Jex-Blake led a group of seven women admitted to study medicine at Edinburgh, the first women matriculated at any British university.
On 19 November 1869, Sophia Jex-Blake was formally matriculated at the University of Edinburgh along with six other women she had recruited — Isabel Thorne, Edith Pechey, Matilda Chaplin, Helen Evans, Mary Anderson, and Emily Bovell — forming the group later known as the Edinburgh Seven. This was the first time women had been admitted to matriculate at any British university to study for a degree.
Jex-Blake had petitioned the university's Medical Faculty and Senatus, and after an initial rejection of her solo application in 1869 on the grounds that arrangements could not be made for a single woman, she cleverly reasoned that a group of women would force the university to adapt its arrangements. The strategy worked, and the university agreed to admit women, provided they were taught separately from male students and paid extra fees for the privilege.
The admission of the Edinburgh Seven was a watershed moment in the history of women's higher education and medical training in the United Kingdom. It provoked fierce backlash, culminating in the notorious Surgeons' Hall Riot of 1870, when a mob of male students and onlookers jeered and threw mud at the women as they arrived for an anatomy exam. Despite completing coursework successfully and often outperforming male peers, the women were ultimately barred by the university from graduating, as the Senatus reversed its decision in 1873. Nonetheless, the campaign galvanized public support and directly led to the Medical Act (Enabling) Act of 1876, which permitted medical examining bodies to license women.