Women In History

[00:00:03] Welcome to Scotland's Women. Throughout the podcast, we'll be listening to women from all over Scotland tell their stories. Let's support each other as Scotland's women and be the real influencers in our lives. Because each and every one of you Scotland's women out there has a story to tell.

[00:00:22] I believe one plus one is one in marriage. Because it's no longer about my goal, his goal. It's about our goal as a family. Which includes commitment, selflessness, kindness. The two of you must show up fully. Don't leave anything behind. Don't let anything come between you.

[00:00:41] Business is a journey. We're going up and down or a roller coaster, whereas there's lots of twists and turns that happen on a day by day basis. And resilience is a huge part. You learn how to deal with these things and learn not to take as hard when the hard things come.

[00:00:57] It all comes down to self-awareness. And by we were allowing ourselves to slip into old roles, let our boundaries be breached, then that can come and help us feel resentful or overwhelmed.

[00:01:10] If you don't want to do something or somebody's speaking to you in a way you don't like, just don't get sucked into those old communications.

[00:01:16] We need to keep the story alive so that women feel inspired.

[00:01:21] There's a campaign to raise awareness about the women, which I think is a shorthand for saying this is the way women should act.

[00:01:34] If they are compelled towards equality.

[00:01:38] Scotland's women, our lives, our stories.

[00:01:42] Now let's get on with the show.

[00:01:59] Hi, Janie. How's it going?

[00:02:01] Hi, Kirsten. Lovely to see you.

[00:02:04] Thank you so much for coming on and welcome to Scotland's Women podcast.

[00:02:09] Thank you for joining us.

[00:02:11] I'm so glad to have you on the podcast.

[00:02:13] Janie, could you introduce yourself and your background and where you're from?

[00:02:17] Yeah, so I'm from Edinburgh.

[00:02:21] I'm a writer.

[00:02:23] I've been published for about 23 years.

[00:02:26] And in that time, I've written for children, mainly for girls.

[00:02:33] And when I look back now, I'm very proud to say that my female character is quite a kind of girl power character.

[00:02:41] So I have been published.

[00:02:43] I've travelled the world as a writer.

[00:02:45] But as I've matured, I wanted to do a kind of long form story and dig into something historical in a very meaningful way.

[00:02:55] And I had been at university in Edinburgh.

[00:02:58] I saw this story.

[00:03:00] I felt really compelled to tell the story.

[00:03:04] And bit by bit, I was just sort of open-mouthed with shock at each element of this story for the fact it's shocking.

[00:03:17] I can't believe I don't know this story in history, in Scottish history.

[00:03:21] Janie, could you tell us what Edinburgh 7 is and how you came about this story yourself?

[00:03:28] Yeah, it's very interesting because I felt the same as you when I first heard it.

[00:03:32] It's an incredible story.

[00:03:34] And how don't I know, especially as I was at Edinburgh University back in the day for five years.

[00:03:40] And it was never mentioned and there were no plaques and no celebration of the women.

[00:03:45] So I first heard about it at the beginning of lockdown, really.

[00:03:50] And I heard that these seven women were being awarded posthumously their degrees.

[00:03:57] And what is this all about?

[00:04:00] And I realised that seven women had come to Edinburgh University from 1869,

[00:04:07] led by Sophia Jax Blake, who was really the most proactive of the group.

[00:04:13] And they tried to complete medical degrees here.

[00:04:18] It was very hard to get in in the first place because no British university was allowing women to study medicine,

[00:04:24] even though in Paris at the Sorbonne and in Zurich and Bern and in America,

[00:04:30] you could, as a woman, study medicine.

[00:04:32] Nowhere in Britain.

[00:04:33] They sort of squeezed in the door at Edinburgh, a little bit reluctantly by most of the professors.

[00:04:41] And when they got there, there was one obstacle after the other,

[00:04:45] which culminated in a fearsome riot at Surgeon's Hall in November 1870.

[00:04:52] And we will dig into this, I'm sure.

[00:04:55] But the gist of it is that the women were unwelcome thereafter at Edinburgh and had to leave and complete their degrees elsewhere.

[00:05:05] And although it was wonderful of the university to trial them out, they hadn't really thought it through.

[00:05:11] And they didn't actually want them to graduate as doctors.

[00:05:14] Because, wow, it's such a big story that I've never heard about.

[00:05:20] Could you tell us this story and how you were drawn to it?

[00:05:24] Well, at that particular time in Britain, there was no place for women to study medicine.

[00:05:30] They were beginning to be allowed to study things like English literature, which would be called bell letter,

[00:05:37] but they weren't actually allowed to do professional courses and science courses.

[00:05:42] And occasionally they were allowed to do what was called extramural, which was a bit like you can do a unit, but not the degree.

[00:05:49] So it was highly experimental for the women to come to Edinburgh to try to become doctors.

[00:05:57] It wasn't a novelty. It wasn't a hobby.

[00:05:59] They wanted to become doctors.

[00:06:00] And it was an experiment on behalf of the university, which went explosively wrong and ended up in all sorts of legal complications,

[00:06:14] violent attacks on the women, a huge riot, court cases, lots of media support for the women and against the women,

[00:06:26] fake news, propaganda, PR.

[00:06:28] It's like I see it as an early story of how the press can really affect the development of a story

[00:06:42] because the Scotsman newspaper and editor got behind Sophia and the Edinburgh Seven.

[00:06:48] And this really did change the course of history.

[00:06:52] How did you come across this story, Janie?

[00:06:54] Because you've never heard of it. I've never heard of it.

[00:06:56] Tell me about the process.

[00:06:59] I saw a little clip on BBC about these seven women who were going to be awarded their degrees posthumously,

[00:07:08] like 150 years later or whatever.

[00:07:11] And I was drawn to the story, being from Edinburgh University,

[00:07:16] and then realising that's really a great act to now give them their degrees.

[00:07:22] But why didn't they get their degrees?

[00:07:24] So it was a sort of a story.

[00:07:26] It asked more questions in my mind than it answered.

[00:07:30] So that was when I started doing some really detailed research in archives and journals and letters and so on.

[00:07:41] So it's the most academic process I've really undertaken apart from my own degrees.

[00:07:47] And it's a real departure for me.

[00:07:50] And in terms of the shape of the story, as a storyteller, I can tell you without tampering with it,

[00:07:58] it is a perfect story because it has so many twists and turns and a perfect arc and peak and solution.

[00:08:08] So it was sort of begging to be told.

[00:08:11] And all I could find was scraps and some out-of-date biographies of the seven women.

[00:08:16] And that was how I started.

[00:08:18] I felt indignation and I felt compelled to tell the story for them because I felt that as a graduate of Edinburgh University,

[00:08:29] as a woman, that they actually paved the way that we could do equivalent degrees to men

[00:08:37] because it was a kind of a game before that, that women were in some courses,

[00:08:43] but not actually ever going to graduate.

[00:08:46] Anyway, and in fact, women didn't properly graduate till the kind of early to mid part of the 20th century

[00:08:53] in most universities, including Oxford and Cambridge and so on.

[00:08:58] So yes, I did feel some anger.

[00:09:03] I felt as if, if you think as an Edinburgh person,

[00:09:09] how often you hear about Greyfriars Bobby or John Knox or something.

[00:09:13] It seems to me that what we do with history, we get preferred stories and preferred versions of stories

[00:09:20] and we just keep retelling them.

[00:09:23] And eventually the other stuff kind of gets put aside.

[00:09:29] And I think a lot of times now women are finding stories and characters in history

[00:09:36] that should have actually been pivotal in our learning of history and were literally ignored.

[00:09:45] So I felt quickly I was onto one of those stories.

[00:09:49] I think as a writer, you constantly look at things and think, is this a story?

[00:09:54] Is this a movie?

[00:09:55] You know, it's just how your mind starts working.

[00:09:57] And often you, you read all about it and you think, no, it's okay.

[00:10:02] I get this.

[00:10:03] This is quite a small issue.

[00:10:05] It's important, but it's not really a scandal or anything.

[00:10:08] With this one, I actually felt it had the elements of a scandal.

[00:10:11] Why did you need to tell this story?

[00:10:13] Why does the world need to hear about it?

[00:10:16] Well, I think I reached a point in my life where I was starting to feel more confident as a woman.

[00:10:25] And with that, when sort of more outrage in a way about how women have been treated over the years

[00:10:33] and that goes right up till this moment.

[00:10:38] Yeah.

[00:10:38] So it's not something historic.

[00:10:42] But I felt by going back to some pioneers, I think my hope is that this is inspiring.

[00:10:53] Because it's easy now to apply to university as a woman.

[00:10:57] It's easy to graduate on par with the men.

[00:11:02] It wasn't always so.

[00:11:04] And I suppose I have a thing about not taking for granted our slim privileges as women.

[00:11:12] And that if we start to ignore the fact that these are very hard won opportunities,

[00:11:21] then eventually we are actually going to start going backwards, I fear, in terms of women's rights.

[00:11:29] So I did feel, and I still do feel, extremely passionate about this story.

[00:11:35] It propels me on a daily basis.

[00:11:40] And when I hear of people in the establishment not really valuing it, that makes me stronger.

[00:11:50] Sounds like it makes you angrier.

[00:11:52] Yeah.

[00:11:54] Yeah.

[00:11:55] It really ends a question of, while I've been researching this and trying to gain access to more information,

[00:12:03] I have actually heard phrases like, why are you bothering with those battle axes?

[00:12:11] Who said that?

[00:12:14] I think I'd better not say.

[00:12:17] But it's the idea that I actually think that I'm ruffling some feathers by bringing the story out.

[00:12:28] And if you think of that logically, it wouldn't be suppressed like this if it didn't upset somebody somewhere in the establishment.

[00:12:37] Yeah, because why would you even have an opinion on it?

[00:12:42] We should all be celebrated.

[00:12:44] And was it a man that said that to you?

[00:12:48] Battle axe?

[00:12:49] Yes.

[00:12:50] Yes.

[00:12:51] Okay.

[00:12:51] But what happened in the tree?

[00:12:54] In the 19th century.

[00:12:55] So this is interesting to me that I think institutions and individuals can have this kind of historic shame.

[00:13:07] As an example, I went to a very moving historical talk in London about the descendants of conscientious objectors in the wars.

[00:13:17] And they had lived with shame all their life because their grandfathers or fathers hadn't felt able to fight,

[00:13:25] which is actually quite a rational position.

[00:13:27] You don't want to kill other people.

[00:13:29] But their children, their daughters were weeping with remembering the shame of this.

[00:13:36] And I think sometimes it's very hard to revisit stories that don't speak well of an organisation, an institution or a particular group.

[00:13:51] Edinburgh has always prided itself on fantastic medical men and now women.

[00:14:00] Sort of the top echelon, really, of the medical world.

[00:14:05] There are lots of quotes from American presidents and so on saying,

[00:14:10] you must go to Edinburgh to study medicine.

[00:14:13] It's like the leading light.

[00:14:15] And it's still very, very well thought of and rightly so.

[00:14:20] But it's not tarnishing, in my opinion.

[00:14:24] It was brilliant that the women got to come here.

[00:14:27] It was never going to go smoothly.

[00:14:28] The first ever experimentation of women joining a new profession.

[00:14:34] Yes.

[00:14:34] Where did the experimentation come from?

[00:14:38] Why at that point was Edinburgh University willing to change and to let women come in and study medicine and get a degree?

[00:14:46] Yeah.

[00:14:47] So one of the Edinburgh Seven, Sophia Jex-Blake, who realised that she would like to study medicine,

[00:14:54] she came to Edinburgh and there were a few friendly professors of medicine who were willing to support her.

[00:15:03] So they proposed that she might join the course, see how it goes.

[00:15:08] And there were votes and sometimes it would go in a favour and then another Senate group would say no.

[00:15:14] And this went on for quite some months.

[00:15:17] But eventually they said, no, you can't come because there's only one of you.

[00:15:23] So Sophia said, is that the main objection?

[00:15:27] And they said yes.

[00:15:28] And she said, OK, give me a month.

[00:15:30] So she went and advertised in the Scotsman for medically minded women to join her at Edinburgh.

[00:15:36] And of course, the editor of the Scotsman gave her a big page to say this.

[00:15:40] And this is where the Seven came about because six people joined her.

[00:15:45] And from there, the university were like, OK, well, you can come, but you will have a different fee structure

[00:15:53] because we're going to have to teach you separately.

[00:15:55] So you'll be paying a lot more.

[00:15:57] There was a lot of obstacles.

[00:15:58] You know, you will have Sunday classes because we'll have to get because mixed classes, male and female.

[00:16:06] Absolutely no way.

[00:16:09] That some of the topics about the human body and Victorians being as they were.

[00:16:26] So men were allowed to look at female body parts at that time and male body parts at that time.

[00:16:34] But because they're female, they're not allowed to see.

[00:16:38] Were they allowed to see any body part?

[00:16:41] Well, the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh was tied up with the university and they banned the women from doing ward rounds.

[00:16:49] Now, you couldn't graduate without practical experience.

[00:16:54] So a lot of times it was restricted to diagrams and so on.

[00:16:58] Obviously, they always worked with a lot of cadavers in university as well.

[00:17:04] But the idea was that whatever they were looking at, it would have to be women only.

[00:17:10] And I genuinely feel from some of the characters that I've researched this time that they just thought it was too gory and vile for women and couldn't understand why women would be so interested in healing in this way.

[00:17:29] When they could be doing embroidery and piano for tea and dance classes.

[00:17:35] And they were baffled by the fact that women were interested in healing.

[00:17:42] Bear in mind that women had delivered babies from the beginning of time and usually made a better job of it than any kind of early obstetricians and so on.

[00:17:57] So it was disingenuous.

[00:17:59] Women could go to war like Florence Nightingale and so on, but as nurses.

[00:18:04] Yeah.

[00:18:05] Cleaning up, bandaging, not actually doing the thinking.

[00:18:10] Do you know much about Sophia's background?

[00:18:13] Because she was the one who paved the way.

[00:18:16] She was the one who literally had balls to just go, I want to do this.

[00:18:23] So I'm going to go in front of the electives and ask this.

[00:18:28] But what's her background?

[00:18:30] And I mean, I'm very intrigued about this woman.

[00:18:33] She started a revolution.

[00:18:36] She did.

[00:18:37] She did.

[00:18:39] So they gave her points and went, okay, you can do it.

[00:18:42] Okay.

[00:18:43] So six women have joined the seven now.

[00:18:47] But they're putting all these obstacles in front of them.

[00:18:51] Absolutely.

[00:18:52] Well, to answer about Sophia's background, she was from a wealthy family in London called the Cubits.

[00:19:00] She was gay and quite open about that in her lifetime, eventually living with her partner, Margaret Todd.

[00:19:10] She was extremely courageous.

[00:19:15] One of these people who is warm hearted, but can be quite difficult, you know, challenges everything that's said to her.

[00:19:25] Why not?

[00:19:26] Could do it this way.

[00:19:28] A very, very kind of positive personality type and not the conventional Victorian woman.

[00:19:39] So one of the amazing things that she did, Kirsten, was that she paid for some of the women in that first group because of her wealthy background.

[00:19:54] Oh, so the women had to pay.

[00:19:57] To attend university.

[00:19:58] To attend university.

[00:19:58] This wasn't a kind of sponsorship or anything like this.

[00:20:03] No.

[00:20:04] The women had higher fees than men because they were thought to be more awkward that they had to have special arrangements and they had to build restrooms and things for the women.

[00:20:15] So the women had hugely high fees.

[00:20:21] And Sophia could easily have been one of these privileged Victorian women who lived from a family trust.

[00:20:34] And when people say, you know, feminism and the suffrage is tied up with class.

[00:20:41] I do agree.

[00:20:42] It was very, very hard for impoverished women to get to university.

[00:20:49] However, what Sophia did was she released funds for some of the women who couldn't afford it and arranged for the fees to be paid by one or two aristocratic suffrage interested women.

[00:21:04] So she was not all about herself.

[00:21:10] And this is how I like to define her.

[00:21:12] That there had been other women before dabbling with being the first doctor and so on.

[00:21:18] You know, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was a wonderful woman, Elizabeth Blackwell.

[00:21:22] But they tended to find a sort of shimmy around the problem, not through universities in Britain, maybe through the Society of Apothecaries in London.

[00:21:31] But they didn't leave the door open for anyone else.

[00:21:34] And I'm not criticizing them for that.

[00:21:36] But Sophia didn't rest until she'd changed the law, made sure other women would come after her, made sure other women would not have the same problems.

[00:21:46] And that's really why I applaud her so much.

[00:21:50] Before this chat, I actually did some research.

[00:21:53] There was little paragraphs here and there, which I was quite shocked at.

[00:21:57] The only research that actually came up and would put, you know, put the story in one sitting is your book.

[00:22:05] And it feels quite sad to me, Janie, because I have never heard this story before, even in school.

[00:22:12] I mean, that would empower me as a child.

[00:22:16] You know, and as you said, going back to the start, we did learn a lot about the history of the city.

[00:22:24] Because I'm from Edinburgh as well.

[00:22:26] Yeah.

[00:22:27] But again, you said the story was told over and over and over again.

[00:22:30] And they're still getting told.

[00:22:32] And obviously, they're becoming hot tourist spots at the moment.

[00:22:35] But I actually want to hear this story, a story that made a difference in history.

[00:22:41] But I'm just shocked why it's still not publicly out there.

[00:22:46] And as I said, the only information that I can find online is your book.

[00:22:52] It's really interesting because I suppose once I really launched into the research, one of my fears is there's got to be somebody else working on this.

[00:23:04] You know, you get this paranoia when you're working on a movie or a book and it's taking up all of your life, like maybe three solid years.

[00:23:12] You think, goodness, you know, there's bound to be somebody beats me to it.

[00:23:19] And I just couldn't believe that that never happened and that there isn't a previous book.

[00:23:27] And I thought this is obviously just my job to tell this story.

[00:23:32] I would only be supposing if I say why I think it hasn't been told.

[00:23:40] I know that.

[00:23:42] Let's take a huge movie from the last few years, Oppenheimer.

[00:23:47] Not completely an equivalent, but a very famous man that maybe everybody didn't quite know about before the movie.

[00:23:57] It seems to me that there's more appetite for men who've done extraordinary things.

[00:24:04] And that becomes a real box office movie.

[00:24:07] And it's harder to tell the story of women.

[00:24:12] You'd have to try and bring in maybe some war, some great men.

[00:24:17] Otherwise, it's going to be seen as, oh, you're banging the drum about women, you know.

[00:24:24] So there is that kind of prejudice still that women's history is not as interesting.

[00:24:31] We've got our favorites.

[00:24:32] We've got Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots.

[00:24:35] Yeah.

[00:24:38] They won't really wise women.

[00:24:40] No.

[00:24:41] And you've got your Anne Boleyn.

[00:24:43] But how do we know?

[00:24:45] They're suffering, though.

[00:24:46] It's stories about women who have suffered.

[00:24:49] And that seems to be the propaganda that we suck up.

[00:24:53] And it's not good to me.

[00:24:56] It's not good for someone like me who wants to learn and inspire.

[00:25:01] Because I am a woman.

[00:25:02] So inspiration is definitely the key word here.

[00:25:08] That we have a story begging to be told.

[00:25:12] It's not really, in my mind, to do solely with medicine.

[00:25:18] I think it's to do with injustice, misogyny, prejudice, persecution.

[00:25:26] So anyone who has suffered any type of persecution will identify with this story.

[00:25:34] So interesting that just two weeks ago that 19 Afghan girls came to Edinburgh to finish their degrees.

[00:25:45] Because they're not allowed to be told.

[00:26:13] Because they're not allowed to in their homeland regime.

[00:26:14] And it's really about bringing a fresh voice and a fresh angle to it.

[00:26:20] Making clear.

[00:26:22] Not all men were appalling to the women.

[00:26:26] Some were.

[00:26:27] And we have to talk about that.

[00:26:30] It's, you know, I'm a great supporter of men who are supportive of women.

[00:26:38] In corporate, professional, academic, and so on.

[00:26:42] I see wonderful men supporting women all the time.

[00:26:46] And I see it in this story too.

[00:26:48] But the simple fact is that there are some very powerful men who, to this day, are suppressing the voice and the power and the rights of women.

[00:27:02] And I feel that with all my heart.

[00:27:05] And I feel I have experienced some of that.

[00:27:09] Therefore, I feel I have a job to do.

[00:27:12] To tell this story in the most exciting and interesting way possible.

[00:27:18] To say to all women, but really young women too.

[00:27:24] Don't think these dusty old stories are of no relevance to our modern life.

[00:27:29] Yeah.

[00:27:30] Because we're still actually fighting prejudice every day.

[00:27:36] And sometimes we don't even know it until it's pointed out.

[00:27:41] Really sad.

[00:27:43] Yeah.

[00:27:44] And it's sad that the Edinburgh Seven were, as you would imagine, a variety of women.

[00:27:52] Mothers, lovers, wives, sisters.

[00:27:56] A completely diverse group of women.

[00:27:59] They were all described as unnatural, unfeminine.

[00:28:06] There's allusions to witchcraft.

[00:28:10] There was a feeling that they were dangerous, that they would corrupt other women.

[00:28:17] There was a feeling that because they were very humane and socialist in the principles, in some cases, that they would do medical work for cheap.

[00:28:30] And that would ruin the earning power of the male consultants.

[00:28:35] There was a feeling that when they were

[00:28:42] wanted to excel in exams beyond the men on the course.

[00:28:46] And then, of course, there was a kind of shockwave went through the medical faculty.

[00:28:55] This was in the first spring of the seven being on the course.

[00:29:03] The hope prize is always seen as quite a seminal moment in this story, where the men really realize they're not just hobbyists.

[00:29:29] They're not just here for fun.

[00:29:30] They want to graduate.

[00:29:31] They want to become doctors.

[00:29:33] They want to take our jobs.

[00:29:34] And there'll be more of them coming behind them.

[00:29:36] And they started to say, well, we're not just going to get our jobs.

[00:29:42] We're going to get our jobs.

[00:29:43] We're going to get our jobs to study along with women.

[00:29:44] And it's unnatural.

[00:29:46] And who are these women?

[00:29:47] And the witches and so on.

[00:29:49] So there was a lot of fear in the governing bodies.

[00:29:52] And they said, unfortunately, Edith can't get the top prize.

[00:29:57] We will have to go to the next day.

[00:29:59] So this actually showed Sophia and Edith and Helen and Mary and Matilda and the others that we have a problem.

[00:30:07] So the behavior of the men got worse.

[00:30:10] The violence, the name calling, threatening to blow up their property with fireworks,

[00:30:17] calling them the most awful of names connected with prostitution and all the usual sort of slanderous things.

[00:30:25] And this became very unpleasant.

[00:30:27] So the women kind of decided over the summer, let's really kind of understand this more and be very accommodating.

[00:30:35] The fact that we're unsettling the men.

[00:30:38] But things got worse in the autumn and culminated in the November riot.

[00:30:44] Was this in the first year of their time at university?

[00:30:48] Yeah, so we're just going 1869 through to 1870 at the moment that there's been the Hope Prize and the name calling and the violence and the riot in one year.

[00:30:58] Yeah.

[00:30:59] Wow.

[00:31:00] That's one hard freshers week, you know, that's one hard freshers.

[00:31:07] Like that never happened to me at university in the first year.

[00:31:10] Yeah, it's a very hard introduction.

[00:31:13] These were brilliantly clever women.

[00:31:16] If you could imagine anyone with the confidence and brains to pass the entrance examination, which in those days, universities just had a kind of often a general entrance exam to see where you were.

[00:31:30] It wasn't like three A's at A level and whatnot.

[00:31:34] So they were already amongst the most academically brilliant women of their generation.

[00:31:40] And this just hadn't been anticipated.

[00:31:43] So what happens is they do well.

[00:31:45] They love it.

[00:31:46] They're teaching each other.

[00:31:47] They're living in a commune in Bucleu Place.

[00:31:49] They're living in one townhouse.

[00:31:51] And they're saying, you're good at chemistry.

[00:31:53] Teach us.

[00:31:54] You're good at anatomy.

[00:31:55] Teach us.

[00:31:56] You're good at surgery.

[00:31:57] Teach us.

[00:31:58] And they're having this wheel of a time.

[00:32:00] But by the anatomy exam of November 18, 1870, the men have decided not to let them in.

[00:32:11] So they keep passing exams and they keep excelling.

[00:32:14] They're going to have to let them graduate.

[00:32:16] And that's never going to happen.

[00:32:17] So the exams were to be blocked.

[00:32:20] There were about 200 people gathered outside Surgeon's Hall.

[00:32:25] Terrifying scene.

[00:32:26] Late afternoon.

[00:32:27] Dusky.

[00:32:28] Noisy.

[00:32:29] Drunkenness.

[00:32:30] Throwing things at the women.

[00:32:33] I am fairly sure I would have turned around and went home.

[00:32:37] Fearful for my life.

[00:32:39] Tell me who?

[00:32:40] Yeah.

[00:32:42] They linked arms and they started walking towards the mob.

[00:32:47] And the violence and the name calling got worse.

[00:32:50] And at this point, they wouldn't have had any protection from police or anything, local authorities or anything.

[00:32:58] Are they literally on their own, these seven women?

[00:33:01] Yes.

[00:33:03] The police, such as it was in those days, they would probably side more with the university.

[00:33:09] These are mavericks.

[00:33:11] These are crazy women.

[00:33:12] You know, they're going to unsettle other women if we're not careful.

[00:33:17] This kind of vibe.

[00:33:18] However, there were some people they called the Irish bodyguards.

[00:33:23] And those were Irish medical students who were really appalled at the behavior of some of these key professors, such as Dr. Christensen and his assistants.

[00:33:38] There were some people in front, bearing in mind that other doctors and even Charles Darwin had spoken out in defense of the women.

[00:33:45] So it wasn't everyone.

[00:33:47] So we get to a point at the riot where they are just not going to turn away and nobody can believe it.

[00:33:56] So there are various accounts of how they got into the exam, whether it was a janitor who opened the gate because he was becoming worried for their safety or whether it was a friendly professor.

[00:34:13] We're just not quite clear on that, but somebody let them in.

[00:34:17] When they got into the exam hall, there was a sheep running riot.

[00:34:22] The idea was don't let them settle into this exam, even if they get in.

[00:34:26] And what did they do?

[00:34:28] They just peacefully sat down, got on with the anatomy paper and all did brilliantly in that.

[00:34:35] After this, all hell breaks loose in the faculty and in Edinburgh.

[00:34:39] And so often in entrenched positions when a group is just becoming like a war.

[00:34:48] So the opposition at the university are humiliated now.

[00:34:52] Some journalists are running headlines like, shame on you.

[00:34:58] That for educated middle class men to behave like this in a culture of chivalry towards women is beyond shameful.

[00:35:08] Can I ask, how old are the women at this point?

[00:35:11] Like, how old are they?

[00:35:13] They are under 30, but mostly in their mid-30s because they've mostly done stints in hospitals, a bit of midwifery, a bit of nursing.

[00:35:26] You know, they'd had some sort of medical background or academic background.

[00:35:31] They're proper young and they're getting, there's only seven of them.

[00:35:35] And there's a big, massive crowd of men doing this, protesting them to take a simple exam.

[00:35:44] And things were actually hitting them.

[00:35:46] Things were being pelted and hitting them.

[00:35:48] And I just know that I would not have had their courage because they could have died that day.

[00:35:57] And that boggled my mind with admiration and shock.

[00:36:01] Is there any written evidence, you know, from Sophia or the rest of the six women about how they actually felt about these riots that were happening?

[00:36:11] There is, because a court case came about after this.

[00:36:16] So by the January of 1871, Sophia was at a public meeting about the Royal Infirmary and she was complaining about the treatment at the riot.

[00:36:29] And she said, well, I know who started it.

[00:36:32] It was one of Christensen's assistants.

[00:36:35] This is a sort of villain, if you like, in the piece, Dr. Christensen.

[00:36:38] Very complicated, older doctor.

[00:36:41] He had an assistant called Edward Cunningham-Crieg and he was thought to have been the stirrer of her at the riot.

[00:36:50] We've learned so much that's interesting about him in the research, but let's just say that he was in the pocket of Dr. Christensen.

[00:37:00] So when Sophia brought his name up at the meeting, Christensen saw an opportunity to accuse her of defamation of character of his assistant.

[00:37:09] And he then sets in motion a very aggressive court case for Sophia, which she has to answer to in June 1871.

[00:37:19] That's when we hear more about what they went through at the riot, how they believe it started, how they believe alcohol played a part and how frightened they were.

[00:37:30] So we do know all of that.

[00:37:32] This was covered hugely by the worldwide press.

[00:37:35] The public gallery was crammed every day.

[00:37:39] And people were largely saying, oh, these women were quite sensible, calm, peaceful, intelligent, eloquent.

[00:37:49] In some cases, pretty feminine.

[00:37:53] They're a mixture of women.

[00:37:56] They're not the kind of monstrous, unnaturals that we were like to believe.

[00:38:02] And this was another turning point that all male jury, because that was the case until well into the 20th century.

[00:38:12] But in actual fact, the public was very much on side of the women.

[00:38:18] And although Sophia was found guilty of defamation, the accuser was only awarded a penny.

[00:38:25] And that was very much like the judge's way of saying, I don't think it's this simple.

[00:38:32] So that was shaming for Christensen and Edward Cunningham Craig.

[00:38:36] And we know that Cunningham Craig dies quite soon after that court case.

[00:38:42] That's another whole bit of research.

[00:38:45] After the riot comes the public meeting, comes the court case.

[00:38:50] Now things have disintegrated.

[00:38:52] The women can't get to walk the wards.

[00:38:55] They can't get into classes.

[00:38:58] And is this a requirement to get your degree?

[00:39:04] It is.

[00:39:04] So as with nowadays, the practical side of medicine is, you know, you can point to all the arteries on a diagram all you will, but you need to be able to diagnose and treat.

[00:39:18] And pharmaceuticals and medicines are another extremely interesting part of this story.

[00:39:24] And the use of poisons in medicine and all of that is a rich, rich tapestry.

[00:39:29] But suffice to say, they could not graduate with the way the university was progressing.

[00:39:35] Sophia went to London to lobby in Westminster.

[00:39:39] A politician called Wedderburn started a bill to support her.

[00:39:43] But it was all going to take too much time.

[00:39:46] So the women leave Edinburgh in about 1872 and they start going to the Sorbonne and Zurich and so on.

[00:39:53] And they could take qualifying exams in Dublin.

[00:39:57] Ireland comes very well out of this story.

[00:40:00] And while Sophia is getting the law changed in London, she gets fully made up to MD medical doctor.

[00:40:09] And in 1876 comes back to Edinburgh as the first female doctor in Scotland and opens in Manor Place at the West End.

[00:40:20] And I think it must have been important for her to come back to the city that wouldn't allow her to graduate.

[00:40:26] I think she loved Edinburgh and she was heartbroken that she couldn't finish her degree here.

[00:40:32] And she had a great many friends, male and female, in Edinburgh because some of the professors were a delight and were always campaigning for the women.

[00:40:41] And they wanted their wives and daughters to be able to study.

[00:40:44] There were a great many supporters that Sophia lists later in life of the amazing professors who supported her and local dignitaries and so on.

[00:40:57] Have you spoken to women doctors while you were researching and looking back on the history?

[00:41:04] Did they know about this particular story and Sophia and the six women?

[00:41:13] No. And a lot have written to me when they've seen the book.

[00:41:17] Wow. Okay.

[00:41:19] In some cases, they said I have left the profession because of sexism.

[00:41:26] And this book has really touched me because to think of the effort that went into the quest for equality.

[00:41:38] Mostly they're really inspired by it, but they say there are still serious, serious problems of sexism.

[00:41:46] And, well, it's too much of a side issue to go into, but there are examples of sexual abuse during surgery which have come out in the UK and in other countries.

[00:42:02] Quite recently, a female Indian doctor was murdered on her shift.

[00:42:08] So there are still problems of how women are treated in the profession.

[00:42:12] Of course, it's great that you can study and become a doctor as a woman, but I haven't met any female doctors who knew about the story.

[00:42:23] What can we learn from these women, Janie? And what have you learned while you were writing and researching the book?

[00:42:30] I think what I take away, and I can't speak for others, I think their courage in the face of name-calling.

[00:42:42] Because when you take a broadly female-centric or feminist stance in the current types, it's not that popular at the moment.

[00:42:59] And yet, the last thing you should do is think, well, I'll pipe down and work on something different.

[00:43:06] I think as a woman who is curious about history, about academia, about the women's movement, I have learned more persistence, more confidence.

[00:43:26] I have learned from them resilience because they didn't have laptops, they didn't have central heating, they didn't have cars, they didn't have wheels.

[00:43:40] They're going about Edinburgh in the most inhospitable months of the year, going to lectures where they're being pelted and called prostitutes and worse.

[00:43:52] And they're not staying in bed, they're not thinking, oh, let's have a DVD.

[00:43:58] They're actually getting out there, court case coming up, right, we'll all go, we'll all link arms and we'll link at the court.

[00:44:06] We've been in a riot, we could go back to our comfortable hometowns, but we're not.

[00:44:12] So I think what we can learn from the Edinburgh Seven is resilience, confidence, persistence.

[00:44:24] And what we can take from it is, not everybody's going to agree with you and support you.

[00:44:31] And I really like the idea that being a good person is more important than being nice.

[00:44:42] And I get this from Sophia.

[00:44:45] So I think I was kind of either born or conditioned nice.

[00:44:52] I do get upset if I upset people.

[00:44:56] And, you know, it's like a visceral thing if you're that kind of person.

[00:45:00] However, what I've learned is from Sophia is that if you have a goal and that's a good, wholesome, positive goal.

[00:45:09] Yeah.

[00:45:09] Then you don't need to have everyone adore you or agree with you.

[00:45:18] You don't need to listen to that abuse that you know is irrelevant.

[00:45:23] Yeah.

[00:45:24] So I would never pick a fight.

[00:45:28] I would never make a tweet that is going to cause an argument because I find my route is much more about steady, quiet, reveal my book when it's ready, reveal my film when it's ready.

[00:45:44] I don't want to stir people up, upset people.

[00:45:47] I think the power is in the story.

[00:45:54] And all I can hope is that it reaches people's hearts and that for women and men that they think, how appalling and how shameful.

[00:46:08] And there are men now treating women in the same way with scant regard for their human rights.

[00:46:21] So we can learn that we still have to work on those areas of society and human behaviour internationally.

[00:46:31] I don't compare myself to Sophia, but have I picked up by osmosis a bit of her guts?

[00:46:39] Yes, definitely.

[00:46:40] And I thank her for that.

[00:46:42] And I hope that this is the start of a process of other women being affected by Sophia.

[00:46:50] And I feel a sort of conduit for her.

[00:46:53] It's not really my story to tell.

[00:46:56] But if nobody else has written a book on it or made a film on it after all this time, then I have accepted this.

[00:47:05] Why is it so important to keep the Edinburgh Seven women alive?

[00:47:11] Lest we forget the challenges that women have had throughout history.

[00:47:21] That there are phrases like difficult women, battle acts, witches.

[00:47:27] These are mostly women who had courage to change the status quo because the status quo is mainly controlled by the male ruling elite who would mainly be male and privileged.

[00:47:44] And there is so much need for them to retain that privilege.

[00:47:49] Because when we see that male privilege dissolving, they become vulnerable.

[00:47:56] There can be court cases against them.

[00:47:59] There can be secrets revealed that they've previously been able to control.

[00:48:03] So the idea of powerful women, women being empowered is very uncomfortable.

[00:48:11] And we need to keep the story of the Edinburgh Seven alive so that women feel inspired.

[00:48:20] And this is my hope.

[00:48:23] I'm not inspiring.

[00:48:24] They are.

[00:48:26] I'm just the vehicle that's brought this story out.

[00:48:28] And I want to keep talking about the Edinburgh Seven.

[00:48:32] And people think, I've had people saying, oh, is it the Seven Hills of Edinburgh?

[00:48:39] Is it a football team?

[00:48:40] What is the Edinburgh Seven?

[00:48:43] And the fact that we still don't know in big numbers about this really alarms and shocks me.

[00:48:50] So it's a campaign to raise awareness about the women, which I think is a shorthand for saying this is the way women should act.

[00:49:03] If they are compelled towards equality.

[00:49:06] That's great.

[00:49:08] Thank you so much.

[00:49:13] Thank you so much, Janie.

[00:49:15] That was amazing.

[00:49:16] It is very inspiring.

[00:49:18] True story.

[00:49:19] It's an amazing book.

[00:49:21] And I can't wait for the listeners to read all about it and hopefully see it on the big screen very soon.

[00:49:29] At the end of each episode, Janie, I ask every woman, what's that one quote?

[00:49:35] Is there that one quote that you've heard and it's stuck with you?

[00:49:39] Would you be able to share yours with us?

[00:49:42] Yeah, I'd be delighted to.

[00:49:44] So I've picked a quote by the writer Maya Angelou.

[00:49:49] And she said, each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.

[00:49:59] And I feel that's what Sophia did.

[00:50:02] And that's what I'm trying to do now.

[00:50:04] And obviously, Maya Angelou is hugely inspirational to me as well.

[00:50:09] Thanks so much, Janie, for coming on to the Scotland's Women podcast.

[00:50:14] The Edinburgh Seven Women.

[00:50:16] So much courage and inspiration and a true story.

[00:50:20] Thank you so much for coming on.

[00:50:21] I'll speak to you soon, OK?

[00:50:23] Thank you.

[00:50:24] It was my pleasure.

[00:50:25] And I've enjoyed every minute too.

[00:50:27] Thank you so much, Kristen.

[00:50:28] Thanks, Janie.

[00:50:30] I'll speak to you soon.

[00:50:31] Bye.

[00:50:32] Bye.

[00:50:32] Bye-bye.

[00:50:34] My name is Janie Jones.

[00:50:36] I'm an author and now a filmmaker.

[00:50:40] I am on most social medias in some version of Janie Jones, Janie Jones writer, Janie Lit on X.

[00:50:50] And I'd be so delighted if you would join me there.

[00:50:54] I'm always posting about the Edinburgh Seven and other topics of interest.

[00:51:01] My book is called The Edinburgh Seven.

[00:51:03] And this is available in Toppings, Waterstones, Amazon and all good independent bookstores.

[00:51:10] Next time on Scotland's Women.

[00:51:12] You don't have to have this perfect Christmas.

[00:51:14] Christmas is what's good for you.

[00:51:16] What makes you happy and your family happy.

[00:51:18] So I think set just realistic expectations.

[00:51:22] And this is where it comes back to expectations.

[00:51:24] Maybe everyone else had started to expect you to do Christmas like that because you'd done it for so long.

[00:51:29] Because also you'd put that expectation on yourself to have it all have the perfect playlist.

[00:51:35] So then you're in this kind of cycle and then you're getting resentful towards them for allowing you to allow that and then overwhelmed.

[00:51:42] So I think it's around letting go of that level of perfection, which all comes from self-awareness, which you've got now.

[00:51:50] Thank you for listening to Scotland's Women.

[00:51:53] We would love to hear from you.

[00:51:55] So please visit the website at scotlandswomen.com as every Scotland's woman has a story to tell.

[00:52:01] And please subscribe on wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:52:05] Scotland's Women.

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