Sophia Jex-Blake

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Sophia Louisa Jex-Blake (1840 – 1912), an English physician, teacher and feminist, was a leading campaigner for medical education for women. One of the first female doctors in the United Kingdom, she was involved in founding two medical schools for women, in London and in Edinburgh, where she also started a women's hospital.

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[edit] Early career

She was born in Hastings on 21 January 1840, daughter of retired lawyer Thomas Jex-Blake[1] and Mary Jex-Blake née Cubitt, and went to various private schools in southern England. In 1858 she overcame the objections of her parents and enrolled as a student at Queen's College, a teacher training college for women in London. In 1859, while still a student, she was offered a post as mathematics tutor at the college where she stayed until 1861, living for some of that time with Octavia Hill's family. She worked without pay: her family did not expect their daughter to earn a living, and indeed her father refused her permission to accept a salary.[2][3]

Next she spent a few months studying with private tutors in Edinburgh. Elizabeth Garrett, whom Jex-Blake had met in London, was there applying to the university medical school. Jex-Blake supported her in this frustrating effort, learning about the difficulties arising for aspiring women doctors from the provisions of the Medical Act of 1858, before leaving to teach in Mannheim, Germany in 1862.

[edit] United States

The following year she travelled to the United States to learn more about women's education. She visited various schools, was strongly influenced by developments in co-education in the USA and later published A Visit to some American Schools and Colleges. At the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston she met one of the country's pioneer female physicians, Lucy Sewall, who became an important friend, and she worked there for a time as an assistant. This was a turning point for Jex-Blake[4]who decided to train to become a doctor.

She applied to Harvard in 1867 along with Susan Dimock, a trainee from the New England Hospital, but was rejected. The following year she hoped to attend a new medical college being established by Elizabeth Blackwell in New York, but 1868 was the year her father died and she returned to England to be with her mother. She found no English medical school which would accept women students, but persuaded Edinburgh University to admit her in 1869. This was the year that Jex-Blake's essay Medicine as a profession for women appeared in a book edited by Josephine Butler: Women's Work and Women's Culture. Here she argued that women doctors were required for "those of their own sex who need them"[5]; she always thought her role as a female physician was to treat women and their children.

[edit] Struggling to become a doctor

Six other women joined her in Edinburgh – the first group of female medical undergraduates at a British university – though they had to fund their own segregated lectures. Despite having many supporters, they also encountered much opposition from lecturers, students and townspeople. In November 1870 there was even a "riot", but procedural and legal opposition was a more serious problem and in 1873 the handful of women students had to accept there was no possibility of obtaining a degree from Edinburgh.

Jex-Blake failed her final exams, perhaps because of time spent arguing the female students' cause,[6] but she had by no means given up her plans. Not only did she help establish the London School of Medicine for Women in 1874 but she also continued campaigning and studying. A supportive MP, Russell Gurney, put forward an "enabling bill" which was passed by Parliament in August enabling, though not compelling, medical examining bodies to treat women candidates as they treated men. The first organisation to take advantage of the new legislation was the College of Physicians of Ireland, but before Jex-Blake applied to them, she passed the medical exams at the University of Berne where she was awarded an MD in January 1877. Four months later she had further success in Dublin and qualified as Licentiate of the King’s and Queen’s College of Physicians of Ireland (LKQCPI) meaning she could at last be registered with the General Medical Council, the third registered woman doctor in the country.

[edit] Career as a doctor

At the London School, Jex-Blake's hopes of playing a leading role as Secretary were overturned when Isabel Thorne was chosen as a more suitable, and diplomatic, person for that role. Sophia Jex-Blake returned to Edinburgh, established a private practice, and, a few months later, a dispensary for poorer patients. With the addition of in-patient facilities, this would eventually become the Bruntsfield Hospital for Women, established in Jex-Blake's own Bruntsfield home after her retirement.

After her mother died in 1881, she had a period of depressed reclusiveness, but in 1886 set up the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women. This had successes as well as various difficulties, but was less needed once women were admitted to Scottish universities in 1892.

After retiring in 1899, Jex-Blake moved to Mark Cross, near Tunbridge Wells, where she died on 7 January 1912. Edinburgh University now commemorate her with a plaque near the entrance to their Medical School, honouring her as "Physician, pioneer of medical education for women in Britain, alumna of the University".

[edit] Jex-Blake's writing

  • The care of infants: a manual for mothers and nurses (1884)
  • Puerperal fever : an inquiry into its nature and treatment: a graduation thesis (1877)
  • The practice of medicine by women (1876), written with Edith Pechey and Isabel Thorne
  • Medical women: a thesis and a history (1872)
  • A visit to some American schools and colleges (1867)

[edit] Relatives

  • Thomas William Jex-Blake (1832–1915), brother, headmaster of Rugby School from 1874 to 1887
  • Katharine Jex-Blake, niece, Mistress of Girton College from 1916 to 1922
  • Henrietta Jex-Blake, niece, principal of Lady Margaret Hall from 1909 to 1921

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Shirley Roberts, Sophia Jex-Blake (Routledge 1993)
  • Shirley Roberts, Sophia Jex-Blake in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)
  • Margaret Todd, The Life of Sophia Jex-Blake (1918)
  • Lilian R Furst, Women Healers and Physicians (Kentucky 1997)
  • Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie, Women in Science: Antiquity through Nineteenth Century A Biographical Dictionary (MIT 1990)
  • Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (1938)
  1. ^ A proctor of Doctors' Commons
  2. ^ See Margaret Todd's biography
  3. ^ According to Virginia Woolf, this was a "typical instance of the great Victorian fight ....of the daughters against the fathers" where a father would hope to keep a daughter in his power by saying earning a living was "beneath her".
  4. ^ S.Roberts DNB
  5. ^ Quoted by Furst
  6. ^ Isabel Thorne said her friend's failure was due to her "unselfish devotion to the interests of her fellow students" in a letter to The Times

[edit] Further reading

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