Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/955

864 ing was the means of gaining converts. The agitation for the suffrage kept the memory of women's wrongs and grievances fresh before the public mind. These years saw the medical profession legally thrown open to women, and facilities given them in school and hospital for obtaining that education which had been hitherto sought abroad. Pharmacy no longer excluded them. London University opened its gates. The Irish Intermediate Education bill, in 1878, which was originally introduced for boys only, was, after several energetic discussions, widened, so as to include girls. Women began to be elected as poor-law guardians. A Scotch Married Women's Property bill was passed, which was a great improvement on the former law. A Matrimonial Causes Amendment act was also carried, which enables magistrates to grant a judicial separation to wives who are brutally treated, along with a maintenance for their children. Some of our friends regretted that these side issues should absorb the time of those who might otherwise have been working exclusively for suffrage; but this was a short-sighted fear. By broadening the basis of work, by asking simultaneously for better laws, better education, better employments and wider fields of usefulness, the sympathies of more women were engaged; while underlying and supporting all was the steady agitation for the suffrage with its compact organization of committees, meetings, publications and petitions which kept parliament awake to the fact that though still disfranchised, women had claims which it could not afford to ignore.

This was a time when the agitation for the suffrage had apparently reached a stationary condition, neither advancing nor receding, in which it was destined to remain for some years longer. Other causes, as the abolition of West Indian slavery and the corn laws, have had a similar period of apparent torpor succeeding the first activity. Justin McCarthy in his "History of our own Times," says: