I should be very glad to know your opinion upon the
plan of applying for admittance as a student at the
Middlesex for the next winter session, and also what you
would advise in the event of this being refused.
22 Manchester Square: May 8, 1862.
I have delayed writing, hoping that I might have at last some good news of success to give you; now, as this seems farther off than I had hoped it would be, I will delay no longer. I think Mrs. Russell Gurney wrote you that I was spending all my time just now in preparing for the matriculation examination of the University of London. I decided to make this the first step, in consequence of the experience last summer brought us. We then made three very careful and vigorous efforts to gain the admission of women into a medical school. Those we tried were the Middlesex, the Westminster, and the London Hospitals; and early in this year we attempted the Grosvenor Street School. I need not tell you we were in each case unsuccessful, though in one or two cases the adverse decision was gained by a very small majority of votes. In each case those gentlemen who opposed always urged as one ground for their doing so, that as the examining bodies were not prepared to admit women to their examinations, the school could not educate a woman to be an illegal practitioner, and that by doing so they would incur the certain risk of injuring the school in the eyes of the public without really aiding women. The medical papers also took up the same line. The 'Lancet' was particularly anxious to point out that we were beginning at the wrong end, and that the first thing we should do was to settle the question of examination. I also had private information from several of the lecturers at the Middlesex that if I could matriculate at the London University and enter as a medical student for its examinations, my friends at
