Women and RCPI

Regulating Midwives

The founding charters of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) gave our institution the authority to regulate and control both medicine and midwifery.

While the former was seen as the preserve of men, at the end of the seventeenth century the position of midwifery was less clear. What had been a traditionally female occupation was increasingly being medicalised by men, but it was still a contested space.

In 1697 Mrs Cormack’s application for a Licence in Midwifery was granted, the first women to be licensed by the RCPI. Two further Midwifery Licences were granted in the 1730s, to Mary Murphy and Catherine Banford. Murphy and Banford would be the last women licensed by the RCPI for over 140 years.

Women enter Medicine

During the 1860s and 1870s the campaign to allow women to practice medicine gathered strength. The RCPI took advantage of the provisions of the 1876 Enabling Act, allowing medical colleges to decide if they would admit women.

In January 1877 Eliza Walker Dunbar sat and passed the Licentiate examinations. She became the first women to receive RCPI’s Licentiate in Medicine, and RCPI became the first institution in Britain and Ireland to award a registrable medical qualification to a woman.

In reflecting on the struggle to gain access to the medical profession Sophia Jex-Blake, one of the leading campaigners, described this decision by RCPI as

'the turning point in the whole struggle’.

The Final Barriers

This progressive attitude continued with the establishment of the new order of Membership in 1879, which was open to both men and women. Fellowship – the highest order of membership – remained closed to women for another four decades.

The first women to receive Fellowship of RCPI was Mary Hearn, who was admitted on 18 October 1924. In 2017 Mary Horgan was elected President of RCPI, the first women to hold the post in 363-years.