Just saw this on Project Gutenberg's homepage. Emily Davies (1830 - 1921) was a campaigner for women's rights to higher education and the co-founder of Girton College, Cambridge, the first women's college in Britain. I love this anecdote about her, her close friend Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, whom she encouraged to pursue medical studies, and Elizabeth's sister Millicent Fawcett, recorded by Elizabeth's daughter, Louisa Garrett Anderson, herself also a pioneering doctor:

Here is a picture of them during a visit to Alde House. Before the bedroom fire, the girls were brushing their hair. Emily was twenty-nine, Elizabeth twenty-three and Millicent thirteen. As they brushed, they debated. 'Women can get nowhere', said Emily, 'unless they are as well educated as men. I shall open the universities to them.' 'Yes,' agreed Elizabeth. 'We need education but we need an income too and we can't earn that without training and a profession. I shall start women in medicine. But what shall we do with Milly?' They agreed that she should get the parliamentary vote for women.