 Both were instrumental in the local administration and implementation of the Education (Scotland) Act when it passed in 1872.Under this act, approximately thousand regional school boards were created at a stroke; the first public bodies in Scotland to be opened to women.As a result, the first Scottish women to be elected to public office were Jane Arthur, elected in Glasgow in 1872, and then Phoebe Blyth and Flora Stevenson in Edinburgh in 1873.