Mary Edith Pechey was born on 7 October 1845 in the village of Langham, near Colchester. She was the 6th child and 3rd daughter of William Pechey, a Baptist Minister and his wife Sarah.

Sarah was described as “competent in Greek and other subjects”, academic skills unusual enough then to provoke comment. William Pechey’s stipend was the family’s only income: enough to live on but little to spare.

There is no information about Edith’s early life but we may assume she and her sisters were educated at home. Edith recalled in a letter that she was interested in science, studying the butterflies and beetles as well as botany in the surrounding countryside.

All the Pechey children had to make their own way: two of her brothers emigrated aged only 16 to join an uncle as land surveyors in Australia. But the only respectable way for a middle-class lady to earn her own living was by her needle or by teaching girls and it is as a teacher that Edith first found herself in Leeds.

Leeds in the 1860s must have come as a massive culture shock to 18 year old Edith, arriving from an agricultural village of less than 600 people. A visitor from less rural Cambridge wrote how he reeled in horror from the crowds and noise, the pall of smoke that obscured the sun, the dirt, the cheek-by-jowl extremes of wealth and poverty.

The local middle-class, made prosperous by these very conditions would have been insulted by his complaints about the “absence of art, literature and science.” They were proud of the fine Town Hall (opened by the Queen) and municipal buildings, the Mechanic’s Institute, the new Victoria Hall concert venue; all the great national associations to do with science, education and social improvement came to Leeds for their conferences.

This was the great age of professionalization. The sons of the merchants and mill owners in the Northern Towns were creating and exploiting new opportunities in engineering, science and technology. The established trades like medicine and law needed to protect their hard-won social status. So, over the century, professional bodies were established to register practitioners and control standards by erecting educational barriers to training which was standardised and regulated.

Women, the working class and other undesirables were thus systematically excluded.

So, the only profession left to middle class women who needed to earn a living was to teach small children and girls. But some women teachers believed they too deserved formal training and recognized qualifications together with the professional status thus conferred. They formed a campaign group and, in October 1867, they arranged a conference in Manchester on women’s education.

Sympathetic ladies from Leeds, Liverpool and Sheffield were invited to attend. These supporters agreed to form a Ladies Educational Association in each of these towns, to organise the university extension exams recently opened to women. Within a year, there were 12 such Educational Associations. Their umbrella organisation, under the unwieldy name of “the North of England Council for Promoting the Higher Education of Women” arranged lecture tours on subjects relevant to the exams.

The first lecture of the first series was held in Leeds. Was Edith one of the local teachers who attended? Her biographer says, “For a few years Edith taught school… she also had the experience of being a governess in a rather well-to-do household.” But the biographer provides no reference for this information.

These lectures offer a possible explanation of how Edith met Josephine Butler, the President of the North of England Council, who visited Leeds to attend that first lecture. Josephine Butler was publicly linked to the campaign for women doctors and Edith seems to have confided her ambitions to Mrs Butler.

The first British woman doctor was Elizabeth Garrett, (later Garrett Anderson) but, when she opened her London practice in 1865, she did so as a Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries, a far less prestigious qualification. No medical school or training hospital would accept her and she only gained her Apothecary’s licence because her father threatened a law suit if she were prevented from sitting the final exam.

Elizabeth Garrett gained her training by exploiting loopholes in the existing system but, in every case, the loophole was swiftly closed after her to prevent others following her example. The campaigns to open both university education generally and the medical profession specifically to women developed simultaneously out of her struggle to qualify.

Reformers argued women doctors were needed because some women were prepared, quite literally, to die rather than discuss intimate symptoms with a male doctor. The prevailing belief was that, even in good health, women were weaker physically and mentally than men. In fact, the ideal 19th century woman might be characterised as an ignorant, silent, obedient, passive invalid. Alas, not many of those around, even then, and especially not in Yorkshire. Doctors insisted that any form of intellectual activity would irrevocably damage a woman’s reproductive organs and render her so ugly as to be unmarriage-able. No woman could be trusted with responsibility or decision making or money.

Of course, at the most basic level, doctors were protecting a lucrative part of their practice. Over the previous century, male doctors had encroached upon traditionally female medical skills, such as midwifery, to provide a reliable income stream BUT obstetrics, gynaecology and midwifery remained optional - not compulsory - subjects for medical students.

Hospital boards nationally simply refused to open their wards to would-be women doctors. The only exception was the newly opened Birmingham & Midlands Hospital for Women & Children. They appointed Dr Louisa Atkins as Resident Medical Officer for 12 months. She had qualified at Zurich University but she was practicing unregistered and therefore illegally in Britain.

Sophia Jex-Blake and another of the Edinburgh Seven, Isabel Thorne, took action. They persuaded 14 supporters to invest £100 each as the working capital to open a medical training school for women doctors in London. It opened in September 1874 and Isabel Thorne gave up her medical ambitions to run it.

Dr Atkins’ term in Birmingham was so successful the Board determined to appoint another woman and offered the post to Edith. “It is impossible for her to qualify under existing procedures yet her certificates and testimonials give the fullest evidence of her competence. The Committee thinks itself singularly fortunate in securing the services of a lady of her distinguished attainments,” reads her testimonial.

Even while employed in Birmingham, Edith maintained contact with Leeds. In January 1875 she lectured on “The Physical Education of Girls”: “over 60 ladies attended in spite of exceptionally stormy weather.” That October she appeared at a networking event arranged by the Leeds Ladies and, in early 1876, she spoke at a public meeting in support of the projected High School for Girls. Nevertheless, as her tenure at Birmingham ended, she wrote to Sophia: “I suppose you can’t think of any way in which I can earn some money?”

We need to digress to national politics here. It had become obvious that only legislation was going to break the deadlock with the intransigent medical authorities. Despite huge opposition, after much negotiation and many compromises, Russell Gurney, a Conservative MP, steered a private member’s bill through Parliament.

The Medical Act 1876 allowed the British medical authorities to license female applicants with foreign medical degrees to practice in the UK.

The Englishwoman’s Review commented: the Act “was not passed on behalf of the few women who wish to obtain medical degrees but on behalf of the many women who wish to place themselves under medical advisers of their own sex.”

But it was only an “enabling” act: there was no compulsion to comply nor penalties for non-compliance and 18 of the 19 British medical authorities had no intention of complying.

The Board of King and Queen's College of Physicians, Dublin were at least prepared to consider the situation. Dublin was then the 2nd city in the UK. The Irish Board almost certainly took into account that the applicants, at least initially, were not Irish women and did not intend to practice in Ireland. No doubt, they also considered how the College might gain financially from the greatly enhanced fees it was allowed to charge the women applicants.

Sophia Jex-Blake paid for Edith to go to Dublin to plead their cause.

Edith persuaded the Board to recognize the London Medical School for Women as an accredited training centre and to licence women applicants who had foreign medical degrees.

Sophia reported jubilantly: “The success accomplished was due almost entirely to the excellent tact and judgement which Miss Pechey has, in Dublin, personally brought before the principal authorities concerned.”

Sophia and Edith enrolled at Berne University in Switzerland for the winter term. The lectures were given in German, the examinations had to be answered in German and their dissertations submitted in German, a language they had only started to learn 6 months previously.

Edith Pechey 1877, in her graduation robes – at last!

A portrait in the archives of The Medical Woman’s Federation in London, now the Wellcome Institute

The obvious place for Edith to set up practice was, of course, Leeds. She was well known for her lectures and had the support of a widespread network of influential, wealthy ladies, among whom she might hope to find her paying patients. In modern parlance, she could hit the ground running.

Edith took lodgings at Warwick Villas, 20 Coventry Place in Leeds - ironically on the same street as the Women & Children’s Hospital who would neither employ her nor accept patients referred by her.

Edith’s consulting rooms needed to be in the centre of town so she took an office suite at the impressive 8 Park Square.

It was a point of principle for the early women doctors to charge the same fees as their male colleagues. To do otherwise was an admission that their work was worth less than a man’s.

As the number of women entering medicine increased, they felt the need for the same sort of networking professional body enjoyed by male doctors. In 1878, the British Medical Association voted against admitting any further women members so Elizabeth Garrett Anderson remained the only woman member until 1892. So the women doctors created their own equivalent organisation, the Association of Registered Medical Women, later The Medical Woman's Federation. In 1882, Edith was elected President.

Edith Pechey was the only woman doctor in the North of England. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, based in London, was consulted by women as far afield as Manchester and Newcastle. It is reasonable to assume Edith’s practice was equally extensive. Mrs Hannah Ford of Adel and her daughters, Emily and Isabella were among Edith’s patients so it is probable that Edith was consulted by other members of the Leeds Ladies Educational Association and the Ladies Council (now known as the Yorkshire Ladies Council of Education). She continued to lecture for them across Yorkshire, frequently giving her time pro-bono to provide free talks for working-class women which were “crowded to over-flowing.”

The male medical establishment in Leeds refused to allow Edith to work at the Public Dispensary, which provided the only free healthcare in the town. So, in 1881, she set up a Dispensary for Women & Children in Mill Street, Holbeck, one of the most deprived slum areas in Leeds. It was funded by donation and staffed entirely by women.

She also assisted the Yorkshire Ladies Council to establish a Trained Nurses Institute in Leeds. Invalid ladies were, of course, cared for at home not in a public hospital and minor operations were routinely carried out in the home. The Institute employed nurses trained in the new Nightingale schools. The profits from private nursing fees provided free Nurses and Midwives to work in slum districts. The Nurses from the Institute and other local hospitals benefited from free entry to Edith’s lectures while Edith recommended the Institute to her paying patients and worked alongside the free District Nurses.

Edith appointed Dr Alice Ker as the Medical Officer at her Dispensary. Alice’s family, the Stevensons, were influential supporters of the Edinburgh Seven so Alice and one of her cousins, Agnes McLaren were among the second wave of women doctors to qualify. After completing her studies at the London School of Medicine for Women, Alice followed Edith as Resident House Surgeon in Birmingham before coming to Leeds. She wrote in her diary that Edith introduced her to “many interesting and distinguished friends” in Yorkshire.

Edith’s practice was successful enough for her to move out of urban Leeds to the rural surroundings of Bramley Top. She took three months leave during the winter of 1879/1880 to enjoy a Nile cruise. This provided material for an article on “Egypt as a Winter Residence for Invalids.”

The Cama & Albless Women and Children’s Hospital in Mumbai, opened in 1886. Edith Pechey was Senior Medical Officer from 1884 to 1905.The Hospital still exists.

In 1883, while in Vienna to obtain more surgical experience, Edith was approached by the Medical Women for India Society. They wanted to set up a hospital in India for women prohibited by religion from consulting male doctors. The Cama Hospital in India was to be staffed solely by women and would provide training for Indian women to qualify as doctors and nurses. In 1890, their first student came to Britain to complete her studies at the London Medical School for Women.

Edith accepted the offer and sold her practice to Alice Ker. Alice returned to Edinburgh after only 2 years. She sold the practice to Dr Ursula Chaplin who moved her consulting rooms to Woodhouse Square. By 1906, Dr Chaplin needed to take on a partner.

Soon after her arrival in India, Edith met Herbert Phipson, a wine merchant based in Bombay. His offices were also the headquarters of the Natural History Society so his customers could browse the Society’s Library and Museum while choosing their wines. Edith and Herbert married in March 1889. Together they opened the Pechey-Phipson Sanatorium, a convalescent community for working women, at his summer estate of Nasik, north of Bombay.

Although Edith’s correspondence has been lost, she obviously maintained friendships in Yorkshire. We know she returned to England on leave in 1891 and 1896 because, on both occasions, she read a paper at a meeting of the Association of Registered Medical Women.

I’m sure you’re not surprised to learn she supported the women’s suffrage campaign. In 1881, she addressed the Women’s Grand Suffrage Demonstration in Bradford, organised by Alice Cliff Scatcherd of Morley; and we know that Alice and her husband visited Edith in India in 1896. In Alice’s scrapbook in the Morley Library is a letter in which she describes accompanying Edith on home visits to her patients.

Edith also kept in touch with Isabella Ford and her sisters in Adel. They were the mainstays of the Leeds Women’s Suffrage Society. When the Phipsons retired to England in 1906, Edith was appointed as the Leeds delegate to an International Women’s Suffrage Alliance Conference in Copenhagen. She visited Leeds that October to make her report.

Edith represented the Leeds Society again at the first of the Woman’s Suffrage processions in February 1907. It was organised by the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies and nicknamed the “Mud March” because of the foul weather. Despite being seriously ill and in pain, Edith marched at the head of the procession with Millicent Garrett Fawcett, President of the Union.

The next year Edith underwent surgery for breast cancer. The surgeon was Dr May Thorne, daughter of Isabel Thorne of the original Edinburgh Seven. The surgery was unable to halt the progress of the disease and Edith died on 14 April 1907.

In 1908 the NUWSS marched under banners created to honour great women; this one commemorated Edith.

In July 2021 a plaque was unveiled at the site of Edith's first consulting rooms in Park Square, Leeds. The plaque was unveiled by Vine Pemberton Joss.