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General Examination for Women

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 16, 2026
Entity authorityQ60750342 ↗
Source-derived summary

The General Examination for Women was an examination of the University of London first held in May 1869 that enabled women to receive a Certificate of Proficiency from the university but not a degree. It was a precursor to the award of degrees to women by the university a decade later. The first nine candidates to take the exam are sometimes known as "the London Nine".

The examination

Candidates for the General Examination for Women were admitted to study at the University of London from 1868. The examination was first held in May 1869 with nine candidates participating. The results were assessed on 15 May 1869, at Somerset House on the Strand, by 17 male examiners. Although the exam could be taken from the age of 17, the average age of the candidates was 21.

In order to receive their certificate, the candidates had to pass a minimum of six papers from "Latin, English Language, English History, Geography, Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, two from Greek, French, German and Italian, and either Chemistry or Botany". The questions included an essay on the character of Queen Elizabeth I, a request to enumerate "the principal rivers in North America", and the calculation of the square root of 384524.01. On the advice of the Home Office, a "female attendant" or matron was made available in case the candidates should become over-excited by being brought to London for examination.

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“General Examination for Women” enters the record as open-knowledge reference entry. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what General, Examination and Women can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1869, 1868—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around General, Examination and Women.
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“General Examination for Women” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, General, Examination and Women provides the most credible route into that argument.

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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q60750342. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1869 and 1868.

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This entry incorporates text from “General Examination for Women” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.