The foundation of the School was due to Sophia Jex-Blake and her supporters. These included Charles Darwin, Lord Shaftesbury, and Thomas Huxley together with a number of pioneering women physicians, among them the first woman in England to obtain a medical qualification, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. In 1877 the Royal Free Hospital agreed to allow the School students access to the wards and out-patient departments, and in 1898 the two institutions joined forces with the School changing its name to the London (Royal Free Hospital) School of Medicine for Women.