Apart from the ghost—which was a pure joy, though a very exciting one—S. J.-B.’s holiday was broken in upon by very disturbing rumours.
It was whispered by some of those who might have been supposed to know, that—notwithstanding the paragraphs that still stood in the University Calendar (see p. 260)—an effort would be made to prevent any new women candidates from undergoing the Preliminary Examination, and from matriculating. Worse than this, it was hinted that a similar effort would be made to prevent the women who had been studying for that express purpose for two years, from presenting themselves for the First Professional Examination.
There were positive difficulties apart from these vague rumours. In a previous chapter we saw that the President of the Royal College of Physicians and the President of the Royal College of Surgeons had refused to preside at the prize-giving “if lady students were to be present and to receive their prizes on that occasion.” This announcement was followed by a decision on the part of the lecturers at Surgeons’ Hall “to rescind the permission given last summer to those lecturers who desired to admit ladies to their classes,”—“it being, however, understood that the prohibition should not extend to the instructions by Dr. Keiller [in Midwifery] and others, of women who were not registered students of medicine.”
It was still open to the women, of course, to get Extra-Mural lecturers to teach them elsewhere, if rooms could be found and the necessary arrangements made; but, as regarded the original students, an automatic deadlock arose at this point of which certain Professors unhappily elected to avail themselves:
By the rules of the University only four classes might be taken from Extra-Mural (non-professorial) teachers, and the original students had already taken these four. Professor Christison’s class was one of those that came next in turn, and it would, perhaps, have been expecting too much of human nature that he should have chosen this moment in which to lay down his arms. In any case, he refused point blank.
In this dilemma, the women appealed to the Senatus,—(1) to appoint special University lecturers (assistants to the Professors or others) whose payment the women would guarantee; or (2) alternatively, to relax, in the case of the women, the ordinary regulations, so that they might take an increased number of Extra-Mural classes.
Counsel’s opinion was taken by the Senatus as to the powers of the University in this respect, and, an opinion adverse to the wishes of the women having been received, the Senatus decided by a majority of one to take no action in the matter.
Promptly S. J.-B. and her Committee submitted the facts to other counsel (the Lord Advocate and Sheriff Fraser) and received the opinion (1) that it was quite competent to the University authorities to make any necessary provision for the completion of the ladies’ education: and (2) that the Medical Faculty were bound to admit the ladies to professional examination on the subjects in which they were already qualified to pass.
This latter point was included with special reference to the incredible rumours referred to above.
As the day of the examinations drew near and nothing happened, the leaders among the women began to feel reassured. The following letters, however, show how well-founded their fears were:
“Private.
My dear Miss Jex-Blake,
I shall be at the Senatus any day you like, unless prevented by something of which I have no present prospect.
I was glad to hear, from my wife, ... that Mr. Fraser has given you a favourable opinion. His view that the Professors are bound to teach all persons who present Matriculation tickets to them, is what I have always held, and I believe often expressed to you. In the same way I should say, they are bound to examine them. What you must do now, then, I fancy, is to present your Mat: tickets and class fees and demand class tickets, and present your Certificates, etc., and demand Examination, and, on either or both being refused, claim a legal remedy. If possible you ought to go to the Court of Session and not to the University Court; and to the 2nd Division, if you have to go beyond the Lord Ordinary. Moncrieff will be much influenced by Fraser’s opinion, whereas Inglis will be influenced, if at all, in the wrong direction. As Chancellor, however, I should think he would himself decline to sit as a Judge in a case which may come before him in the former capacity.
With kind regards from Mrs. Lorimer, believe me,
Dear Miss Jex-Blake,
... I should very much like to see the legal opinion you have obtained upon the point of legal responsibility as incurred by the University Court in their pragmatic sanction of the lady students matriculating and passing their preliminary examination.
A legal opinion depends so entirely upon the manner in which the matter is laid before counsel, and usually leaves so many loopholes for escape unperceived by a non-professional eye, that I am always jealous of such opinions unless the interpretation thereof is given by someone of good common sense and legal experience....
I shall be at home tomorrow (Saturday) evening at 7.40 p.m. when it will give me the greatest pleasure to see you, if that will suit your convenience.
Is it true that Mrs. de Lacy Evans is engaged to Mr. Russel of the Scotsman?!!!
Here is a significant little letter, too, from the Secretary to the University:
Dear Miss Jex-Blake,
I have instructed Mr. Gilbert[89] to receive the money [for the First Professional Examn.] and give the customary acknowledgments, so that you may be all right with the Dean.
I am bound to call a meeting of Senatus upon a requisition signed by 3 Professors. Secure a day likely to suit your friends. Saturday is not a good day generally, and on Friday 2 or 3 are coming down here to dine,—at least they are asked to do so.
How would Thursday or Monday do?
That afternoon, we are told, there was a “furious row” in the Medical Faculty, and a day or two later each of the women candidates for the First Professional Examination received a copy of the following letter:
Madam,
I am instructed by the Medical Faculty to inform you that your name and your fees have been received in error by the Clerk of the University as a candidate for the first professional examination during the present month, but that the Faculty cannot receive you for such examination without the sanction of the Senatus Academicus.
Two days later S. J.-B. received the following letter with reference to the Preliminary Examination:
Madam,
I am desired by the Dean of the Medical Faculty to inform you that he has been interdicted by the Faculty from giving examination papers to ladies on the 17th and 18th curt.
Kindly communicate this fact to the ladies whose names you some time ago handed in to me for this examination.
It will be noticed that the letter was dated on the day previous to that on which the examination was to take place. Three ladies had come—or were on their way—from various parts of the kingdom to submit to it. If they were not allowed to enter, they would be thrown back in their professionalprofessional studies for a whole year.
Most women—and men—would have sat down under this blow. S. J.-B. went straight to her solicitor and took him with her to see the advocate (Mr. Fraser). The following is a copy of the letter that was sent by them to the Dean of the Medical Faculty:
Dear Sir,
We have been instructed to obtain the opinion of counsel with reference to the legality of your refusal to admit ladies to the Preliminary Examination in Arts, which will take place tomorrow.
We beg now to enclose the memorial submitted, and the opinion given thereon by Mr. Patrick Fraser, for your perusal, and request that you will, at your earliest convenience, return them to us.
We beg to point out that you are individually responsible if the refusal is persisted in, and that we have been instructed, in that case, to raise actions for damages against you at the instance of each of the memorialists. You will also observe that the instructions of the Medical Faculty, being in themselves illegal, will be no defence against such actions.
We trust that you will, in these circumstances, reconsider the matter, and see fit to retract the refusal, and prevent the necessity of further proceedings.
There was no loss of time in receiving the reply:
Dear Miss Jex-Blake,
I have received the legal notice from your solicitor. Under these circumstances I shall not take the responsibility of refusing the ladies admission to the preliminary examination as heretofore. But I must inform you that I admit them provisionally until the matter is decided by the proper authorities, and without prejudice as regards myself.
So the ladies were duly examined in the ordinary course.
On applying for Matriculation tickets, however, they were informed by the clerk that the Principal of the University had written him word that, in consequence of representations made to him by Professor Christison, no ladies were at present to be allowed to matriculate. “Of course,” said a friendly professor, “the Principal had no more authority to issue this decree than had the janitor.”
In this case, fortunately, there was time to call a meetingmeeting of Senatus, as referred to by Professor Wilson above (letter of October 13), and the necessary requisition was signed by Professors Crum Brown, Tait, and Liston.
[Diary.] “Tuesday 17th. Preliminary examination all right,—Mundy, Dahms, and Miller. Dr. Alex. Wood takes Motion in General Council.
Thursday, 19th. Leader written yesterday, in proof today. I, oh, so tired! Settled about motions in Senatus. Med. Fac. want Lord Advocate’s opinion,—seem shaking in their shoes.
Ah, we will win,—but the price!”
Poor little Despotic Emperor! Where was her Sackermena?
“How these worries must increase the difficulties of study in the case of each one of you;” wrote a faithful friend, the Dowager Countess of Buchan, next day. “But then the certainty of success somehow, as the dear Newman used to say, when he meant that there were benedictions in the air; and that you will surely have worked out the greatest possible benefit for womankind for all generations, even if hostilities are prolonged, must be a support now and an abundant recompense, I hope, for all your toils when they are happily concluded.”
About the same time another “honourable woman” was writing:
“Sir,
I venture to trouble you with a post office Order for £2,—payable from me to yourself,—as my small contribution to the Fund needed by the General Committee for securing a Complete Medical Education for Women in Edinburgh.
The question is so important, and the Lady-students have manifested so fine a spirit and temper under the harassing trials, that a large proportion of their countrymen will, I trust, feel the obligation of sustaining them during their conflict with jealousies and prejudices which will scarcely be credited by a future generation.
Permit me to offer you my thanks for the service you render to a good cause by managing the financial concerns of the movement, and believe me, Sir, with much respect.
W. L. Reid, Esq.”
At the Senatus meeting on Oct. 21st., the question of admitting women to the First Professional Examination was discussed, and the Medical Faculty was instructed to examine them. It is interesting to know that all the candidates passed.
But S. J.-B. was not one of them. All her strength was being spent in carving out the way.
It was matter for congratulation, of course, that the schemes of the enemy had been foiled; but the friends of the women in the University were now more anxious than ever to raise the whole question on to a level above these harassing obstacles. At a meeting of the University Council Dr. Alexander Wood moved that “the University is bound in honour and justice to render it possible for these women who have already commenced their studies, to complete them.”
“This,” said the Lancet, “is precisely the ground we have always taken up about the matter; and we hope the General Council of the University will, by the adoption of Dr. Alexander Wood’s motion, put an end to the controversy which has redounded so little to the credit of that school.”
Dr. Wood made a brave and telling little speech, and was ably seconded by Mr. Alexander Nicolson. In moving the amendment, Professor Turner, with great shrewdness, quoted S. J.-B.’s letter to the Dean of the Medical Faculty of two years before (see p. 235), a letter which, at a superficial glance, looked like the weakest point in her case—the letter in which she had signified her willingness “to withdraw my application altogether if, after due and sufficient trial, it should be found impracticable to grant me a continuance of the favour which I now request”; and of course no one present knew enough of the facts to reply. It was only after Dr. Wood’s motion had been lost by 107 votes to 97, that S. J.-B. had an opportunity of pointing out—in the hospitable columns of the Scotsman—that the letter quoted had reference only to the tentative proposal that she, alone and without matriculation, should attend Professor Balfour’s and Professor Allman’s summer courses. This proposal the University had refused, “deferring the whole question till a permanent plan could be arranged and formally sanctioned by all the necessary authorities,—which was finally accomplished after eight months of consideration and delay.”
This is one instance—out of hundreds—of S. J.-B.’s extraordinary ability to refute statements that looked true, that might have been true, that were nearly true,—by a precise quotation of facts. It was an ability that made for her more enemies than friends as life went on. Let it be noted, too, that, but for the generosity of the press, she never could have corrected such statements at all.
“To sum up the whole matter in one word,” she wrote, “I will venture to say, that, instead of the daily trials of the past two years and the apparent deadlock at which we have now arrived, we should have found nothing but smooth paths for our feet, and no difficulties from either students or professors, had Dr. Christison but kept to the promise he voluntarily made to me at the close of my single interview—of two minutes—with him 2 years ago—‘I shall vote against you, but I shall take no measures to oppose you.’”
Once more the Lancet made dignified protest:
“The Edinburgh school has come badly out of its imbroglio with the lady students. The motion of Dr. Alexander Wood, to which we made reference last week, was negatived by a majority of ten. As we then pointed out, the issue before the General Council was neither more nor less than this,—to keep faith with the female students whom the University had allowed to proceed two years in their medical curriculum. The Council was not asked to commit itself in the slightest degree to any opinion, favourable or unfavourable, to the admission of ladies to a medical career. It had only to concede, in common courtesy, not to say common fairness, the right to which the best legal advice had clearly shown the female students to be entitled,—the right to carry on the studies they had been allowed to prosecute half way towards graduation. Will it be believed? An amendment postponing the settlement of the difficulty till it had been duly considered by the authorities of the University, was put and carried; as if there was any more room for ‘consideration’ in the matter! Thus Edinburgh stands convicted of having acted unfairly towards seven ladies, whom she first accepted as pupils, and then stopped half-way in their career.”[91]
Move and countermove follow with bewildering rapidity at this time. Within a fortnight Professor Muirhead is urging the Senatus to rescind the regulations for the admission of women to the University, reserving the rights of those already entered; and this is passed by a majority of one,—14 to 13.
Eighteen Professors, however, rose up in wrath to protest against this decision, and—as only fifteen, out of a total of thirty-five, could be got to support it,—the regulations of Nov. 1869, were confirmed by the University Court, and everything was left in statu quo![92]
Meanwhile—in addition to classes for the seniors—arrangements had to be made for the three new students who had entered. It was probably in connection with these that S. J.-B. received the following letter:
Dear Madam,
As you will probably be aware before you receive this, I have been utterly unsuccessful in my attempts to bring my Colleague to my own way of looking at the matter in question.
I may mention to you that my own impression, derived from various conversations with several of the most prominent of your opponents, is that they would have but little objection to give you, or at least to make arrangements for giving you, the instruction you seek—provided it were sought as a favor and not claimed as a right—in other words I think many of them are anxious to avoid making what might be called a precedent. This I give you confidentially and merely as an impression, but I have little doubt of its being at least nearly a correct one.
This was the letter of a wise man, and it might, perhaps, have been better for the cause in the immediate future if S. J.-B. had acted on the advice it contained. Her reply is not forthcoming, but we know quite well that she was not prepared to run the risk involved in acting on the advice. Two women had already secured registration “by a postern gate,” and that was not her aim. She longed—no one more—to write M.D. after her name; but she would, as a matter of course, have foregone that right forever, if, by so doing, she could have opened the gate for all.
A year previously to the date we have reached, Robert Louis Stevenson had written in a letter to his cousin:
“You will probably know how nicely woman’s rights were received by some of my fellow students the other day. The female medicals were hooted, hissed and jostled till the police interfered. My views are very neutral. I quite believe that Miss Jex-Blake and the rest of our fellow studentesses are the first of a noble army, pioneers, Columbuses and all that sort of thing. But at the same time, Miss Jex-Blake is playing for the esteem of posterity. Soit, I give her posterity, but I won’t marry either her, or her fellows. Let posterity marry them. If posterity gets hold of this letter I shall probably be burnt in effigy by some Royal Female College of Surgeons of the future.”
It was many years before this letter was brought to S. J.-B.’s notice, and when it was, she received it with a hearty laugh of genuine appreciation. She enjoyed R. L. S. much more than he enjoyed her, but she had never had the smallest wish to marry him!
He was entirely wrong, moreover, in the assumption that the women students would have to wait for posterity to marry them. This very autumn of 1871—to the profound sorrow and discomfiture of many upholders of the movement—saw the engagement of no less than three of them. Mrs. Evans’ engagement has been already noted in a letter from Dr. Patrick Heron Watson. In a characteristic passage, we learn how the news of it came to S. J.-B.’s ears:
“After my business over with R., I rose to go.
‘Oh, sit down a minute. So your class is thinning?’ [Miss Anderson had been married a month before].
‘Yes,’ quoth I dolorously. ‘We’ve lost one.’
‘And I hear you’re going to lose another!’
‘Oh, no,’ protestingly. ‘I hope not.’
‘But I think so.’
‘Do you? Well, have you heard who?’
‘Mrs. Evans.’
‘Oh, no,—I don’t believe it.’
‘Well, she told me so herself.’
‘Did she?—and who on earth to?’
R. got red up to top of bald crown. ‘Have you no idea?’
‘No,’ (a fib by this time).
‘Really no idea?’
‘How should I?’
‘Well,—she asked me to tell you about it,—does that give you an idea?’
‘Mr. R.!—you don’t mean to say it’s you?’
Great redness, and ‘Yes, I do.’
‘Well!!!—I hope your treachery will go between you and your sleep!’
‘Now don’t you be hard upon her! Will you go and see her?’
‘No, certainly not. The most she can expect is that I don’t send a policeman after her.’
‘And brand her with D?’
‘Yes. You may tell her I won’t do that,—and that’s the utmost she can expect!’
And leaving,—‘Well, I think you’re an uncommonly lucky man, but I hope your conscience will prevent your sleeping!’”sleeping!’”
This was all very well, but the blow was a severe one, especially as Miss Chaplin was married—to Professor Ayrton—a month or two later.
“I do hope you and Miss Pechey will remain firm to the end,” writes Miss M‘Laren plaintively, “for really three marriages within six months is quite alarming.”
How many times Miss Pechey was urged to forsake the good fight one cannot even roughly conjecture. Certainly very often.[93]
There was no time, however, to weep over fallen comrades. One must just give them decent burial, so to speak, and pass on. From this time forth the work in hand must take a two-fold direction:
1. The struggle in Edinburgh must be carried on with unabated energy, as if success were a matter of course.
2. Every enquiry must be made, with the utmost secrecy and discretion, as to a more hopeful solution of the problem elsewhere.
The following letters indicate some of the influences at work:
Darling,
You must not think I don’t sympathize with you, but I am so vexed and perplexed really I don’t know what to say. I always hope you can see the next step in a clearer and brighter light than I do, and,—you are sure you have my best wishes. I am rather uneasy about you, being sure you must be worn and harassed, and can hardly know what to do next.
I am very glad the examinations were successfully passed....
Dear Miss Jex-Blake,
Mr. Sidgwick has shown me in “the Scotsman” a notice to the effect that they are attempting to exclude you from paying the fees at Edinburgh.
Are they making a final effort to reject you? Will it be successful? If so, have you any plan of action.
Please let us know, for Mr. Sidgwick and I have been consulting together, and have made up our minds that we will try all that we can now for your admission to this university, and we are ready to begin, if you feel that this is your best place to turn to, and if you need it. Let us know then.
We feel quite sure of ultimate success here in the matter of full admission of women to the whole benefits of the university.
Still we do not know how distant ‘Ultimate’ may be. We are not sanguine of success at present in your cause. Still we think it worth while trying, if it would materially help you.
So there were very brave people in Cambridge as well as in Edinburgh: for Mr. Stuart as well as Mr. Sidgwick knew all about that unfortunate speech and the lawsuit to which it led. S. J.-B. had scrupulously sent them the records; and, as a matter of fact, Mr. Sidgwick had been one of the many distinguished people who subscribed to the Fund for defraying the expenses of the lawsuit.
If only the struggle had ended here: if only the University had consented to give the women the little ledge they coveted on its precipitous wall: or, failing that, if some young, enlightened university had said, “Come to us!”—the story would be in all ways a pleasanter one to tell. But that is not how things happen in life. Removal to another university at this stage would simply have meant beginning the fight all over again; and Edinburgh—blundering old Edinburgh—was so kind, so homelike, with its great army of friends, many of them convinced that victory lay within sight, that the inducement to stay in spite of all was great. The very next turn of the wheel might revolutionize all things.
Meanwhile the protagonist had been on the strain for nearly three years, and she was growing very weary of the struggle: she was losing a little of the verve that had carried her on hitherto. The incessant canvassing, organizing and writing had developed her inherent business capacity to the last point, and was making her a little intolerant of unbusinesslike ways in other people. It was more difficult than formerly in journalism and in verbal argument to show herself all things to all men as she had done so finely in those first calls on the Professors. But she had not the smallest idea of giving in: like a strong man lost in the snow, she was conscious mainly of a resolute determination to keep going on somehow.
“Your cause is sure to win,” Dr. Guthrie said to her about this time; “but a cause may be won at the cost of a life.”
“I know,” she replied, “I am prepared to give it mine.”
But she did not mean to die if she could help it until the work was done.
In any case the next move was fairly clear. The Annual Meeting of Contributors to the Royal Infirmary was coming round once more, and again the election turned on the question of the admission of the women to the wards. S. J.-B. went doggedly on with her canvassing, but the outer public was getting a little bored with the whole subject, and she herself had no longer the attraction of freshness and novelty. In those days perseverance was not reckoned a special virtue in a woman, and persistence was a positive vice. She received one nasty snub (conveyed through the office-boy) from one who had been almost a friend, and, in order to understand what this meant to her, we must remember that family tradition was strong in her still. Pelted with peas or pursued by a mud-throwing mob, she never for a moment forgot that she was, in her own way, grande dame. And now she was too tired to brush the little insult off. “I was fool enough to go out with eyes so full of tears that I doubted being fit for my next call.”
But the moral thews and sinews were in fine fighting form, and the ideals of youth were as fresh as ever. The very words of the old inspiring quotations rose to her mind. How surprised the old managers would have been if they had heard them! They thought it was only that weary question of Miss Jex-Blake and the Infirmary.
Kindly folk were many, however, and every now and then she met an unexpected tribute of appreciation or respect; and sufficient votes were gained to make the dreary proceeding worth while.[94]
Sometimes she would return from these missions to find herself called out to a slum maternity case undertaken through the mediation of a friendly doctor. Then,—
“Home after 10 p.m. Then to write leader for Monday. Done about 12.15. Then to relight fire and get warm,—then bed!”
“Sunday, [Dec.] 31st. Wrote paragraphs and finished article. Went down to Scotsman Office....
Oh, dear, I hope the things will be in right tomorrow,—and oh, how I hope we may win!
We have 296 votes more or less promised. We ought.
Now,—‘ring out the old, ring in the new’—Ah, that it may be so in some things,—‘Ring out the care that frets the mind’[95]—Ring in quiet and peace and liberty,—‘leave to toil’.”
Next day the great meeting took place, and this time a large hall had been taken for the purpose.
As before, six candidates were proposed by those in power, and six by those in favour of the women. The task of the latter was made easier by the fact that the suggestion of mixed classes had been given up some two or three months before, the Committee for Securing a Complete Medical Education for Women in Edinburgh having undertaken to guarantee the payment of teachers, and to provide suitable rooms and accommodation for the classes, if the University should find this latter an insoluble problem.
Professor Christison pointed out incidentally that 80 beds at £40 a bed would be one item in the reckoning.
When the votes were counted there were:
| For the Women, | 177 |
| For the Powers, | 168 |
“The result was received with great cheering and waving of handkerchiefs from the ladies’ party.”
Professor Masson then proceeded to move:
“That henceforward all registered students of Medicine shall be admitted to the educational advantages of the Infirmary without distinction of sex,—all details of arrangements, however, being left to the discretion of the managers.”
The hostile party raised an objection to this on the ground of want of adequate notice—though Professor Masson had, as a matter of fact, advertised it in the public papers as required—and, through an indescribable hubbub, the proposer stood his ground, ably supported by Professor Calderwood and by Mr. M‘Laren, M.P. When it became clear that they were going to carry their point, the opposing party rose and left the hall almost en masse; and it was then that Dr. Guthrie made what proved to be his last public speech, in support of Professor Masson’s motion. At the close of his peroration, with a wave of his hand towards the door through which the great retreat had taken place, he concluded with the lines S. J.-B. had quoted in her diary the night before,
The motion was then put to the meeting and carried unanimously.
“I, oh so tired!” says S. J.-B.,—“hearing voices round me in a sort of swoon.”
Her letter-bag for the next few days was enough to put new life into anyone.
“My dear Miss Blake, and all your brave sisterhood, Three cheers for you and one cheer more! My husband has just come back and told me of your victory.
May this be an augury of future success in every direction.
A lawyer who had strenuously opposed the idea of mixed classes writes,
“For your sake, I shall make my first charity this year £5 to the Infirmary.”
And no one was more enthusiastic than the young man who was demonstrator of Anatomy at the time of the riot:
“It would be almost a mockery to wish you all a Happy New Year after such success. It is enough to turn one’s head, but only, I suppose, the heads which hammered on so hard in defeat, or rather repulse, are not to be turned with victory.”
It would have been almost a mockery, certainly, though not in the sense he meant.
“Sunday, Jan. 7th. Hear that the doctors are going about getting their patients to sign papers,—exact tenor unknown.”
True enough, here were already the first mutterings of a fresh storm, and indeed, most people must have been rather uneasy at so terrifying a victory.
“Dear Miss Jex-Blake,” writes Dr. Heron Watson on January 5th, “See to it that there is a full representation on behalf of the ladies on Monday week at the adjourned meeting, as I expect foul play!...”
And another lawyer writes:
“Dear Miss Jex-Blake,
I don’t know whether you are taking any means to secure a muster of your friends at the Infirmary meeting on Monday week; but I think it would be worth while to do so. I am afraid our opponents may attempt a surprise for the purpose of rescinding the Statute passed at last meeting as to the admission of Lady Students. I have not heard that they have any such plan on foot; but as no notice requires to be given of any such motion, they may not improbably try it, trusting to our being off our guard.
A fortnight after the Annual Meeting, the Contributors met to hear the result of a scrutiny of the votes, and it was then that the following unexpected issue—quite distinct, of course, from the immediate object of the scrutiny—was thrust upon them:
On the side of the women had voted,
On the side of the powers,
It was now claimed that the votes of firms were incompetent, at the majority really lay on the other side.
“It mattered nothing,” said the Scotsman,[96] “that firms had voted ever since the Infirmary was founded; that contributors qualified only as members of firms had, as has now been ascertained, sat over and over again on the Board of Management, and on the Committee of Contributors. It was of equally slight importance that the firms whom it was now sought to disqualify had been among the most generous benefactors of the charity, and that, with the imminent prospect before them of great pecuniary necessity, it would probably be impossible, without their aid, to carry out even the plans for the new building. The firms had voted in favour of the ladies, and the firms must go, if at least the law would (as it probably will not) bear out the medical men in their reckless endeavour to expel them.”
An appeal to law, however, is a slow affair, and on this occasion there was obviously no inducement for the law to bestir itself unduly. It was not till July 23rd that Lord Jerviswoode pronounced the votes of firms to be perfectly valid.
The case was appealed to a higher court, where it did not come on for trial till the end of October: it was then again postponed and judgment was not given till December.
“Dec. 7th. Saturday. Judgment from Second Division in our favour on all points.”
The Annual Meeting was now once more at hand, however, when new managers might be elected who were unfriendly to the women. Needless to say the woman’s party lost no time. A Contributors’ meeting was called for December 16th, and another for December 23rd, when a vote was passed admitting the women to the Infirmary on condition that their visits were to be separate from those of the men, and that they were to go only to those wards where their presence was invited by the physicians.
So at last they got their tickets, and began an attendance which was to “qualify” for graduation.
“Qualify” in the technical sense; assuredly not in any other. What the girl graduate of the present day would say to such qualification, one need scarcely ask. Here is S. J.-B.’s account of it: