Elizabeth Garrett becomes the first woman in England to receive a medical license. It didn’t come easy.
Daughter of a London pawnbroker, Garrett was inspired to enter medicine after meeting Elizabeth Blackwell, the first practicing woman physician in the United States. But first, Garrett had to overcome the opposition of her parents as well as Victorian gender and class restrictions. She tried applying to medical schools. All turned her down. Garrett enrolled as a nursing student at Middlesex Hospital and sat in on some medical classes. She was booted after the male students complained.
She hung in there and continued studying independently. No rule specifically barred women from taking the medical-license examination, so Garrett took the exam on September 28, 1865, and was one of three successful candidates (out of seven). It enabled her to obtain a certificate to begin practicing medicine. The licensing authority immediately changed its rules to prevent other women from trying this.
Garrett opened a dispensary for women and later became a visiting physician to the East London Hospital. Still lacking a formal medical degree, Garrett learned French and slipped across the Channel to the University of Paris, where more enlightened attitudes prevailed. She earned her degree, which the British Medical Register refused to recognize.
Undaunted, Garrett (now Elizabeth Garrett Anderson after marriage) opened the New Hospital for Women in London, staffed entirely by women. Elizabeth Blackwell joined as a professor of gynecology. Garrett’s persistence, and subsequent success, shook the British medical establishment to its foundations. The old-boy network finally cracked in 1876, when all-male med schools began admitting women. (See here for another early woman doctor.)—TL