To the Editor of the Times.
Sir,—As Sir Alexander Grant, as representative of the University of Edinburgh, has thought fit to lay before your readers a statement respecting that University and its lady students which is, to use the mildest term, imperfect in the extreme, I trust to your justice to allow me to supplement his narrative with such additional facts as he has not thought it desirable to make public.
Sir Alexander states that in 1869 the University was “solicited to admit ladies as an experiment to the lectures of the medical professors,” and further on speaks of the regulations as being, “as was requested, tentative.” He implies that all that followed was in compliance with this request, the claim to graduation being altogether an afterthought on the part of the ladies. Now, the real fact is that in March, 1869, I personally did request admission to medical lectures on these terms, but though the application was granted by the Senatus it was refused by the University Court on the express ground of the inexpediency of making any such “temporary arrangement in the interest of one lady.” About three months later four other ladies joined me in making a new and altogether different application—viz., that the University “would sanction the matriculation of women as medical students, and their admission to the usual examinations, on the understanding that separate classes be formed for their instruction.” At the same time (June 21, 1869) I addressed a formal letter to the Lord Rector of the University urging the same proposal, and asking that, if separate classes could be formed, women should be “allowed to matriculate in the usual way, and to undergo the ordinary examinations, with a view to obtain medical degrees in due course.”
Our new proposal was successively submitted to all the different authorities of the University, and received the assent of all—viz., of the Medical Faculty, the Senatus Academicus, the University Court, the University Council, and the Chancellor—and, after five months of consultation and consideration, regulations were, in November, 1869, framed and issued “for the education of women in medicine in the University,” these regulations being henceforth incorporated in the official University Calendar. The first of these regulations states that “women shall be admitted to the study of medicine in the University”; in the fourth regulation exceptional provision is made for “women not intending to study medicine professionally”; and the sixth regulation ordains that “all women attending such classes shall be subject to all the regulations now or at any time in force in the University as to the matriculation of students, their attendance on classes, examination, or otherwise.”
As the decision by which a bare majority of the Scotch Judges absolved the University of Edinburgh from all responsibility towards its matriculated lady students rests on the assumption that the University Court exceeded its legal powers in passing the above regulations, it may be worth while to state that the University Court comprised at that time the then Lord Advocate of Scotland (who is now Lord Justice Clerk), and also the previous Lord Advocate, Mr. Gordon, and that the regulations in question were confirmed by the Chancellor, who happens to be, as Lord Justice General of Scotland, the highest legal authority in the country. It is certainly a tolerably striking instance of the “glorious uncertainty of the law,” that the two highest Judges in the land should concur in an action which is subsequently declared by a majority of their brethren to be illegal.
Sir Alexander further goes on to suggest that we might have ascertained beforehand how many of the Professors would be willing to hold separate classes for our benefit. The answer to this is twofold. In the first place, no less than four of the medical Professors have been changed since my first application was made, and in every case the change has, as regards our interests, been for the worse. One of those Professors whose loss we have most to deplore is Sir James Simpson, whose generous liberality made him always ready to espouse the weaker cause, and whose strong sense of justice would have made him always our strenuous supporter in the councils of the University. Had he been spared, it is, indeed, more than possible that the whole history of the past four years would have been different. On these losses it was impossible for us to calculate; nor could we (before we learnt the full bitterness of professional rancour) have foreseen that those Professors who were themselves unable or unwilling to teach us would absolutely refuse their assent to every one of the alternative measures by which others might have been enabled to give us the necessary instructions. It is hardly necessary to allude to your correspondent’s rather apocryphal statement that the stupendous labour of giving two lectures a day (which is habitually undergone by Professors in the Arts Faculty) has ruined the health of one medical Professor and seriously endangered that of two more. Suffice it to say that these facts are, to say the least of it, quite new to me, and that, did space permit, I think a very different version of the circumstances might be given.
As Sir Alexander has thought fit to refer to the students’ riot in November, 1871 (though to my mind it is very far from the most discreditable episode in this history), I think it right distinctly to deny the interpretation he puts upon the event. It is true that the riot did occur while we were attending an extra-mural class of anatomy (we having utterly failed to obtain a private class, though we had offered a fee of a hundred and fifty guineas for one), but the rioters were, with few exceptions, not our fellow-students at all, but a mob of University students who had been summoned together by a missive circulated in the University class-rooms. The real truth was that the riot was deliberately got up simply and solely in the hope of frightening certain friendly infirmary managers from admitting us to their wards, and perhaps also of frightening us by showers of foul words and of street mud from pursuing our studies any further. Fortunately, the chivalrous device was not permanently successful in either direction.
I pass on, however, to notice the statements made respecting the recent lawsuit and the events immediately preceding it. Sir Alexander says that when the University “for the first time sought legal advice” the authorities obtained an opinion adverse to the ladies’ claims from the Solicitor-General. As that opinion has never been published, there is no opportunity for its discussion; but Sir Alexander appears entirely to forget the fact that an opinion to the exactly contrary effect was delivered by the Lord Advocate of Scotland, who takes official precedence of the Solicitor-General, and that that opinion was not only submitted to the University Court, but published more than once in the newspapers and elsewhere. In that opinion the Lord Advocate stated distinctly that he believed the University to be not only able, but distinctly bound, to complete the education of those ladies whom it had invited to matriculate, and that all necessary arrangements for that purpose could legally be made. It will thus be seen that the above opinions at any rate neutralized each other, and that, had the University willed it otherwise, it certainly need not have been “paralyzed” by one of them.
It is further stated that the University Court informed the ladies that, by the opinion above referred to, “it was debarred from promoting their graduation until the legality of such graduation could be established, but it offered to make, in the meantime, arrangements for their full medical instruction”; and, further, that such offer was rejected by the ladies. Both these statements, Sir, I distinctly deny. I have at this moment the whole correspondence before me, and I fail utterly to find in it any such offer as that alleged. The only thing that in any degree gives colour to Sir Alexander’s assertion is a passage occurring in a Minute of the University Court of January 8, 1872, which is as follows:
“The Court are of opinion that the question under reference has been complicated by the introduction of the subject of graduation, which is not essential to the completion of a medical or other education.... If the applicants in the present case would be content to seek the examination of women by the University for certificates of proficiency in medicine, instead of University degrees, the Court believe that arrangements for accomplishing this object would fall within the scope of the powers given to them by section 12 of the Universities (Scotland) Act. The Court would be willing to consider any such arrangements which might be submitted to them.”