Who were the Seven?
Despite their Edinburgh experiences, all seven women left the University to make their mark on the world.
Sophia Jex-Blake, Isabel Thorne and Edith Pechey
Sophia Louisa Jex-Blake (1840–1912)
Sophia Jex-Blake was the driving force behind the campaign to secure women access to a university education. She received her MD in Bern in 1877 and become the first registered female doctor in Scotland.
She established two medical schools for women – one in London and one in Edinburgh. She also established the Edinburgh Hospital and Dispensary for Women and Children, which later became the Bruntsfield Hospital.
Isabel Jane Thorne (1834–1910)
Isabel Thorne was the mother of four children when she joined the campaign in Edinburgh in 1869. Although she never gained her MD,
she served as Honorary Secretary to the London School of Medicine for Women for 31 years from 1877 to 1908. Thorne was identified by Lucy Sewell as being the woman student most likely to make the best doctor.
Edith Pechey (1845–1908)
Despite coming top in the chemistry exam of 1870, Edith Pechey was modest about her own intelligence. When she wrote to Jex-Blake in 1869 requesting to join the campaign, she determined that she could offer little more than ‘moderate abilities and a good share of perseverance’ but feared she was ‘deficient in most’ subjects of study.
Pechey gained her MD from the University of Bern in 1877 and spent much of her medical career in India. She was the first woman to be elected to the Senate of the University of Bombay and was a tireless campaigner for expanding educational opportunities for Indian women and girls. She returned to England in 1905 and was active in the women’s suffrage movement until her death in 1908.
Matilda Charlotte Chaplin Ayrton (1846–1883)
After leaving Edinburgh, Matilda Chaplin studied medicine in London, Paris and Ireland. She travelled to Japan, where she opened a school for midwives, and was an author of anthropological studies. She died in London on 19 July 1883, aged just 37.
Helen de Lacey Evans (1834–1903)
Helen Evans was a young widow when she joined the campaign in Edinburgh. She never received an MD but was part of the founding executive committee of the Edinburgh Medical School for Women and Vice-President of the committee for the Edinburgh Hospital and Dispensary for Women and Children.
Evans was also one of the first female members of the St. Andrews School Board, a position she held for 15 years. She was the mother of the suffragist and feminist campaigner, Helen Archdale.
Mary Adamson Anderson Marshall (1837–1910)
Mary Anderson gained her medical degree in Paris. Her thesis on mitral stemosis was considered by many to be a significant contribution to the subject. She worked alongside her sister-in-law, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, at the New Hospital for Women and opened a dispensary in Notting Hill. Marshall moved to Cannes in 1895 where she continued to practise until her death in 1910.
Emily Bovell (1841–1885)
Emily Bovell gained her MD in Paris in 1877. In 1880, she was nominated by the French Government for the Officier d’Academie, an award rarely conferred upon women, in recognition of her services to the medical profession. In 1881, as a consequence of her poor health, she and her husband gave up their practice in London and moved to Nice. She established her own practice at which she worked until her death in 1885.
