Sophia Jex-Blake

NAME  Sophia Louisa Jex-Blake. 

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Sophia Jex-Blake was an English physician, teacher, and feminist who led the campaign to secure women's access to university medical education in Britain. She was the first practising female doctor in Scotland and one of the first in the United Kingdom. She is famous for her central role in the Surgeons' Hall riot of 1870, for founding two medical schools for women — in London and Edinburgh — and for her contribution to the passage of the Medical Act 1876, which enabled women to receive medical degrees and licences to practice in Britain. (1) 

BIRTH Born January 21, 1840, at 3 Croft Place, Hastings, Sussex, England. 

FAMILY BACKGROUND Sophia was the youngest child of Thomas Jex-Blake, a retired lawyer and proctor of Doctors' Commons, and his wife Mary (née Cubitt), daughter of Thomas Cubitt of Honing Hall, Norfolk. On both sides the family descended from well-known Norfolk gentry families, and the family background was that of comfortable, upper-middle-class Evangelical Anglicanism. 

Her father was described as a "proud lover" of her mother to the day of his death, and the household maintained a quiet ethic of charitable giving — it was said that "the Jex-Blakes' carriage was as fine as any in the place, but there was always a poor person in it." 

Her brother Thomas William Jex-Blake (1832–1915) became headmaster of Rugby School and later Dean of Wells Cathedral; among her nieces were Katharine Jex-Blake, Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, and Henrietta Jex-Blake, Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. (2) 

CHILDHOOD Sophia was described from infancy as "vital to the finger-tips" with "a pair of great luminous eyes, too mature for a baby." She was, by her own cheerful admission, a "terrible pickle" as a child — overflowing with energy, willful, and temperamentally volcanic, her outbursts of passion repeatedly alarming her quietly devout parents. Her governess in 1848 wrote warmly of her as "a dear child, shewing daily advancement in her studies," but noted her "native wildness." 

As a small child Sophia devoted enormous creative energy to constructing an imaginary island nation called "Sackermena and her Isles," producing maps, constitutions, laws, and poetry for her invented kingdom — a fantasy that her biographer Margaret Todd considered the clearest early sign of Sophia's extraordinary organizing and governing instincts. She later recalled: "No one ever had a happier childhood than I." (2)

EDUCATION Sophia was home-educated until the age of eight and attended various private schools in southern England. 

In 1858, Sophia enrolled at Queen's College, London — a pioneering institution for the higher education of women — despite the objections of her parents. 

In 1859, while still a student, she was appointed mathematics tutor at the college, though her father refused her permission to accept a salary for the work, since he did not expect his daughter to earn a living. She remained there until 1861. 

In 1865 Sophia travelled to the United States to study educational methods, visiting numerous schools and colleges and publishing her findings as A Visit to Some American Schools and Colleges. While in Boston she worked at the New England Hospital for Women and Children under Dr. Lucy Ellen Sewall, with whom she formed a lifelong friendship, and it was this experience that crystallized her vocation to become a doctor. 

In 1868 Sophia began a regular course of medical study under Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell at Blackwell's new Women's Medical College in New York, before returning to Britain determined to qualify as a doctor. 

Jex-Blake's application for matriculation. Centre for Research Collections University of Edinburgh

She was eventually awarded an MD by the University of Berne in January 1877, and in the same year qualified as Licentiate of the King's and Queen's College of Physicians of Ireland (LKQCPI), becoming the third woman registered with the General Medical Council.  (3)

CAREER RECORD 1858–1861: Studied and worked as mathematics tutor at Queen's College, London; refused salary by her father.

1865-1868: Spent several years in the United States studying and observing medical education, including work with pioneering female physician Elizabeth Blackwell. 

1869: Applied to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. After initial resistance, she gathered other women applicants and became leader of what later became known as the Edinburgh Seven.

1869-1873: Studied medicine in Edinburgh while fighting institutional discrimination, hostile students, and opposition from some professors. 

1870: Survived the infamous Surgeons' Hall Riot, when male students attempted to prevent the women from entering an examination. The incident generated widespread public sympathy for the women's cause. 

1873: Lost a legal challenge against the University of Edinburgh after the courts ruled that the university had been wrong to admit women in the first place. The women were denied degrees.

1874: Helped establish the London School of Medicine for Women, Britain's first medical school for women. 

1877: Obtained an MD degree from the University of Bern in Switzerland and qualified through the King's and Queen's College of Physicians of Ireland, becoming one of Britain's first licensed female doctors.

1878: Returned to Edinburgh and opened a medical practice, becoming the first registered female doctor in Scotland. She also founded the Edinburgh Hospital and Dispensary for Women and Children, which later became Bruntsfield Hospital. 

1886: Founded the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women and served as its dean. 

1899: Retired from medical practice and educational work.

APPEARANCE Surviving photographs from the 1890s show a woman with strong, determined features and serious eyes, typically unsmiling in the manner of Victorian formal portraiture

A portrait painted by Samuel Laurence when she was approximately 25 shows a composed and direct young woman. Laurence famously abandoned a crayon drawing of her, declaring "I must get you in oils or not at all" — suggesting she possessed a strong and difficult-to-capture physical presence. (2)

Sophia Jex-Blake Aged 25 Portrait by Samuel Laurence

FASHION Jex-Blake dressed respectably and conservatively in the manner expected of a professional Victorian woman. Her clothing projected seriousness and competence rather than fashionability. She generally wore dark dresses, high collars, and practical hairstyles suitable for a physician and campaigner.

CHARACTER Jex-Blake was widely described — by friends and opponents alike — as determined, combative, and formidably energetic. Her biographer Todd summarised her as "able, energetic, determined, a born combatant and leader." 

She was also, by many accounts including her own, tempestuous and abrasive; her quarrel with students at the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women became sufficiently bitter to end in a court case. 

At the same time she was characterised as generous and unselfish in pursuit of the wider cause of women's education, and possessed of deep personal loyalties. James Stansfeld MP, who closely associated himself with her campaign, wrote: "Dr Sophia Jex-Blake has made the greatest of all contributions to the end attained." (2)

SPEAKING VOICE Jex-Blake was a confident and apparently effective public speaker. She was notably the first woman since Jenny Geddes to speak in St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh, when she addressed a crowded meeting during the Royal Infirmary campaign, reportedly to a reception of considerable "hubbub." (2)

SENSE OF HUMOUR Her childhood letters reveal a sharp, self-aware wit alongside her fiery temperament; she wrote to her brother as a small child: "I must say I think you very impertinent, however I condescend to write to you."

Sophia herself showed a dry, combative wit in her correspondence — she described her fellow campaigners as the Septem contra Edinam (the Seven against Edinburgh), after the Seven against Thebes. 

When asked by a friend if she had been a terrible pickle at school, she replied simply: "Specs so," and changed the subject. (2)

RELATIONSHIPS Jex-Blake never married. Her most important emotional relationship was with Dr. Lucy Ellen Sewall of Boston, with whom she formed a deep and lifelong friendship from 1865 onwards; the two women maintained an extensive correspondence throughout Jex-Blake's campaigns. 

Later in life she is assumed to have been in a romantic relationship with Dr. Margaret Todd, a physician and novelist. On Jex-Blake's retirement in 1899, the two women moved together to Windydene, Mark Cross, Rotherfield, Sussex, where they lived until Sophia's death in 1912. Todd subsequently wrote her biography, The Life of Dr Sophia Jex-Blake (1918). (2) 

Dr Margaret Todd

MONEY AND FAME Jex-Blake came from a comfortably wealthy background — her father was a proctor of Doctors' Commons and the family maintained a carriage and a gracious home in the manner of the Norfolk gentry. However, she chose a life of considerable financial struggle in pursuit of her goals; she was refused a salary for her tutoring work by her father, and her legal battles cost enormously. 

A public subscription raised £1,000 to help cover the costs of an early libel action brought against her. She received a gift of a further £1,000 from a supporter, Walter Thomson, during the Edinburgh campaign. 

As Jex-Blake's cause advanced she became a public figure; her battles made national newspaper headlines and she addressed a major meeting at St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh, chaired by Lord Shaftesbury in London. Her fame, however, remained that of a campaigner and reformer rather than a celebrity. (2)

FOOD AND DRINK In retirement at Windydene, she is recorded as taking an interest in fruit-growing and dairy work on her property. No other personal preferences in food or drink are recorded. (2)

MUSIC AND ARTS Her household in Edinburgh at Bruntsfield Lodge was described as a meeting place for former students, colleagues, writers, and acquaintances from around the world, suggesting a cultivated social environment.

LITERATURE Jex-Blake was a prolific writer of letters, essays, and polemical works. She published A Visit to Some American Schools and Colleges, and the influential campaigning work Medical Women (1872). She edited and contributed to The Englishwoman's Year Book. Her biographer Todd describes her as a "born chronicler" who from childhood strove compulsively to record her doings and dreams on paper. 

In retirement she was a reader; her biographer notes her "love of poetry" and her books, though specific titles or authors are not recorded. (2) 

Image by Perplexity

NATURE As a child Jex-Blake had greatly enjoyed outdoor scrambling on the rocks of Hastings, and in later life she was known for driving tours in the Scottish countryside.

In retirement at Windydene, Rotherfield, she took up fruit-growing and maintained a dairy, and the house was set in country surroundings she evidently loved. (2)

PETS The chapter "Driving Tours. Animal Friends" in Todd's biography suggests she had a notable fondness for animals, though specific pets are not named in available sources. (2)

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Jex-Blake was an energetic walker in childhood, fond of scrambling on the Hastings rocks. In later life she enjoyed driving tours in the Scottish countryside. In retirement she engaged in fruit-growing and dairy work. (2)

SCIENCE AND MATHS Jex-Blake showed marked aptitude for mathematics from an early age, becoming mathematics tutor at Queen's College, London, while still a student there at the age of nineteen. She won her Queen's College certificate "with great credit." 

Her commitment to science as a vocation led her, after initial hesitation among careers including law and the ministry, to choose medicine. Her essay "Medicine as a Profession for Women" (1869) argued rationally that no objective evidence existed for women's intellectual inferiority to men. (2) 

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Jex-Blake was raised in a household of earnest, "fine-flower" Evangelical Anglicanism that she found in some ways cramping, though she was baptised at St. Clement's, Hastings, and retained a personal religious faith throughout her life. 

As a child she wrote prayers recording private religious struggles. In adulthood she distanced herself from what she felt was the restrictive religiosity of her upbringing but retained what her biographer describes as a broad, humane religious attitude. Her biographer records that in later life Jex-Blake had a clearly defined "religious attitude" that resisted easy categorisation. (2)

POLITICS Jex-Blake was a committed advocate for women's rights across several fronts. She contributed to Josephine Butler's 1869 collection Women's Work and Women's Culture, arguing for women's access to education and professional life. She worked closely with the Liberal politician James Stansfeld MP, who championed the women's medical cause in Parliament, and she directly lobbied Home Secretaries and Cabinet members. 

Jex-Blake campaigned successfully for the first election of women on the Edinburgh School Board. She supported women's suffrage, though her primary political energies were directed at educational and professional equality. Her biographer records that in retirement she maintained a strong interest in all public questions relating to women, and expressed distrust of German militarism in the years before World War I. (2)

SCANDAL Jex-Blake was frequently involved in public controversies. The bitter dispute over women's admission to Edinburgh University generated national headlines, lawsuits, and public arguments.

In 1889, students at the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women successfully sued Jex-Blake for damages in an acrimonious court case arising from her conduct as a teacher and administrator. The case was reputationally damaging, and several of the students, including Grace Ross Cadell and her sister Georgina, thereafter transferred to the rival Edinburgh College of Medicine for Women founded under the direction of Elsie Inglis. The episode revealed the limits of Jex-Blake's skill as a collegiate leader. (2)

MEDICAL CAREER Sophia Jex-Blake's medical career was one of those epic Victorian struggles that make you wonder how anything ever got accomplished in the nineteenth century. Becoming a doctor required not merely intelligence, perseverance, and years of study, but also the ability to withstand legal defeats, public humiliation, institutional obstruction, and the occasional flying sheep.

Jex-Blake's first serious encounter with medicine came in Boston in the mid-1860s, where she worked at the New England Hospital for Women and Children under Dr. Lucy Sewall. The experience convinced her that medicine was not merely an interesting possibility but her calling. Unfortunately, the world was less convinced. Harvard Medical School declined to admit her because she was a woman, a rationale that today sounds embarrassing but at the time was delivered with complete confidence by otherwise educated people.

She intended to continue her training at Elizabeth Blackwell's Women's Medical College in New York, but her plans were interrupted by the death of her father in 1868, which brought her back to England.

There she discovered that British medical schools were united on one point: women need not apply. Since Scottish universities enjoyed a reputation for intellectual independence, she turned her attention to the University of Edinburgh. The authorities initially rejected her application on the grounds that "the interest of one lady" did not justify making special arrangements. This was a wonderfully Victorian way of saying no while sounding administrative about it.

Jex-Blake responded by advertising for allies. Six women joined her cause — Isabel Thorne, Edith Pechey, Matilda Chaplin, Helen Evans, Mary Anderson, and Emily Bovell. Together they became known as the Edinburgh Seven and, in 1869, secured admission to the University of Edinburgh, becoming the first women to matriculate at a British university.

The experiment did not go down well with everyone.

On November 18, 1870, the Edinburgh Seven arrived at Surgeons' Hall to sit an anatomy examination. Instead of the usual examination-day atmosphere of nervous silence and frantic revision, they found themselves confronted by a crowd of several hundred hostile students and spectators. Mud, rubbish, and insults were thrown. Someone released a sheep into the building. One suspects the sheep had little idea what side it was supposed to be on.

The women sat their examination regardless, displaying considerably more composure than many of their critics. Yet courage was not enough. The university eventually refused to award them degrees, and in 1873 Scotland's highest civil court ruled that they should never have been admitted in the first place.

It was a defeat, but one that generated enormous public sympathy. The women lost the case but began winning the argument.

Jex-Blake had not spent years battling institutions merely to surrender at the first judicial setback. If Britain would not qualify her, she would go elsewhere.

In January 1877 she earned an MD from the University of Berne in Switzerland. Later that year she travelled to Dublin and passed the examinations of the King's and Queen's College of Physicians of Ireland. This made her one of the first women entered on the British medical register.

The door that had been slammed repeatedly in her face had finally been opened, though only after she had marched around the back of the building and found another entrance.

In 1878 Jex-Blake returned triumphantly to Edinburgh and established her practice at 4 Manor Place. In doing so she became the first practising female doctor in Scotland.

Almost immediately she opened a dispensary in Grove Street, providing affordable medical care to working-class women. What began as a modest clinic expanded into the Edinburgh Hospital and Dispensary for Women and Children, Scotland's first hospital staffed entirely by women. The institution eventually developed into Bruntsfield Hospital, a remarkable achievement considering it originated from a woman whom the medical establishment had once declared unsuitable even to sit examinations.

Jex-Blake understood that individual success was not enough. If women were to become doctors in significant numbers, they needed institutions willing to train them.

In 1874 she helped establish the London School of Medicine for Women, the first medical school in Britain dedicated to female students. Twelve years later she founded the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women.

Characteristically, however, she could never entirely escape controversy. A dispute with students culminated in a court case and the creation of a rival school under the leadership of her former pupil Elsie Inglis. Even among allies, Jex-Blake's formidable personality could generate sparks.

The cause for which she fought eventually prevailed. The University of Edinburgh finally allowed women to sit medical degree examinations in 1892, and from 1894 women could graduate fully in medicine.

Jex-Blake retired around 1899 and spent her final years in Sussex. By then the barriers she had spent decades battering down were beginning to crumble. Today plaques, memorials, and institutional histories commemorate her achievements, but perhaps her greatest monument is the simple fact that women studying medicine in Britain no longer have to fight riots, lawsuits, and university authorities merely to enter a lecture hall.

Sophia Jex-Blake did not just become a doctor. She helped change the definition of who could be one.

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS As a child Jex-Blake suffered from "indifferent health" during her school years, and her parents' letters express regular concern about her physical wellbeing. In January 1847, her mother wrote urging the seven-year-old Sophia to pray for spiritual strength, and also warned her not to let her father talk too much on walks. 

After her mother's death in 1881, Jex-Blake suffered "a period of depressed reclusiveness." (3)

HOMES Born at 3 Croft Place, Hastings, Sussex. She lived for a period with Octavia Hill's family in London. 

After qualifying as a doctor she leased a house at 4 Manor Place, Edinburgh (1878). She subsequently lived and conducted her practice for 16 years at Bruntsfield Lodge, Whitehouse Loan, Edinburgh. 

On retirement in 1899 she moved to Windydene, Mark Cross, Rotherfield, Sussex, where she lived with Dr. Margaret Todd until her death. (3)

TRAVEL In 1865, Jex-Blake made an extensive tour of the United States, visiting schools and colleges in Boston, New York, Niagara, Oberlin, Hillsdale, St Louis, and Antioch. She worked in Boston and New York before returning to Britain in 1868. 

She spent time in the United States studying medicine, later traveled to Switzerland to earn her MD from the University of Bern, and visited Ireland to obtain her medical licence

DEATH Jex-Blake died at Windydene, Mark Cross, Rotherfield, Sussex, on January 7, 1912, aged 71. She is buried at St Denys Church, Rotherfield. (4)

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA In 2021 Scottish playwright Frances Poet wrote Sophia, a dramatic work based on the experiences of Jex-Blake and the Edinburgh Seven.

In 2020, Bellfield Brewery in Edinburgh launched an India pale ale named after her. 

An Historic Scotland plaque was unveiled in 2015 to commemorate the Surgeons' Hall Riot. 

Historic Scotland commemorative plaque to the Edinburgh Seven By Spillerjzy 

ACHIEVEMENTS First practising female doctor in Scotland, and one of the first in the United Kingdom. 

Led the Edinburgh Seven — the first women to matriculate at a British university — in their campaign to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh (1869). 

Co-founded the London School of Medicine for Women (1874), the first medical school in Britain to train women. 

Contributed centrally to the passage of the Medical Act 1876 (the Russell Gurney Enabling Act), which permitted women in Britain to receive a medical degree and a licence to practice medicine and surgery. 

Founded the Edinburgh Hospital and Dispensary for Women (1885) — Scotland's first hospital for women staffed entirely by women, later known as Bruntsfield Hospital. 

Founded the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women (1886). 

Her decades of campaigning helped bring about the University of Edinburgh's decision in 1892–1894 to admit women to degree examinations in medicine. 

Sources: (1) Wikipedia – Sophia Jex-Blake (2) Margaret Todd, *The Life of Sophia Jex-Blake* (Project Gutenberg via Mirror Service) (3) National Archives – Sophia Jex-Blake, Pioneer of Women's Medicine (4) Encyclopaedia Britannica – Sophia Louisa Jex-Blake (5) University of Edinburgh – Sophia Jex-Blake Plaque