Youth and Sex: Sexual Psychology

Born as Mary Anne Dacomb Bird, she was raised with her grandparents, following her mother's death, in a strict Evangelical Christian household. She attended a boarding school in Manchester, then to one in New Brighton, and finally at the Mrs. Tyndall's School at #16 Upper Hamilton Terrace in London.

Aged 19, she met William Scharlieb, “who was engaged in eating his dinners at the Middle Temple, preparatory to his call to the Bar and subsequent practice in Madras as a barrister”. His initial marriage proposal in February 1865 was met with prompt parental opposition. Mary persisted and eventually the marriage took place in December 1865, and the couple sailed for India almost at once. She became instead one of the first four women students at the Madras Medical College.

In three years she gained her Licentiate in Medicine. She set sail to return to England with her children, old enough by then to travel, in a small ship, her eyes fixed on a degree in medicine. Upon her return to England in 1878 she called on Dr. (Mrs.) Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the only qualified medical woman until 1877, who had recently started the London School of Medicine for Women. Here she met with small encouragement, her prolonged stay in India and her naturally frail physique producing an unfavourable impression of her ability to follow such a strenuous profession. She was, however, accepted, and in 1879, in company with three other candidates for the first medical examination; she passed.