Jessie Chrystal Macmillan (1872-1937)

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Jessie Chrystal Macmillan (1872-1937)

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Jessie Chrystal Macmillan, or Chrystal Macmillan as she would later go by, was a barrister and political activist. Born on 13 June 1872 at 8 Duke Street Edinburgh, she came from a wealthy family.

Jessie Chrystal Macmillan in her barrister robes. Courtesy of John Herdman

Her father, John Macmillan was the son of a butcher and cattle salesman. Apprenticed to the Melrose Tea Company, John would become a successful and wealthy tea merchant and past master of the Edinburgh Merchant company. Her mother was also named Jessie Chrystal Macmillan (née Finlayson).

Statutory Register of Births, District of St Andrews, Burgh of Edinburgh, 1872. Crown copyright, NRS, 685/2 570

John Macmillan was a supporter of education for girls, but it is not known whether Chrystal attended school in her early years. According to the Matriculation Record in the University of Edinburgh’s archives, she attended Miss Matthew’s School in Edinburgh for two years, and St Leonards School in St Andrews for three. There does not appear to be a record of Miss Matthew’s School, but we know that in 1888 Chrystal left to become a boarder at St Leonards School in St Andrews (Kay, Pipes, 2024).

A radical - and expensive – school, its first headmistress was Dame Louisa Lumsden, a Scottish pioneer for female education. It had a broad curriculum and reputation for encouraging young women to earn their own living and to become full citizens in society. Macmillan later credited this education for its profound effect on her future pursuit of equal rights:

“When I was at school, years were spent instilling into me admiration for [the] defence of the principles of liberty”
Kay, Pipes, 2024. p12

Tracing the family through NRS’ records, we can follow them skipping through the censuses. In 1881 the family is situated at 2 Belford Park Edinburgh. Chrystal is eight at this time and recorded as a ‘scholar’, the term used for a school pupil. Three servants are listed: a Janet Morris, domestic cook; Elizabeth Smart, a nurse; and Isabella R. Barker, a nursemaid. This is an indication of the family’s wealth.

1881 Census, parish of St Cuthbert, Edinburgh. Crown copyright, NRS, Census 685/1 99/11

In 1891 we find the family enumerated at Corstorphine Hill House – now the site of the Edinburgh Zoo – although Chrystal is not listed. Just a year later, she was among the first women to be admitted to University of Edinburgh. Chrystal graduated four years later with a Bachelor of Science degree, the first woman at Edinburgh to do so. She later returned to the University and became the first woman to graduate with first class honours in mathematics and natural philosophy in April 1900, also earning a second-class honours in moral philosophy and logic.

1901 Census, parish of Corstorphine. Crown copyright, NRS, Census 678/5/5

In 1901 the family remains at Corstorphine Hill House and Chrystal is recorded as a student. The head of the house is enumerated as George Macmillan, her brother. Their father John Macmillan died unexpectedly in January of the same year, at an annual dinner of the Merchant Company.

Statutory Register of Deaths, Parish of Corstorphine, Edinburgh, 1894. Crown copyright, NRS, 678/13

A test case

In 1906, Chrystal’s education and belief in the rights of women were still flourishing. The Representation of the People (Scotland) Act 1868 had extended voting rights to the university electorate. As a graduate, Macmillan and four other women - Elsie Inglis, Frances Melville, Margaret Nairn and Frances Simson - were full members of the General Council of Edinburgh University. As members they had a right to exercise a vote under the terms of the act, which specified that ‘every person whose name is on the register’ was eligible. However, their request for voting papers was refused by the Registrar for the University. The University Court confirmed this decision and sought to defend it, despite the Court minutes noting:

“… the women have been admitted to graduation in several of the faculties of the universities and their names have been placed on the Register of the General Council. They have attended and voted at the meetings of the General Council, and they have hitherto enjoyed and exercised all the privileges possessed by the male graduates of the universities”
Kay, Pipes, 2024. p23

The women’s position was an oddity. Despite their education and ability to participate in all the other privileges that male graduates enjoyed, they were barred from voting. Together, they decided to prepare a test case to take to the Court of Session; a legal challenge to the Universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh for voting papers for the forthcoming election.

The arguments presented were:

that the University franchise was unlike other franchises. It was not dependent on property qualifications but on the intellectual ability of the person to graduate and become a member of the General Council;
that the word ‘person’ within the act did not exclude women;
that women were not ‘subject to any legal incapacity’. This term was used to describe ‘aliens, lunatics and minors’ and to exclude them from voting.

The women were represented by Mr Clyde, KC and assisted by Mr Kennedy and Mr Munro. Dean of Faculty, Mr Campbell, KC, and Mr Macmillan (unrelated to Chrystal) represented the University. Lord Salvesen heard the arguments of the case on 27 June 1906.

The following week, on 5 July 1906 Lord Salvesen delivered his judgement. The women did not succeed.

The appeal

In 1907 an appeal was submitted to the Court of Session and heard in October that year by Lords McLaren, Pearson and Ardwall. The records of the unextracted process for the appeal are held in our archives under the reference CS240/N/19/1.

The records retained provide the details of the original judgement by Lord Salvesen. In finding against the women graduates, he sums up with a proposed consolation, and perhaps rebuke:

Cropped section from the records of CS240/N/19/1, 1906. Crown copyright, NRS

“I hope it may console the pursuers for their want of success if I remind them that the legal incapacity of women to vote at Parliamentary elections did not in the opinion of that very learned judge, Mr J. Willes, ‘arise from any underrating of the sex either in point of intellect or worth,’ but was ‘an exemption, founded on motives of decorum, and was a privilege of the sex (honestatis privilegium)’; and again that the absence of such a right is referable to the fact that in this country in modern times, and chiefly out of respect to women, and a sense of decorum, they have been excused from taking any share in the department of public affairs’. If this be so, I am afraid this action, if it has served no other purpose, has at least demonstrated that there are some members of the sex who do not value their common law privileges.”

Some insight into the reaction to the Salvesen’s statement can be gleaned from the press reports following. The Women’s Suffrage Record responded with:

“Judges do sometimes indulge in jokes, or we would not make the suggestion, and it seems impossible to believe that anyone could be so devoid of a sense of humour as to seriously talk in such a strain…he was speaking to well-educated women, and Scottish women at that, and to tell them that it was a privilege for the larger half of the nation to have no voice in the making of the laws by which they are governed – that it is a privilege to be classed with paupers, lunatics, and criminals, a privilege to be entirely dependent on the casual benevolence of male legislators, a privilege to be so superior that even the most noble of all aspirations, namely, to become a full citizen of your own country, is of no account. We pity the women graduates who had to listen to such words, and we admire their patience and self-control. Such speeches ought only to be delivered to the diplodocus in the National History Museum”
Women’s Suffrage Record, Sunday 1 July 1906

In 1908 the case was taken further still, and presented to the House of Lords. In another first, Macmillan was the first woman to plead a case before the House of Lords and presented her arguments in-person before the lord chancellor. At this time, arrangements to prevent women from entering, due to the activities of the militant suffragettes, had to be suspended to allow her to be admitted. Not a lawyer at this time, contemporary sources suggest she showed skill in presenting her case. Despite this, it was rejected.

The failure of the case and subsequent appeals is unlikely to have been a surprise to the suffragists. While unsuccessful the press coverage of these events helped to advertise the cause of women’s suffrage. Particular focus was given to women being grouped with children and ‘lunatics’ in terms of ‘legal incapacity’, and the law not recognising the female sex as being ‘a person’. This was to be a significant and repeated attack against the then-current establishment by those pursuing women’s suffrage.

Further career and campaigning
In 1913 Macmillan moved to London where she served on the executive of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), became active in the International Woman Suffrage Alliance between 1913 to 1920, and was elected chair of the Scottish Federation of Women’s Suffrage Societies in 1914.

During the war Chrystal Macmillan was one of the organisers of an international women’s congress at The Hague. Held in April 1915, there were many difficulties for the women to surmount in reaching the congress as the issuing of passports was restricted and the North Sea and the English Channel had been declared a war zone. Macmillan was one of only three British women able to attend.

After the end of the conflict , with the first Representation of the People Act passed in 1918, and the passing of the 1919 Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act , women could now enter the professions. Macmillan trained and was called to the English bar on 28 January 1924. One of the first generation of women barristers, she always advocated for equal rights. She was one of the founders of the Open Door Council, which campaigned to remove legal restrictions on the employment of women and opposed protective legislation. She served on the executives of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship and the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene.

Macmillan was particularly interested in the right of women to retain their own nationality on marriage to a foreigner, giving evidence to a select committee in 1922 and leading a deputation to The Hague. It took until 1948 for the British Nationality Act to pass; this allowed British women for the first time to keep their nationality regardless of the citizenship of their spouses. This milestone was sadly unrealised in Macmillan’s lifetime.

Statutory Register of Deaths, district of Newington, Edinburgh, 1937. Crown copyright, NRS, 685/6 590

In June 1937 Macmillan developed a blood clot and had to have a leg amputated. She had suffered for some time from a heart condition and we can see from the Register of Deaths, that she died at 8 Chalmers Crescent, Edinburgh, on 21 September 1937, of valvular disease of the heart, chronic nephritis uraemia. In her will she left bequests to Open Door International for the Economic Emancipation of the Woman Worker, and to the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene. A memorial prize is awarded annually in her name by the society of the Middle Temple, and most recently in 2008 the University of Edinburgh’s School of Social and Political Science was named in her honour.

A woman of many talents and ambitions, this article highlights and provides a brief overview of some of the work undertaken in her lifetime. It focusses primarily on the events that are represented in our archives. For those interested, please see further reading below for a more detailed account of her life and work.