story: pioneers in the face of adversity: “the mob of ‘69...

Doctor or Doctress - Primary Source Sets exploring American history through the eyes of women physicians Story: Pioneers in the Face of Adversity: “The Mob of ‘69” DoctorDoctress.org

Doctor or Doctress? Primary Source Sets exploring American history through the eyes of women physicians

Story: Pioneers in the Face of Adversity: “The Mob of ‘69” (link to web version) Explore the opposition that 19th-century female medical students faced and overcame to acquire a medical education

PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENTS | WOMEN IN THE WORKFORCE | GENDER DISCRIMINATION | GENDER ROLES | BIAS & PERSPECTIVE

Today, about one-third of doctors are women. Over 150 years ago this was not the case. The Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania was founded in 1850 to train women to be physicians at a time when most women and girls did not receive much, if any, formal education.

2-minute intro video providing context and set-up for story and its primary source set

[Story intro-text continues from above, complementing intro-video] Nearly twenty years later, there was still fierce opposition to the attendance of women students at medical school clinical lectures. When the women of WMCP were finally granted permission to attend a lecture at Pennsylvania Hospital in 1869, the ensuing uproar became a defining moment in the College’s history and a turning point in the acceptance of women physicians.

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The Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP) was established because medical schools around the country were reluctant to accept women students. WMCP was the sole women-only medical school and for many years one of the only women's medical schools in the nation and the world.

In the 19th century, (male) medical students would attend classes called clinical lectures to learn how to treat sick patients. At a clinical lecture, a doctor and patient appeared onstage in an amphitheater, the doctor described the patient’s illness or injury to the student audience, and demonstrated how to heal or fix it. Physicians presented patients with a range of illnesses, from broken legs to pneumonia and everything in between.

In 1869, the number of women medical students and doctors was still very small compared to the number of male medical students and doctors. In November of that year, a group of about 35 students from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania went to the Pennsylvania Hospital amphitheater to attend a clinical lecture also attended by several hundred male medical students. This event came to be known among students, faculty, and alumnae of WMCP as the “The Jeering Episode.”

Consider These Questions [story-level synthesis questions – a starting point for teachers and students]

• Why were male medical students so strongly opposed to women being present at clinical lectures? • What effect did the newspaper publicity surrounding this event have on public opinion? • Were male students’ actions intended to voice disapproval of women’s presence, to intimidate and

discourage the female students, or to disrupt their learning? All of these? • Do you think women today have achieved equality of educational and professional opportunity in the

medical field? In other fields? Why or why not? • How do institutions that specifically serve historically under-served groups (i.e., women’s colleges,

historically black universities, etc.) impact societal change? • Describe a time when you felt unwelcome because of your gender/identity. Can you draw parallels from

your experience to this incident in 1869?



PRIMARY SOURCE DOCUMENT [Essential Evidence – Document 1 of 4 on website]

“Blackguardism” (link to web version) November 8, 1869 Newspaper

Background Newspaper clipping from the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin describing the events of November 6, 1869, when group of 20-30 female students from the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP), went to the Pennsylvania Hospital amphitheater to attend a clinical lecture also attended by several hundred male medical students. Their attendance drew a strong response from the male students, including taunting and jeering – this event came to be known among students, faculty, and alumnae of WMCP as the "The Jeering Episode." The Jeering Episode and ensuing debate about women medical students were widely covered in regional newspapers, and this is one of roughly ninety articles about the incident collected by the College. The scrapbook was made by pasting clippings into an existing, bound, printed book.

Why It Matters Though Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania had been training women to be doctors since 1850, in 1869 many male medical students were still opposed to female students attending clinical lectures with them. The author of this newspaper article describes the “Jeering Episode” that took place at Pennsylvania Hospital in November 1869 and expresses the view that male medical students were not justified in their opposition to and harassment of the female students. The author states that the bad behavior of the male students demeaned both the women and themselves, since it was "ungentlemanly" and not appropriate for future doctors and professionals.

Analyze This Evidence [Document analysis questions that the students should be able to answer, or at least get a start with]

• The article indicates male students disapproved of the hospital managers' allowance of women into the clinics. Would there have been a more effective way for them to express their displeasure? If yes, how? If no, why?

• Why would these men object to women entering the medical profession?

PRIMARY SOURCE DOCUMENT [available as scan of original, typed transcript, and read-aloud audio transcript]

Listen to this document read aloud

[online audio transcript, read by a high school student]

[TRANSCRIPT] The Pennsylvania Hospital on Saturday was the scene of an outrage, repetition of which will, we sincerely hope, result in a summary punishment of the offenders. Recently the managers of this hospital gave the students of the Women's Medical College permission to attend the clinical lectures delivered in the institution. On


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Saturday, for the first time, about thirty young women, students of the Women's College, attended the hospital. The students of the male colleges, knowing that the ladies would be present, turned out several hundred strong with the design of expressing their disapproval of the action of the managers of the hospital, particularly, and of admission of women to the medical profession generally. Ranging themselves in line, these gallant gentlemen assailed these young ladies as they passed, with insolent and offensive language, and then followed them into the street, where the whole gang, with the fluency of long practice, joined in insulting these helpless, unprotected women. It was a blackguard action, which deprives every man in that crowd of any claim to the title gentleman. If these women had given gross offence; if they had indulged in any unwomanly behavior; if they had intruded themselves in the hospital in violation of the rules, even then there would have been no excuse for such infamous conduct as this on the part of the students. But these ladies had an absolute right there; they were admitted by precisely the same authority that admitted the blackguards; and more than this, it was right that they should accept the privilege offered them if they wished to do so.

We are of the opinion that it would be more pleasant for the young women and for the professors, if the female classes could attend separate lectures. In every hospital there must always be cases which come up for demonstration, which are not nice, and which young men and women had better not study together. For this reason one hospital might be devoted entirely to female students. But if these choose to attend the regular clinical lectures, if they examine disgusting cases without embarrassment, we do not perceive why the male students need have any scruples about being present. If any of the students are troubled with such delicate sensibilities that they cannot bear to listen to medical lectures in the presence of women, it would be better for them to withdraw. Such tender youths as these are not fitted for the harsh trials of life.

We presume that this demonstration was intended, as much as for any other purpose, to be a protest against the right of women to practice medicine. Why these sagacious youths object to female physicians we do not know, unless it is that they are conscious of intellectual deficiency, and are afraid of competition from persons whom they feel to be their superiors mentally as they are morally. Cowardice, probably, is the ruling motive, intellectual cowardice, that was expressed by the physical faintheartedness, which summoned three hundred male students before it dared to attack thirty defenseless women…

[original; partial view of page online]


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PRIMARY SOURCE DOCUMENT [Essential Evidence – Document 2 of 4 on website]

“The Other Side” (link to web version) 1869 Newspaper

Background Newspaper clipping of a letter to the editor originally published in the New Republic in November 1869. Describes the events of November 6, 1869 when a group of about 30 women students from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP) went to the Pennsylvania Hospital amphitheater to attend a clinical lecture also attended by several hundred male medical students. Their attendance drew a strong response from the male students, which included heckling and spitballs. This event came to be known among students, faculty, and alumnae of WMCP as the “The Jeering Episode.” The Jeering Episode and the ensuing debate about women medical students were widely covered in regional newspapers, and this is one of the numerous articles about the incident collected by Woman's Med. The scrapbook was made by pasting clippings into an existing, bound, printed volume.

Why It Matters Though the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania had been training women to be doctors since 1850, in 1869 many male medical students were still opposed to women students attending clinical lectures with them. The author of this newspaper article claims he was present at the clinic that took place at Pennsylvania Hospital on November 6, 1869. He asserts that, despite other press reports describing the male students jeering at the women students, the male medical students did not harass the women students at the lecture, even though the male students did in fact object to the presence of the women. The specific language the author used to describe the women students reflects his strong opinion of women medical students and his anger at their presence at the lecture. His language questions the very female-ness of the women.


• What is the author’s objection to women attending the lecture? • What message is the author conveying by referring to the women students as “sexless beings”,

“beardless non-blushers”, and “neuter”?




[TRANSCRIPT] I was present at the Pennsylvania Hospital last Saturday week, and having beheld the alleged assault on these thirty-four, volunteer to relate the circumstances, as, being the only person present from Camden, I am







better qualified to do so than writers absent from and entirely ignorant of the affair. I was there throughout the whole, and positively assert that no one in female attire was hissed, booed, or insulted.

Who is this shameless heard of sexless beings who dishonor the garb of ladies? This beardless set of non-blushers who infest the rights of four-hundred regular medical students who have sustained the clinics from their foundation! Who in their indecent effrontery would compel us to witness clinical exposures in their presence! This neuter thirty-four who have shamed common decency by their unwelcome and uninvited presence to the disgust of every student and the loathing of the instructors! Who, by their immodest persistence have shamed all gentlemen from those clinics! Whose lewdness has caused comments, not only from the clinical professors, who do not recognize their presence as medical students, but also the contempt of all refined ladies, and in whomever else exists a spark of instinctive modesty!

All these attempts at mixing, they say, is being done to cause an equality to be established between these beardless neuters and regular medical students. This kind of equalizing would not elevate the standard of the thirty-four, but would degrade that of the four-hundred gentlemen who see in them “only the sort of beauty they call human in hell.”

I do not mean to assail the character of this genderless mass, I would not attack anything so weak; yet I would ask in true candor whether the feelings of our refined lady acquaintances would be exalted towards us if these unblushing beings were to become our associates.



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PRIMARY SOURCE DOCUMENT [Essential Evidence - Document 3 of 4 on website]

“What Did She Say?” by Sarah Hibbard (link to web version) 1870 Manuscript / Diary

Background Lecture notes of Sarah Hibbbard, also includes a possible thesis draft. Beginning on page 31, Hibbard references the Jeering Episode of 1869, when a small group of students from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania went to the Pennsylvania Hospital amphitheater to attend a clinical lecture. Their attendance drew a strong response from the hundreds of male students in attendance, including jeering, and created a controversial debate about women's presence in clinical lectures. The Jeering Episode and ensuing debate were widely covered in regional newspapers.

Why It Matters Sarah Hibbard, an 1870 graduate of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP), was one of the women medical students who attended a clinical lecture at Pennsylvania Hospital in November 1869 and was met with harassment and “jeering” by the hundreds of male medical students also in attendance. She writes about how the incident, and the public response to it, had a lasting, and perhaps unintended effect -- it made the women even more determined to pursue their studies, and caused the public to be sympathetic and supportive of the women's right to do so.


• What did Hibbard mean when she wrote "their loss was our gain"? • How would you characterize Hibbard's feelings towards the harassing students?




[TRANSCRIPT] Without going into the details of the past more than to gather up some facts upon the subject from the memorable years of 1869 and 70, I will say that the conduct of the male medical students of which so much has been said through the press, and their most unmanly deportment during the clinics of those winters, needs no comment further than to say that their “loss was our gain.” For certainly they did lose, and certainly we did gain, as the facts will show. But as to the manner of their abuse, I will not give the particulars, for the same reason that a San Francisco editor declined to publish the particulars of three murders, as “there was nothing original about the

Sarah Hibbard, date unknown


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modes of death.” But if these poor fellows had sought to do us a life-long favor, they could not have done it more effectively than they did in their conduct towards us during those sessions. I say us, because I too, with others, have the pleasure of knowing that for two winters I sat an earnest listener to those clinic lectures: one in the old amphitheater at Blockley Alms House, and the other at the amphitheater of Pennsylvania Hospital, amid the groans and hisses of as ungentlemanly a set of fellows as one would care to meet, after paying just as much for our tickets of admission as they. And yet we bore all this for what? Simply that we might be the better fitted to minister at the bedside of our mothers, sisters, and friends throughout the land.



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