Universities, medical education and women: Birmingham in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Abstract

Examining the evolution of medical education for women in a major city, this paper details the combination of private and public initiative, and the role of nonconformist denominational networks in Birmingham, one of the largest industrial and commercial centres of the British Empire. From the 1880s women gradually gained access to both higher education and professional training in medicine. This was necessarily underpinned by the growth of school science for girls. In this, the role of the new endowed and proprietary schools for girls was very significant in Birmingham but that of the School Board and LEA was also important, not least in demonstrating class and gendered attitudes in education and medicine. In theory from the 1880s and 1890s it was possible even for girls from elementary schools to proceed by way of scholarship both to secondary school and to university. Such educational opportunities expanded in early twentieth-century Birmingham yet always remained slimmer for girls. From 1900 the new university ostensibly gave equal rights to women in medical education as in all other studies. The university itself had grown out of local interests and patronage and saw itself as serving the local community. Birmingham’s liberal leaders believed in scientific education and social reform, including greater equality between the sexes, although contemporary cultural and social currents could militate against such high aspirations. Nevertheless, the university did take a lead in opening up medicine to women, allowing participation in professional life, for some at the highest levels, and serving the local city and regional community.

Keywords:

• Birmingham
• university
• medical education
• women

Notes

¹For example Jane Martin, ‘Reflections on Writing a Biographical Account of a Woman Educator Activist’, History of Education 30, no.52 (2001): 453–70; Women and The Politics of Schooling in Victorian and Edwardian England (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1998); Jane Martin and Joyce Goodman, Women and Education, 1800–1980 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Sandra Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991).

²Arnold Chaplin, ‘The History of Medical Education in the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, 1500–1850’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, V Supplement, no. 12 (1919): 83–107.

³See Annemieke van Drenth and Francisca de Haan, The Rise of Caring Power: Elizabeth Fry and Josephine Butler in Britain and the Netherlands (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1999) for interpretation of this concept.

⁴Ruth Watts, Women in Science: A Social and Cultural History (London: Routledge, 2007), 122–31, 167–69.

⁵Eric Ives, Diane Drummond and Leonard Schwarz, The First Civic University: Birmingham 1880–1980. An Introductory History (Birmingham: University of Birmingham University Press, 2000), 18.

⁶Ibid., 161, 203, 247.

⁷Ibid., 261.

⁸Jonathan Reinarz, Healthcare in Birmingham: The Birmingham Teaching Hospitals, 1779–1939 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2009), 161–63, 169, 179.

⁹Lesley Hall, ‘Institutions which Admitted Women to Medical Education’ (accessed January 9, 2001); Women and the Medical Professions (accessed July 10, 2001): 3–5.http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah/wmdrs.htm; Medical Women’s Federation, http://www.m-w-f.demon.co.uk/80years.htm (accessed January 9, 2001): 1–3; Carol Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex? Women in British Universities 1870–1939 (London: UCL Press, 1995), 12–13, Students: a Gendered History (London: Routledge, 2006), 137–47; S. T. Anning and W. K. J. Walls, A History of the Leeds School of Medicine: One and a Half Centuries 1831–1981 (Leeds: Leeds University Press, c.1982), 96–98; Helen Mathers, ‘Scientific Women in a Co-educational University; Sheffield 1879–1939’ History of Education Researcher no. 81 (2008): 3–19.

¹⁰University of Birmingham Special Collections (UBSC), Pbx7795.s7, Mary Darby Sturge M.D. Obit. March 14, 1925; Brian Jones, Josiah Mason 1795–1881: Birmingham’s Benevolent Benefactor (Studely, Warwickshire: Brewin Books, 1995), 88–96, passim.

¹¹Rachel Waterhouse, Children in Hospital: A Hundred Years of Child Care in Birmingham (London: Hutchinson, 1962), 89–96. This was a development much promoted by the lady visitors to the Children’s Hospital.

¹²Ruth Watts, ‘From Lady Teacher to Professional: A Case Study of Some of the First Headteachers of Girls’ Secondary Schools in England’, Educational Management and Administration 26, no. 4 (1998): 339–42; Janet Whitcut, Edgbaston High School 1876–1976 (Birmingham: published by the Governing Body, 1976), 1–2, 29–67, 80.

¹³UBSC, Mary Sturge; Brian Jones, Josiah Mason 1795–1881: Birmingham’s Benevolent Benefactor (Studely, Warwickshire: Brewin Books, 1995), 88–96, passim.

¹⁴King Edward’s School Birmingham (KESB) Archives, The Magazine of King Edwards High School for Girls, Birmingham no. 5 (1896): 77, 80; R. E. M. Bowden, ‘Cullis, Winifred Clara (1875–1956)’, rev. Ruth E. Bowden, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), Oxford University Press: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32661 (accessed June 12, 2008).

¹⁵ESB Archives, King Edward VI Governors’ Order Book, 31^st March 1882–29^th June 1887, 195; 29^th July 1887–29^th June 1892, 221; 29th July 1892–31st July 1896, 456, passim; The Magazine of King Edwards High School for Girls, Birmingham no. 5 (1896): 77, 80 – regular successes were reported in the London Matriculation, e.g. the school had seven firsts in this in 1876; Bowden, ‘Cullis, Winifred’; Mary R. S. Creese, ‘Maclean, Ida Smedley (1877–1944)’, rev., ODNB, http//www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/37720, (accessed June, 2008).

¹⁶ KESB archives, ‘Opening of the New High School for Girls’, November 26, 1896. Report of the Proceedings and Address of Mrs Sidgwick, Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, 13, 16–21, 23. Matthews played a prime part in both educational and medical advances in Birmingham. He was solicitor to the Birmingham School Board throughout its existence and was an active member of the committees for Edgbaston High School and the Children’s Hospital among others – see Whitcut, Edgbaston High School, 30, 32 and Waterhouse, Children in Hospital, 26, 29, 84.

²¹‘Miss Creak B.A.’, in Birmingham Faces and Places 5 (Birmingham: J.G. Hammond Co., 1893), 179.

¹⁷KESB Archives, King Edward VI Governors’ Order Book, 29^th July 1887–29^th June 1892, 20, 77, 160–1, passim; 30^th September 1896–30 May 1900, 156–7, 176, 349, 442, 522.

¹⁸Watts, ‘Lady Teacher’, 343–44; KESB, 1882–1900 passim.

¹⁹Birmingham City Library (BCL) No. 4216, Edgbaston Church of England College for Girls Limited Minute Book 18 November 1890–30 November 1904, passim.

²⁰These schools were very popular local developments among aspiring members of the working classes but, since they grew within the elementary system, provoked much opposition from more traditional educationists who preferred a more exclusive ‘secondary’ ethos and less stress on science and technical subjects, although most higher grade schools had broadened their curriculum as far as they were allowed. They were abolished by the 1902 Education Act. See Mel Vlaeminke, The English Higher Grade Schools: A Lost Opportunity (London: Woburn Press, 2000), passim.

²²BCL, Birmingham School Board Reports (BSBR), 1883–1892, passim (1883–1884, 48; 1886–1887, 44–45, 53; 1887–1888, 40–41, 46; 1888–1889, 39–40, 68; 1890–1891, 32, 33, +40; 1891–1892, 29, 34–36; 1894–1895, 110, 114 – the relaxation of the Revised Code meant that hand and eye training was now open to all in standards I to III).

²³BCL, BSBR, 1891–1892, 34–35.

²⁴Ibid., 1887, 46; 1888, 37–38; 1892, 29–30, 34–36, 55; 1893, 36, 41–42; 1894, 44; 1895, 34, 52;1898, 42–44, 47; 1896–1899, passim – the Municipal Day School, founded in 1897, however, and teaching technical subjects, was for boys only.

²⁵BCL, BSBR 1882–1900, passim.

²⁶ KESB archives, ‘Opening of the New High School for Girls’, November 26, 1896. Report of the Proceedings and Address of Mrs Sidgwick, Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, 5.

²⁷Reinarz, Health Care in Birmingham, passim; UBSC rvk1057, The Eleventh Annual Report of the Board of the Birmingham and Midland Hospital for Women 1881, 3, 5, 32–48; D’A. Power, ‘Tait, (Robert) Lawson (1845–1899)’, rev. Jane Eliot Sewell, ODNB, Oxford University Press, 2004 (htpp://wwww.oxforddnb.com/view/article/26919, accessed July 10, 2007).

²⁸Catriona Blake, The Charge of the Parasols: Women’s Entry into the Medical Profession (London: Women’s Press, 1990), 151, 160–61, 170–71, 178–85, 215, 219, passim; Thomas Neville Bonner, To the Ends of the Earth: Women’s Search for Education in Medicine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 3, 31, 37–44, 54, 63; Jo Manton, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1965), 195, 220–21, 280, 330, 346; Edythe Lutzker, Edith Pechey-Phipson, M.D.: the Story of England’s Foremost Pioneering Doctor (New York: Exposition Press, 1973), 50–51, 53–59.

²⁹UBSC, Report … Hospital for Women 1881, Appendix I, 59–60.

³⁰UBSC, Report … Hospital for Women 1881, 3–5, 9, 11–12, 29, passim; Judith Lockhart, ‘“Truly, a hospital for women”: the Birmingham and Midland Hospital for Women, 1871–1901’, in Medicine and Society in the Midlands 1750–1950, ed. Jonathan Reinarz (Midland History Occasional Publications, Brentwood: Doppler Press, 2007), 81–97 – note too, from 1883, the Ladies Visiting Committee played a considerable part in the running of the hospital, the raising of subscriptions and the care of patients; Ellen Jordan, ‘“Suitable and Remunerative Employment”: The Feminization of Hospital Dispensing in Late Nineteenth-century England’, Social History of Medicine 15, no. 3 (2002): 440–45; Waterhouse, Children in Hospital, 83–84; UBSC, Mary Sturge, 6.

³¹Blake, Charge of the Parasols , 186–87,194–05; Carol Dyhouse, Students: A Gendered History (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 137–54.

³²Blake, Charge of the Parasols, 160–61, 170–7.

³³Power, ‘Tait’, 1–2.

³⁴Jones, Josiah Mason, 96; Eric Ives, ‘What is a University?,’ in Ives, Drummond and Schwarz, First Civic University, 74–85; Reinarz, Health Care in Birmingham, 159–84.

³⁵Ibid.; Ives, ‘The Struggle for the Charter’, Diane Drummond, ‘The New University’ in Ives, Drummond and Schwarz, First Civic University, 102–03, 132, passim. Lodge helped persuade Eleanor Rathbone (subsequently a feminist and MP) to go to university – Susan Pederson, Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 28–37. Lodge’s younger sister Eleanor was a student and later, in turn, librarian, history tutor and vice-principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and from 1921 to 1931 Principal of Westfield College, University of London – Frances Lannon, ‘Lodge, Eleanor Constance (1869–1936)’, ODNB, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/34582 (accessed September 12, 2007).

³⁶Andrew Rowley, ‘Beale family (per. c.1836–1912)’, ODNB, http:www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/49729 (accessed June 12, 2008); Enid Huws Jones, Margery Fry: The Essential Amateur (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 66–89, – 66, 72 – Fry and Mrs Beale became governors of the King Edward’s Schools when the Board of Education said women had to be on the Foundation as a condition of it gaining grants; Drummond, ‘New University’, 132.

³⁷Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968, 1st ed. 1963), 184–240; Richenda Scott, Elizabeth Cadbury 1858–1951 (London: George G. Harrap & Co, 1955), 29–44, passim.

³⁸Helen Plant, ‘Ye are all one in Christ Jesus’: Aspects of Unitarianism and Feminism in Birmingham, c.1869–90’, 9, Women’s History Review no. 4 (2000): 721–42; Birmingham City Library (BCL) SB/B 1/4/6, Birmingham School Board Report(s) showing the Work Accomplished by the Board during the year ended November 28^th (BSBR), 1876–91. Another woman served briefly on the School Board from 1894 to 1895; from 1891–1902 Miss H. E. G. Dale was elected and subsequently served on the new City of Birmingham Education Committee (CBEC) until 1917 – BSBR 1891–99; CBEC Reports 1903–17.

³⁹Plant, ‘… Aspects of Unitarianism and Feminism in Birmingham’, 721–42; Jones, Josiah Mason, 96.

⁴⁰The Midlands: region of central England, usually considered to include the counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire, as well as Birmingham and the surrounding metropolitan districts (the former West Midlands).

⁴¹UBSC, SL Arch 117/1 & 119/ii, Dean’s Register of Students, September 1900–October 1920; Register of Birmingham Medical Graduates and Diplomates, 1905–1930.

⁴²Dyhouse, Students, 60–78

⁴³ The Birmingham Medical Review, Birmingham, Cornish Brothers, Vols I–IV, January 1926–December 1930, passim.

⁴⁴UBSC Dean’s Register, 1, p.175; CBEC, Minutes … 1912, 5, 82–83,113; Minutes … 1913, 127, 733–34; Minutes … 1914, 358; Minutes … 1915, 179, 245, 287; Minutes … 1917, 140 – McLaren took three months without pay in 1912 to study tropical medicine.

⁴⁵UBSC, Dean’s Register of Students, September 1900–October 1919. Some of the qualifications, of course, were awarded after 1920 – six of the DPH were so awarded.

⁴⁶CBEC Report … 1908, 64.

⁴⁷See especially Reports of the Hygiene and Special Schools Sub-Committees in CBEC Minutes and Reports, 1902–1930, passim.

⁴⁸Hilda Shufflebotham married twice, each time to a fellow doctor in Birmingham.

⁴⁹Watts, Women in Science, 188–91; UBSC Dean’s Register 1, 180.

⁵⁰At least 28 came from Edgbaston, Mosley, Handsworth and Selly Oak suggesting that they might well have been from the two high schools and King Edward’s Grammar School – see UBSC Dean’s Register; Register of Birmingham.

⁵¹Rachel Waterhouse, ‘Introduction’, and Alison Thorne, ‘King Edward’s Grammar School for Girls Handsworth, 1883–1993’, in Six King Edward Schools 1883–1983 (Birmingham: KESB Foundation, 1983), 1–14, 21–25.

⁵²E. W. Jenkins and B. Swinnerton, Junior School Science Education in England and Wales since 1900: From Steps to Stages (London: Woburn Press, 1998), viii.

⁵³CBEC, Report … for the year ended November 9, 1903, 11–12; Report … 1911, 10; Report … 1930, 96–97.

⁵⁴Watts, Women in Science, 176–88.

⁵⁵Waterhouse, ‘Introduction’, 10; CBEC, Report … 1906, 40–46, 60; Minutes … 1913, 302–05, 692–93.

⁵⁶Leonard Schwarz, ‘In an Unyielding Hinterland: The Student Body 1900–45’ in Ives, Drummond and Schwarz, First Civic University, 256–57, 261–65.

⁵⁷D’A. Power, ‘Tait’, 3; see, e.g. L. Huxley, ed., Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, 2 vols (London: Macmillan, 1900), I: 211–12, 166–208 – Huxley was equally both a detractor of women’s brains and a supporter of further and medical education for them; see Adrian Desmond, ‘Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825–1895)’, ODNB, [http://www.oxforddnd.com/view/article/14320, accessed July 1, 2006], 11, passim.

⁵⁸Lawson Tait, ‘The Medical Education of Women’ (Birmingham: White and Pike, 1874, reprinted from The Birmingham Medical Review, no. 3: 81–94): 11–12.

⁵⁹Tait, ‘The Medical Education of Women’, 10–11.

⁶⁰Schwarz, ‘…Unyielding Hinterland’, 237–51.