“Are only the hot-headed youths to be blamed who hustle and hoot at ladies in the public streets, and by physical force close the College gates before them? Or are we to trace their outrageous conduct to the influence of the class room, where their respected professor meanly takes advantage of his position as their teacher to elicit their mirth and applause, to arouse their jealousy and opposition, by directing unmanly inuendoes at the lady students? If such conduct be permissible on the part of the professors, alas for the school whose teachers have not even but one halfpennyworth of manliness to their intolerable deal of nastiness, or boasted philanthropy, as the case may be, and whose students crowd the academic precincts to hustle, hoot at, cover with mud, and even to strike at, ladies who have always shown themselves to be gentle and noble women. “The current report is, that these disgraceful outrages were originally and principally carried out by students of the College of Surgeons. This is contrary to fact. Certainly the majority of them conducted themselves in a most contemptible manner, roused, not by a word or look from the ladies, but by the possibility of being outstripped by them in the race for honours; and therefore did they elect to end the rivalry by an appeal to brute force. The truth, however, is that the rioters were called together by a missive, circulated by the students in the _Chemistry Class of the University_ on Friday morning, on the back of which was written, “To be opened by those who signed the petition to the managers against the admission of female students.” This missive called upon the petitioners to assemble at the College of Surgeons before four o’clock, for the purposes which they so thoroughly carried out. The proceedings of Friday will therefore enable the public now to judge of the value which the majority of the managers of the Infirmary ought to have attached to the prayers of _such_ petitioners. Moreover, the professor who is to receive the complimentary address which is being got up by the same memorialists for his exertions in their cause, must feel highly flattered by the implied association. “What now is to be done with this vexed question of female education? Will it be settled by continuing those brutal exhibitions, or by asking the ladies to withdraw? Neither course is likely to prove successful. Another and a more honourable course has been suggested by some of the original memorialists, who--considering their honour dearer to them than their sympathies--declare that the blot can only be wiped away by their joining to aid the ladies who have been so thwarted and so abused in obtaining the object for which they have wrought so hard and endured so bravely.--I am, &c., VIR.” _Scotsman_, November 22, 1870. NOTE N, p. 107. The following is the petition referred to:-- “_To the honourable the Managers of the Royal Infirmary._