Pioneers in Women’s Education

Educator and campaigner: Frances Mary Buss 

Frances Mary Buss was the founder of the UK’s first girls’ secondary school and a staunch campaigner for women’s rights. In 1850 she opened the North London Collegiate School for middle-class girls whose families were not wealthy enough to afford a governess (a Victorian home tutor for girls and young women) but not poor enough to be sent to a charity school. During a time when girls were educated to make good wives and boys were educated ‘for the world,’ Buss said that she wanted her school to prepare girls ‘for any position in life which they may be called upon to occupy.’  

The North London Collegiate School began life as a private school but in 1871, after investing her own money and looking for outside funding, Buss managed to have it changed to a grammar school. That same year, Buss opened her second school, Camden School for Girls, in Kentish Town.  

Although many were taken aback by Buss’s insistence on teaching girls Latin and mathematics, by the early 20th century Buss’s school model could be seen in towns up and down the country.  

Thanks to the hard work and dedication of Frances Mary Buss to women’s education, both the North London Collegiate School and Camden School for Girls continue to educate girls from all backgrounds in north London. 

The London Nine 

In June 1868, the University of London (UoL) voted to admit women to sit the ‘General Examination.’ On Saturday 15 May 1869, 17 male examiners from UoL went to Somerset House on the Strand to grade the first ‘General Examination for Women,’ which nine candidates had sat earlier that month. The women needed to pass a minimum of six papers across a range of subjects including, English Language, English History, Geography, Natural Philosophy, Latin, Mathematics, and two from Greek, French, German and Italian, as well as either Chemistry or Botany. 

Of the nine women to sit the exam, six were awarded Honours. Sarah Jane Moody, who went on to set up a preparatory school in Guildford with her sisters. Eliza Orme got a law degree and had a successful legal career while being active in the fight for votes for women and the prison reform movement. 

Louisa von Glehn became a campaigner for working women and wrote popular histories which she published under her married name, Louise Hume Creighton. Susannah Wood taught maths in Bath, Cambridge and Cheltenham, and was appointed Vice-Principal of the Cambridge Training College for Women in 1891. Kate Spiller went home to Somerset, where she was an active member of her local school board in Bridgewater.  

After resitting and passing the General Examination for Women in 1870, Mary Anne Belcher went on to teach at Cheltenham Ladies College from 1871-1883, rising to vice principle in 1877. From there, Belcher became the headmistress of Bedford High School in 1883. Despite not passing the exam, Mary Anna Baker went on to have a successful career as a governess and schoolteacher in Northamptonshire. 

Even though we know little about Isabella de Lancy West, who passed the exam, and Hendilah Lawrence, who didn’t, all nine of these women were pioneers in women’s higher education and have opened the doors into academia for millions of women. 

The Edinburgh Seven 

The "Edinburgh Seven" were the first women admitted to study medicine in Britain, in 1869.  

The first of the Edinburgh Seven, Sophia Jex-Blake had previously studied at Queens College, London, and had taken on an unpaid role there as a mathematics tutor because of her father’s refusal to allow her to accept a salary. Disenchanted with her lack of opportunities in England, aged just 25, she travelled to post-civil war America to learn more about women’s education.  

There she met one of the first female physicians in the country at the New England Hospital for Women and Children and was inspired to apply to study medicine and applied to Harvard in 1867, her application was rejected on the grounds that "There is no provision for the education of women in any department of this university". 

Determined to receive medical training when she returned to the UK following her father’s death, she sent her application to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. While her application was accepted by the medical faculty and the university senate, the university court rejected her application on the grounds that they could not make the necessary arrangements “in the interests of one lady.” 

Undeterred, Jex-Blake placed an advertisement in The Scotsman and other national newspapers inviting more women to join her in her application. It didn’t go unanswered the summer of 1869 five women, including Jex-Blake, sent a second application – with a further two joining later. The application made by the Edinburgh Seven was approved by the university court, to the disapproval their male counterparts at the university. 

As soon as the women proved that they could compete equally with the male students, an all too predictable hostility began to arise. They were followed, harassed by letter and in person, and had fireworks pinned to their front door. In November 1870, things escalated and upon arriving to sit their anatomy examinations at the surgeons’ hall, the women were faced with an angry mob of 200 men waiting outside for them, hurling mud and insults. These events made national headlines as the ‘Surgeons' Hall riot’ and influential faculty members used this bad press to persuade the university to refuse graduation to the women and a court ruled that they should have never been allowed to begin the course and as such their degrees were withdrawn. 

This did not deter these seven wonders. Emily Bovell set up a practice with her husband in Wimpole Street, and began lecturing on physiology and hygiene, and running ambulance classes for women at Queen's College. Mary Anderson Marshall became a senior physician at the New Hospital for Women in Marylebone. 

Matilda Chaplin enrolled again at the University of Edinburgh but was prevented from studying higher branches of medicine. She went on to study at the University of Paris where they recognised her abilities, and she was awarded Bachelier ès-Sciences and Bachelier ès-Lettres. In 1872, she graduated with a certificate in midwifery from the London Obstetric Society and later travelled to Japan with her husband where she opened a school for Japanese midwives.  

Mary Edith Pechey went on to become one of the first women to qualify as a doctor in the United Kingdom. She spent more than 20 years in India as a senior doctor at a women's hospital and was involved in a range of social causes including women's rights. 

Helen Carter did not complete her studies after her marriage, but she remained friends with Jex-Blake and was active in promoting the care of women by women doctors. Isabel Thorne joined with her fellow classmate, Jex-Blake, and other pioneering women in medicine; Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Emily Blackwell, and Elizabeth Blackwell – alongside anthropologist and biologist Henry Huxley – to set up the London School of Medicine for Women (LSMW).  

After the Medical Act 1876 was passed, allowing medical authorities to license all qualified applicants whatever their gender, Sophia Jex-Blake passed the medical exams at the University of Berne and was awarded a medical doctorate in January 1877. Four months later she was finally registered with the General Medical Council and the third woman to register as a doctor in the country. 

Legacy 

Thanks to the hard work and dedication of Frances Mary Buss to women’s education, and her campaigning in the suffragette movement, girls from all backgrounds are educated up until the age of 18 in the UK for free. 

Thanks to the likes of the women of the London Nine and Edinburgh seven we are now in the situation in the UK that women now make up more than half the student population. 

The legacy of the Edinburgh Seven lives on. 150 years after the Surgeons’ Hall riots in 2019, all seven women were awarded a posthumous MBChB, and in 1998, LSMW merged with the University College Hospital's medical school to form the UCL Medical School. 

These seventeen women are part of a long line of female pioneers who have broken out of the expectations of their gender roles for generations, to create a bright future for themselves and the women that have followed in their footsteps. They opened doors and showed that women could compete equally in the field of education.