On 18 November 1870, a crowd gathered outside the Surgeons’ Hall in Edinburgh. Inside, seven young women sat for an anatomy examination alongside male medical students. Outside, hundreds of men jeered, shouted insults, and attempted to force the gates. Mud, rubbish, and abuse rained down on the women as they tried to enter the building. Some of the male students reportedly released a sheep into the hall as a mockery of the female candidates. Others, more sympathetic ones, tried to shield the women and escorted them out of the college in safety once the examination was over.
Surgeons’ Hall, the site of the 1870 riots. Credit: Billy Wilson
The disturbance, later remembered as the Surgeons’ Hall Riot, became one of the defining episodes in the struggle for women’s higher education in Britain. Newspapers across the country reported the scandal. For supporters of women’s education, the riot exposed the hostility and fear that greeted women who dared enter professions traditionally reserved for men. For the women themselves, it was merely one battle in a much larger war.
Those women became known as the Edinburgh Seven—the first female students admitted to a British university.
At the center of the group stood Sophia Jex-Blake, a determined and fiercely intelligent woman whose ambition to study medicine had already led her into repeated conflict with educational authorities. Born in 1840 into a wealthy English family, Jex-Blake possessed an independence unusual for Victorian women. After travelling in the United States and observing advances in women’s education there, she returned convinced that women should have access to professional careers, especially medicine.
In the mid-19th century, British universities were exclusively male institutions. Women might attend lectures informally or receive private tuition, but they could not generally matriculate, earn degrees, or enter the professions. Medicine in particular was considered wholly unsuitable for women. Critics claimed that intellectual strain would damage female health, that anatomy lectures would corrupt feminine modesty, and that women lacked the emotional stability necessary for medical practice.
Sophia Jex-Blake
Jex-Blake challenged these assumptions directly. In 1869 she applied to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. The university initially rejected her application on the grounds that it could not make special arrangements for a single female student. Rather than give up, she advertised for other women willing to join her. Six responded: Isabel Thorne, Edith Pechey, Matilda Chaplin, Helen Evans, Mary Anderson, and Emily Bovell.
Together, they formed the group later celebrated as the Edinburgh Seven.
When all seven sought admissions together, the university agreed to admit them. The women set up home in 15 Buccleuch Place, now home to the University of Edinburgh's Student Experience Office, and began preparing for the matriculation exam. The examination was in two parts, with English, Latin and mathematics as compulsory subjects. In addition, each candidate had to choose two subjects from a group that included Greek, French, German, higher mathematics, natural philosophy, logic, and moral philosophy.
Against odds, the women matriculated in 1869, making history as the first female undergraduates at any British university. Four of the women came in the top seven places. Yet admission did not mean acceptance. From the outset, the women faced obstacles that male students did not.
Jex-Blake's application for matriculation, submitted to the University of Edinburgh. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
They were segregated into separate classes and were charged higher fees because the university claimed extra teaching arrangements were necessary for women. Some lecturers refused to teach them altogether. At nearly every step, institutional resistance forced the women into exhausting disputes over rules and privileges that male students took for granted.
Academically the women excelled. One of the most striking examples came when Edith Pechey competed for the prestigious Hope Scholarship in chemistry. Her examination performance placed her among the top students in the class. Ordinarily, this would have earned her the scholarship automatically. Instead, opponents argued that awarding the prize to a woman would humiliate male students and encourage further female participation in medicine. The scholarship was ultimately denied to her despite her results, provoking public outrage.
As their visibility increased, so did the backlash. Cartoons ridiculed them in newspapers. Critics denounced them from lecture platforms and pulpits. Some male students behaved courteously, but others treated the women as intruders contaminating a masculine domain. For months the women faced harassment and bullying. They had obscenities shouted at them in the streets, doors slammed in their face, and dirty or threatening letters were sent to them as part of this campaign of abuse.
This hostility culminated in the events at Surgeons’ Hall on 18 November 1870.
Plaque commemorating the Edinburgh Seven and the Surgeons' Hall riot. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
The women arrived to sit an anatomy examination only to find an angry crowd of several hundred blocking the entrance. A large number of people were seen pelting rubbish and mud as well as shouting abuse and insults at the women. The gates were reportedly slammed shut against them. Supporters eventually helped the women enter the hall, where they calmly completed their examination despite the uproar outside.
Three months after the event, The Edinburgh University Magazine wrote in an article that “it is a sign not of advancing but of decaying civilisation when women force themselves into competition with the other sex.”
The riot was widely reported in the media where it generated sympathy for the women far beyond Edinburgh. Many newspapers condemned the mob’s behaviour as disgraceful and ungentlemanly.
The Scotsman wrote:
...a certain class of medical students are doing their utmost to make sure that the name of medical student synonymous with all that is cowardly and degrading, it is imperative upon all...men...to come forward and express... their detestation of the proceedings which have characterised and dishonoured the opposition to ladies pursuing the study of medicine in Edinburgh.
Despite the rise in public sympathy, opponents within the university continued seeking ways to remove the women. After years of legal disputes, the Court of Session ruled in 1873 that the university had acted beyond its authority in admitting female medical students in the first place. The women were denied degrees and effectively expelled before completing their qualifications.
Several members of the group continued their medical education abroad, particularly in continental Europe, where some universities were more receptive to women. Sophia Jex-Blake eventually qualified as a doctor in Switzerland and later became a leading campaigner for medical education for women in Britain. Edith Pechey went on to have a distinguished medical career in India, where she worked extensively on women’s healthcare. Matilda Chaplin also earned medical qualifications in Paris.
The struggle of the Edinburgh Seven contributed directly to wider reforms. In 1876, Parliament passed the Medical Act, which allowed British medical authorities to license qualified women doctors. Although the law did not compel universities to admit women, it removed one of the key legal barriers preventing women from entering medicine. Jex-Blake herself later helped establish the London School of Medicine for Women, the first institution in Britain dedicated to training female doctors.
The Edinburgh Seven did not receive full official recognition during their lifetimes. It was only in 2019, nearly 150 years after the women first matriculated that the University of Edinburgh formally acknowledge the injustice, and posthumously awarded them honorary medical degrees.
References:
# Surgeons' Hall riot. Wikipedia
# Edinburgh Seven. Wikipedia
# The Surgeon’s Hall Riot: A Turning Point. Edinburgh Medicine Timeline
# Back in the Day: Surgeons’ Hall riot that changed minds about women doctors. The National
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