Sophia Jex-Blake

Sophia Jex-Blake grew up in a strict evangelical family in Hastings. Against her parents’ wishes she studied and taught mathematics. On a journey to the United States she met women doctors and decided to become a physician herself.

In 1869 she and six other women, later known as the “Edinburgh Seven”, were admitted to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh – the first women at a British university. They faced fierce hostility: in 1870 male students rioted to prevent them from taking an anatomy exam. The university finally refused to award them degrees.

Jex-Blake did not give up. In 1874 she co-founded the London School of Medicine for Women. She took her medical degree in Bern in Switzerland and in 1878 became the first practising woman doctor in Scotland. In 1886 she founded a medical school for women in Edinburgh. Her campaign contributed to a change in the law in 1876 that allowed women to qualify as doctors.

In her youth she had a passionate friendship with the social reformer Octavia Hill. From the 1880s she lived with the doctor and writer Margaret Todd, who later wrote her biography. She died in Sussex in 1912, aged 71.