Over a year after the Edinburgh Seven first matriculated they had been facing consistent opposition. They had people shouting at them in the streets, had to arrange to attend different lectures at the extra-mural medical college and in October 1870 they were denied permission to ‘walk the wards’ of the Infirmary. This was a decision apparently made to protect them, because the sights and illnesses in the hospital made it a place that would be too much for a faint-hearted woman to bear. The Edinburgh Seven had faced opposition every step of the way but it all culminated in the Surgeons' Hall Riot, which would later be remembered as a turning point not just for their case but for women’s education as a whole.
The riot happened on 18th November 1870, the day of the students’ anatomy exam at Surgeons' Hall. When the women arrived at Surgeon’s Hall they were met with a crowd of several hundred people – the majority of which were outlookers – that was big enough to stop traffic for an hour. Their male peers, several of whom were drunk and holding whisky bottles, were gathered outside shouting verbal abuse at them, throwing rubbish at them and blocking their entrance. When they were eventually ushered in by janitors and sympathetic peers they were able to get to the exam hall. However the exam was once again disrupted by the students releasing the Royal College’s pet sheep at the time ‘Poor’ Mallie into the room.
After the exam the women were escorted home by a group of sympathetic Irish students who were given the name the ‘Irish Brigade’. By this point they were already covered in mud but they were also hostilely met by more screaming and mud throwing as they left the building. Not only did the women have to endure the riot itself but in January 1871 Sophia Jex-Blake had to go to court to defend herself in a defamation case filed by Mr Craig – the student she identified as being the leader of the riot. A student who interestingly was Professor Robert Christison’s classroom assistant, who was a known opponent of the Edinburgh Seven and this supported the theory that some members of faculty were in support of the riot. Mr Craig won the trial, but he was only awarded one farthing of the thousand he initially requested. This resulted in the trial being considered a silent victory for the women, the kind of covert support which was still so rare at the time.
The Surgeons' Hall Riot was an appalling event but its shocking nature was exactly what made it such an instrumental point in the women’s fight for change. The riot gained a lot of media coverage, and a particularly notable article was that written in The Scotsman which urged
“all...men...to come forward and express... their detestation of the proceedings which have characterised and dishonoured the opposition to ladies pursuing the study of medicine in Edinburgh.”
Although the event was a mere culmination of the abuse and opposition they had been facing for over a year, it was able to showcase the magnitude of injustice these women were facing.
In 2015 a plaque to commemorate the Edinburgh Seven as part of the Historic Scotland Scheme – and under the recommendation of one of our tutors, Jo Spiller – was put up outside Surgeons' Hall on Nicholson Street. The plaque hangs where the Edinburgh Seven where once thrown with mud and prevented from entering an anatomy exam, and where now hundreds of female medical students walk on their way to their classes.
Author- Aya Riad
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