Doctor

There is a plaque at Old Bruntsfield Hospital, Whitehouse Loan

Sophia Jex-Blake is remarkable, firstly because she qualified as a doctor at a time when women faced enormous barriers to entering the profession and secondly because she made it possible for other women to follow her into medicine.

After tutoring in mathematics at Queen's College, London (1859-61), Sophia Jex-Blake wanted to study medicine. English medical schools were at that time closed to women. Indeed it was only after some perseverance that Jex-Blake, a native of Hastings, managed to secure a place at Edinburgh University where she matriculated with five other women in 1869. Amazingly and shamefully, the University authorities reversed their decision in 1873 and Sophia Jex-Blake had to complete her studies and graduate in Berne.

Sophia Jex-Blake believed that women and children in poor circumstances should have the opportunity of medical treatment administered by women and she opened a dispensary in Grove Street for the women of Edinburgh's slums. Years later, in 1899, the Edinburgh Hospital for Women and Children was transferred from Grove Street to Sophia Jex-Blake's home, Bruntsfield Lodge. Still mindful of Edinburgh University's refusal to allow her to matriculate, she opened the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women the first month she had received 16 applications for places, each paying £40 per annum in fees.

She was a great pioneer of woman's medicine and never tired of fighting the hypocrisy of the Edinburgh society of the day which preferred to devote its attention to the religious conversion of people in other lands rather than face the issues of poverty and ill health that lay on its own doorstep.