Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/190

 widow survived him. Brasses were put up in Blackley's memory in the churches of St. James the Less, North Waltham, and Frensham.

Blackley, whose Irish humour and eloquence made him an attractive platform speaker, was an accomplished linguist and a capable parochial organiser. His published writings, besides sermons, review articles, short stories, and the works mentioned in the text, are: He was also editor (with [James Hawes) of the 'Critical English [New] Testament,' an adaptation of Bengel's 'Gnomon,' 1866, 3 vols. His 'Collected Essays' (1880) was re-issued in 1906, under the title of 'Thrift and National Insurance as a Security against Pauperism,' with a prefatory memoir by his widow, who zealously aided in propagating his views of social reform.
 * 1) 'The Frithiof Saga, or Lay of Frithiof,' a translation in original metre from the Swedish of Esaias Tegnér, bp. of Wexio, Dublin, 1857; American edit. New York, 1867; illustr. edit. 1880.
 * 2) (with Dr. Friedlander) 'A practical dictionary of the German and English languages,' 1866 (pocket edition, 1876).
 * 3) 'Word Gossip,' 1869, a series of familiar essays on words and their peculiarities.



BLACKWELL, ELIZABETH (1821–1910), the first woman doctor of medicine, born at Counterslip, Bristol, on 3 Feb. 1821, was third daughter of Samuel Blackwell, a Bristol sugar refiner. The father, a well-to-do Independent, emigrated with seven children in August 1832 to New York. Here Elizabeth and her sisters continued their education and became intimate with William Lloyd Garrison and other anti-slavery friends. When Elizabeth was seventeen they removed to Cincinnati, where her father died suddenly, leaving his family of nine unprovided for. In order to support their mother and younger brothers, Elizabeth and her two sisters started a day and boarding school. They joined the Church of England, and became enthusiastic politicians and keen supporters of the movement for a wider education of women. They were intimate with Dr. Charming and studied the writings of Emerson, Fourier, and Carlyle. In 1842 the school was relinquished. Elizabeth became head of a girls' school in Western Kentucky, which she left after a term owing to her dislike of slavery. Resolving to become a doctor in spite of the discouragement of friends, she studied medicine privately while continuing to teach in North Carolina and in Charleston. After three years she vainly applied for admission to medical schools at Philadelphia and in New York. In October 1847 she formally applied for entry to the medical class at a small university town, Geneva, in Western New York State. The entire class, on the invitation of the faculty, unanimously resolved that 'every branch of scientific education should be open to all.' Outside her class she was regarded as 'either mad or bad.' She refused to assent, save by the wish of the class, to the professor's request to absent herself from a particular dissection or demonstration. No further obstacle was offered to her pursuit of the medical course. She graduated M.D. (as 'Domina' at Geneva, N.Y.) in January 1849, the first woman to be admitted to the degree (cf. gratulatory verses to 'Doctrix Blackwell,' 'An M.D. in a Gown,' in Punch (1849), xvi. 226).

In the following April she came to England, was courteously received by the profession on the whole, and shown over hospitals in Birmingham and London. In May, with 'a very slender purse and few introductions of value,' she reached Paris, and on 30 June entered La Maternite, a school for midwives, determined to become an obstetrician. After six months' hard work she contracted purulent ophthalmia from a patient and lost the sight of one eye. Thus obliged to abandon her hope of becoming a surgeon, she, on returning to London, obtained (through her cousin, Kenyon Blackwell) from James (afterwards Sir James) Paget, dean of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, permission to study there. She was admitted to every department except that of women's and children's diseases, and received the congratulations of Mrs. Jameson, Lady (Noel) Byron, Miss Rayner (Mdme. Belloc), Miss Leigh Smith (Madame Bodichon), the Herschells, Faraday, and Florence Nightingale.

Meanwhile her sister Emily was studying for a doctor at Cleveland, Ohio, and in 1854 acted as assistant to Sir [q. v.] in Edinburgh, but declined an urgent request to go to the Crimea.

Elizabeth went back to America in 1850,