Following the 1876 Medical Act, it was illegal for academic institutions to prevent access to medical education based on gender. The first medical school for women in Britain was established in 1874 by Dr Sophia Jex-Blake in anticipation of this law. The London School of Medicine for Women quickly became part of the University of London, with clinical teaching at the Royal Free Hospital. Edith's sister Florence was a student at the school, she graduated in medicine with honours in 1895 (MB BS) and obtained her MD in 1898. Meanwhile, Edith gained an appointment as a physics lecturer at the school in 1899. Her first tasks were to set up a physics laboratory and design the physics course. The laboratory was planned for 20 students, and the course content was pure physics, as required by university regulations; it included mechanics, magnetism, electricity, optics, sound, heat and energy. In her Lancet Obituary, an ex-student of hers noted: “Her lectures on physics mostly developed into informal talks, during which Miss Stoney, usually in a blue pinafore, scratched on a blackboard with coloured chalks, turning anxiously at intervals to ask ‘Have you taken my point?’. She was perhaps too good a mathematician … to understand the difficulties of the average medical student, but experience had taught her how distressing these could be”.