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 undaunted, Sophia Jex-Blake attacked at their base the twin difficulties of instruction and of legal qualification. Having secured Dr. Arthur Trehern Norton as dean, and a staff of recognized lecturers, she founded the London School of Medicine for Women, which opened in October 1874 on its present site in Hunter Street (formerly Henrietta Street). Clinical work was not secured till 1877, when the London (afterwards the Royal) Free Hospital opened its doors to women students. The legal question was ventilated in parliament from 1873 onwards, Sophia Jex-Blake, as the moving spirit behind the scenes, constantly supplying facts, arguments, and even, at the request of Mr. Cowper-Temple (afterwards Baron Mount-Temple), a draft Bill. Meanwhile her last attempt to qualify under existing conditions, through the licence in midwifery of the College of Surgeons, registrable for general practice, was foiled by the resignation of the examiners en masse (1876). This probably hastened parliamentary action, and in August 1876 the Russell Gurney Enabling Act became law. All medical examining bodies were now empowered to examine women, and through the Irish College of Physicians, the first to use the power, Sophia Jex-Blake, already an M.D. of Berne, at length gained a legal title to practise in Great Britain (1877).

In 1878 Sophia Jex-Blake settled in Edinburgh. There, in addition to private and dispensary practice, she founded a women's hospital in 1885, and in the next year a school of medicine for women which continued for more than ten years. In 1894, when the university of Edinburgh admitted women to graduation in medicine, the last of the barriers against which she had launched herself in 1869 was down. Able, energetic, determined, a born combatant and leader, she had been an unselfish and generous protagonist in the cause. In 1899 she gave up active work and retired to Rotherfield in Sussex, where she died on 7 January 1912. Her portrait by Samuel Lawrence (1865) hangs in the rooms of the Royal Society of Medicine.

 JEX-BLAKE, THOMAS WILLIAM (1832–1915), schoolmaster and dean of Wells, was born at 2 Cumberland Terrace, Regent's Park, London, 26 January 1832, the eldest surviving son of Thomas Jex-Blake, of Bunwell, Norfolk, and Brighton, proctor of Doctors' Commons, and J.P. for Sussex, and grandson of William Jex-Blake, J.P., of Swanton Abbotts, Norfolk. His mother was Maria Emily, youngest daughter of Thomas Cubitt, J.P., of Honing Hall, Norfolk. He was educated at Rugby, where he was a pupil of Archibald Tait, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, and of Edward Meyrick Goulburn, afterwards dean of Norwich. He matriculated as a scholar of University College, Oxford, in 1851, and obtained a first class in classical moderations (1853) and a first class in literae humaniores (1855). During his undergraduate days at University College, Frederick Charles Plumptre was master of the college, Goldwin Smith and John Conington, fellows. In 1855 Jex-Blake was elected a fellow of Queen's College, and in the following year he was ordained deacon at Oxford, and in 1857 priest at Winchester.

The calling of a public-school master was Jex-Blake's chosen career, and he followed it for thirty-two years. His apprenticeship was served at Marlborough College, where, for one ‘half’, he was sixth-form master under George Edward Lynch Cotton [q.v.], an inspiring head. He married in 1857 Henrietta, second surviving daughter of John Cordery, India merchant, of London. After foreign travel with his wife, Jex-Blake became assistant master (1858–1868, taking the ‘Twenty’) at Rugby under Frederick Temple, his second experience of an inspiring chief. In 1868 he was elected principal of Cheltenham College, a tribute to his reputation, which his services to Cheltenham enhanced.

In 1874 Jex-Blake became head master of Rugby. He took the reins at a dangerous time. His predecessor, Henry Hayman [q.v.], had been unfortunate and unpopular, and internal divisions had dimmed the lustre of the school. By tact and wisdom, and with the help of old friends, Jex-Blake restored it to prosperity, his courteous manners and knowledge of the world being helpful to Rugby in its relations with parents and with the county. He was the first public-school head master in England to appreciate the value of art in a liberal education. Owing to his initiative Rugby had an art museum before any other school in England. That his taste for fine pictures owed much to John Ruskin is gracefully acknowledged in the introduction to his book, A Long Vacation in Continental Picture Galleries (1858). At Rugby  298