page_title: Sophia Jex-Blake
section_title: The campaign to secure a university education for women begins
hierarchical_section_title: Sophia Jex-Blake / The campaign to secure a university education for women begins
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context_page_description: Sophia Louisa Jex-Blake was an English physician, teacher and feminist. She led the campaign to secure women access to a University education when she and six other women, collectively known as the Edinburgh Seven, began studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1869. She was the first practising female doctor in Scotland, and one of the first in the wider United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; a leading campaigner for medical education for women and was involved in founding two medical schools for women, in London and Edinburgh at a time when no other medical schools were training women.
context_section_description: Sophia Jex-Blake was determined to seek medical training in the UK and due to Scotland's already enlightened attitudes towards education, felt that if any university would allow women to study it would be a Scottish one.
  She applied to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh in March 1869 and although the Medical Faculty and the Senatus Academus voted in favour of allowing her to study medicine, the University Court rejected her application on the grounds that the University could not make the necessary arrangements 'in the interest of one lady'.
  She then advertised in The Scotsman and other national newspapers for more women to join her. A second application was submitted in the summer of 1869 on behalf of the group of five women initially (with two more joined later in the year to make the Edinburgh Seven - the group is Mary Anderson, Emily Bovell, Matilda Chaplin, Helen Evans, Sophia Jex-Blake, Edith Pechey and Isabel Thorne). It requested matriculation and all that that implied - the right to attend all the classes and examinations required for a degree in medicine. This second application was approved by the University Court and the University of Edinburgh became the first British university to admit women.
  Sophia Jex-Blake wrote in one of her letters to her great friend Lucy Sewall:
  "It is a grand thing to enter the very first British University ever opened to women, isn't it?"
  See the Edinburgh Seven page for further details about the Edinburgh Campaign
caption: Jex-Blake's application for matriculation, submitted to the University of Edinburgh and held in their archives.
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