was very satisfactory, as the Chairman (Lord Kinnear) said they were satisfied that it was desirable and necessary to give medical degrees to women in Scotland.”
To another friend she had written a week earlier,
“By the bye you will like to see the enclosed proof of my evidence last week before the Universities Commission. Miss E.-L. made me tell my class about it next day, and they clapped warmly; and then, after the lecture, as I was going out, they gave me another round. I stopped and said,—‘Oh, is that for Univ. Commission?’ ‘For you, Doctor!’ shouted Miss Moorhead.”
The whole matter, as is usual with such things, ran a leisurely course, for on April 27th, 1892, she writes again,
“... I had one very amusing experience on Monday. The Scottish Universities Commission has been issuing some ‘Ordinances’ to which serious objections are taken, and among others a flaw has been found in the Women’s Ordinance, which we want to have remedied. All the objecting bodies were to meet together, so Dr. Balfour and I were summoned by enclosed solemn document to appear to represent our School, and it was amusing to find myself an invited delegate, at whose entrance the Chairman rose and came forward with outstretched hand, in the awful University Court Room, where our case had over and over again been tried by a hostile authority, and lost, without an opportunity for a word in our own defence.
Sir Robert Christison looked down from the wall, and it made me almost chuckle to think what he would have said!
Sic transit! How the world moves!
I have just heard this morning of a legacy of £100 for our Hospital, and probably something for the School though (from vague wording) that is less certain.”
At this time the great hope—as so often in the past—lay in the direction of the University of St. Andrews, but the hope proved illusory once more. In reading the history, one feels again and again as if St. Andrews University had been surrounded by some strange magic circle, for it happened on numberless occasions that when everything seemed settled, and every difficulty had been laboriously overcome, some unsuspected link in the chain gave way, and endless exertion was rendered null and void. So it seems to have happened now, for in June 1894 we find S. J.-B. writing again to Miss Du Pre:
“I have been desperately busy this week, chiefly at the University or with University people, as circumstances have led to my very suddenly applying to have our School recognized by the [Edinburgh] University Court, which really seems possible, Calderwood and Watson both being members of it. The story is a long one, arising out of complications at St. Andrews.