Edinburgh Seven & the Surgeons' Hall Riot of 18th Nov 1870 © David Hutchison
Edinburgh Seven
150 years ago on 2nd Nov, 1869 a group of six women: Sophia Jex-Blake, Edith Pechey, Matilda Chaplin, Helen Evans, Mary Anderson and Isabel Thorne became the first women to matriculate at a UK university. Emily Bovell joined the group later and they became known as the Edinburgh Seven.
Many of the male students and lecturers were against the women studying and this culminated
in the Surgeons’ Hall Riot of 1870. The group were thwarted from graduating but five of them completed their studies abroad whilst the
other two continued to help the cause of women in medicine. Women were eventually allowed to graduate in 1893. Edinburgh University awarded
the Edinburgh Seven degrees posthumously in 2019.
New painting of Sophia Jex-Blake © David Hutchison
