into the professions until towards the end of the nineteenth century. Wills was able to attend Cheltenham Ladies' College, Newnham College Cambridge, and the London School of Medicine for Women. In September 1903 Wills went to Cheltenham, one of the first British boarding schools to train female students in science and mathematics. Wills's elder sister Edith was in the same house, Glenlee, two years ahead of her. Wills's examination record was good. She passed the 'Oxford Local Senior, Division I' in 1905; the 'University of London, Matriculation, Division II' in 1906; and 'Part I, Class III and Paley, exempt from Part II and additional subjects by matriculation (London). In September 1907, Wills began her studies at Newnham, a women's college. Wills was strongly influenced by the botanist Albert Seward and by the geologist Herbert Henry Thomas, who worked on carboniferous palaeobotany. Wills finished her course in 1911 and obtained a Class 2 in Part 1 of the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1910 and Class 2 in Part 2 (Botany) in 1911. While she was allowed to sit the University examinations, she was ineligible as a woman to receive a Cambridge degree. 1911 to 1914 In February 1911, Wills's father died at the age of 53. She had been very close to him, and it is likely that his unexpected death affected her final exam results that summer. In 1913, her elder sister Edith died at the age of 26. Later that year, Wills and her mother travelled to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, where they visited relatives and friends. In 1914, she and her younger brother Gordon travelled to South Africa. A friend from Newnham, Margaret (Margot) Hume, was lecturing in botany at the South African College, then part of the University of the Cape of Good Hope. She and Wills were both interested in Sigmund Freud's theories. At the outbreak of war in August 1914, Gordon enlisted in the Transvaal Scottish Regiment. Wills spent some weeks doing voluntary nursing in a hospital in Cape Town, before she and Margot Hume returned to England, arriving in Plymouth in December. Medical training In January 1915, Wills enrolled at the London (Royal Free Hospital) School of Medicine for Women, the first school in Britain to train female doctors. The school had strong links with India, and had a number of students from there, including Jerusha Jhirad, who became the first Indian woman to