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Likewise, more recently, Irene Finn has argued that the Irish medical profession
with the exception of the King and Queen’s College of Physicians held a hostile
view towards women in medicine. 3 This thesis will argue against these ideas by
showing that Irish university authorities and members of the medical hierarchy in
Ireland possessed a positive attitude towards women in the medical profession.
Moreover, the thesis considers the history of women in the medical profession in
Ireland as being crucial to understanding the history of women in the medical
profession in Britain. Between 1877 and 1886, the KQCPI played a virtually unique
role in the qualification of women doctors in Britain and Ireland with forty-eight of the
first fifty women who were registered in Britain as qualified medical practitioners
taking their examinations at the KQCPI. 4 It is notable that Irish universities and
hospitals opened their doors to women medical students earlier than their British
counterparts, which is somewhat surprising considering that Ireland was at this time
part of the United Kingdom and one might have expected similar trends.
I will demonstrate how women medical students were co-educated with men
students and appear to have been treated favourably by the councils of Irish
medical institutions. Irish medical education appears to have been inclusive and
welcoming of women students, even in the hospital setting where women students
in Britain had experienced difficulties in gaining admission. This thesis thus
highlights the distinctiveness of Irish medical education. The difficulties faced by
women who wished to gain admission to study medicine at British medical schools
have been retold several times. 5 As with women’s entry into higher education more
generally, this story is often depicted as a ‘struggle’ and overall, the picture that
emerges is one of heroic women battling against male patriarchy. I will show, in
contrast, that women’s admission to Irish medical schools turned out to be far less
3 Irene Finn, ‘Women in the medical profession in Ireland, 1876-1919’, in: Bernadette
Whelan (ed.), Women and paid work in Ireland, 1500-1930, (Dublin: Four Courts Press,
2000), pp.102-119.
4 The other two women doctors, Elizabeth Blackwell and Elizabeth Garret Anderson
qualified in 1859 and 1865 respectively through the Apothecaries’ Hall.
5 For a general overview: Thomas Neville Bonner, To the ends of the earth: women’s search
for education in medicine, (Harvard University Press, 1992), Caitriona Blake, Charge of the
parasols: women’s entry into the medical profession, (London: Women’s Press Ltd., 1990)
and Edythe Lutzker, Women gain a place in medicine, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969). For
biographies of Sophia Jex-Blake: Shirley Roberts, Sophia Jex-Blake: a woman pioneer in
nineteenth century medical reform, (London: Routledge, 1993) and Margaret Todd, The Life
of Sophia Jex-Blake, (London: MacMillan & Co., 1918).
2