What have women ever done for Scotland?

This first post is an introduction rather than the in-depth story of any one individual, but I hope that these cameos will inspire you to read about the lives of some of these women and many others in the coming months.

Those of whom I write were nurses, doctors, scientists, and women without medical training but whose organisational and pioneering skills facilitated the work of others.

In recent years the work of Dr Elsie Inglis and the Scottish Women’s Hospitals for Foreign Service, (SWH) in World War I has been written of extensively, and deservedly so. Despite this interest, during the Covid-19 pandemic, when it was decided to name the Glasgow emergency hospital the NHS Louisa Jordan, some people objected on the grounds that ‘No-one has heard of her’. Louisa was a member of the Scottish Women’s Hospital Unit in Serbia. She volunteered to care for another doctor who had contracted typhus but sadly, both women died.

Louisa Jordan and some of the other women who served in Serbia are honoured in a special service every year in that country, whilst being virtually unknown here. There they have streets named after them and some are commemorated on postage stamps, so how could we in Scotland, forget them? This blog is an attempt to address the omission of such women and others like them, from the history of Scotland.

Since so many books and articles have been written about the work of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, I don’t intend to follow suit, though I will write about the post-war careers of some of the women who served in these units as they deserve a wider audience than those who are simply interested in World War I medical history.

Isabel Emslie researched links between venereal disease in adults and learning difficulties in children before going on to become an eminent psychiatrist. Anne Louise McIlroy, gynaecologist at the Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow then moved to London where she was appointed the first woman medical professor in the United Kingdom. Women have particular reason to be grateful to her, since she was one of the first to advocate that women should receive analgesia in childbirth.

Dr Margaret Fairlie from Dundee and Dr Mary Esslemont in Aberdeen are no longer much remembered outside their respective cities, but they made a huge difference to the lives of the people who lived there. Generations of Dundee women were grateful for the services of gynaecologist and obstetrician Margaret Fairlie, who brought their children into the world. My youngest sister was one of these children.

Aberdonians in straitened circumstances were thankful for the services of their General Practitioner, ‘Dr Mary’. She brought not only medical expertise and a warm heart, but the sack of coal or box of food in the boot of her car was also most welcome.

Many of these women were Scots born and bred. Others came to Scotland to study or to take junior medical posts and ended up spending the rest of their working life here.

Gertrude Herzfeld, daughter of Austrian immigrants, was born and educated in London, before moving to Edinburgh to undertake her medical degree. She spent much of her professional career in that city, pioneering new techniques in children’s surgery at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children. She was the first woman to become a practising surgeon of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. In one of her obituaries she is described as ‘a big woman with a big heart’.

While many of the women doctors were from well-to-do backgrounds and they left academic articles, diaries and books or have been written about by others, the history of women in nursing and the paramedical professions is much less well known.

Though nurses and midwives such as Rebecca Strong and Margaret (Maggie) Myles were often from more humble backgrounds, their dedication and determination won through. Their achievements affected subsequent generations of nurses and patients, including the author of this piece.

Rebecca Strong, daughter of a London East End publican and pupil of Florence Nightingale, totally reformed nurse training in both Dundee and Glasgow Royal Infirmaries and her influence on nurse education was felt as far afield as Yale University in the United States. Despite her lowly roots she had a close professional relationship with Sir William Macewan, the eminent Glasgow neurosurgeon, and together they instituted improvements in nurse training and in living standards for nurses. Remarkably, despite the difference in status, she was not afraid to challenge him and he often came around to her way of thinking.

After the death of her husband in World War I, and the loss of her four year old son very soon after, Margaret Myles trained as a midwife and eventually became a household name for those in the profession. Myles Textbook for Midwives is the ‘bible’ of midwifery and is now in the 19th editon. To midwives everywhere it is simply known as Maggie Myles. Quite the legacy for Margaret Findlay, born to a house painter and a domestic servant in Aberdeen.

Annie Altschul arrived in the UK as a refugee fleeing Nazi oppression in 1938. Initially she worked as a mother’s help before training as a nurse. She was not impressed by the snobbrty of people in Ealing nor by the staff at her next hospital where she felt as though the students were treated like idiots. It was only when she began work at Mill Hill Psychiatric Military Hospital that she came into her own. She loved the person-centred care and that patients were not viewed as problems but as people with interesting stories who temporarily needed some help. After taking a degree in psychology. Annie became a nurse tutor in the Maudsley Hospital before moving to Edinburgh where she spent the rest of her life, becoming the first Professor of Nursing in 1976. It has been said that her humane, non-custodial and therapeutic approach to psychiatric nursing totally revolutionised it.

We don’t know if Helen Marshall Rough was a trained nurse, but if not, she was certainly a very efficient administrator. Her stated aim in setting up the Glasgow and West of Scotland Co-operation of Trained Nurses was to ensure that nurses received full remuneration for their services. The organisation proved successful and It was really only with the inception of the National Health Service in 1948, that demand for the services of Domiciliary Nurses began to wane.

The workplace of the aristocratic Nursing Sister Mary Stewart-Richardson was unconventional. After training as a nurse in Dundee Royal infirmary, she later became Sister in Charge of an ambulance train in World War I, hopping from carriage to carriage on the outside of the moving train while clutching bottles of medicine and sick bowls as it returned from the Front. This was necessary since there were no interconnecting carriages but neither she nor her colleagues seemed to think that this behaviour was out of the ordinary, or in any way dangerous. Though trains shuttling back and forth to the front were notoriously slow, it was still a fairly death-defying performance and one that Health and Safety organisations might have problems with today.

Many of the earlier doctors such as Grace Cadell and her sister Martha (Ina), battled for women’s suffrage and fought for the right to receive medical education on the same terms as men. They initially attended the Edinburgh School of Medicine, set up by Sophia Jex-Blake, but after breaching the rules, they were expelled. Undaunted, they took legal action against Jex-Blake and won. They later attended the Edinburgh College of Medicine for Women set up by Dr Elsie Inglis and her father John Inglis.

After qualifying, at her house in Leith Walk Grace provided medical care for suffragettes such as Ethel Moorhead, ill and exhausted as a result of being force fed in prison. She also resisted paying taxes and refused to stamp the insurance cards of her servants. ‘No taxation without representation’. On being fined, she paid the the £50 in ha’pennies and farthings. She never married but despite that, Grace adopted four children, one of whom she named Grace Emmeline in honour of Mrs Pankhurst.

Many of the women worked in the slums of Edinburgh, Glasgow and other cities, in conditions that they could never have imagined. In Dundee Dr Emily Thomson and Dr Alice Moorhead (sister of Ethel) set up a GP practice. While Alice worked with more well off patients, Emily worked with the poorest. Women and men were ground down and ill through working long hours inhaling the dust in the jute mills and living in damp and broken down housing. Emily was instrumental in setting up Dundee Women’s Hospital along with Mary Lily Walker. At least some of the funding for the hospital came from supporters of the suffrage movement.

On first qualifying, women were channelled into specialities such as gynaecology, obstetrics, and paediatrics, or they were forced into areas of medicine in which men had little interest . Instead of sulking, they gave it their all and became pioneers in psychiatric care and in treating venereal disease. Until I started researching these women even I , with a lifetime in healthcare under my belt, had little clue about the huge contribution that women had made to the development of psychiatric care.

In the face of strong parental opposition, (she was initially sent to a horticultural college) Dr Kate Fraser from Paisley graduated in medicine and went on to become became a pioneering psychiatrist. She was the first woman to be appointed as Deputy Commissioner of the General Board of Control for Scotland in 1914 before becoming a full Commissioner in 1935. She travelled the length and breadth of the country visiting patients and their parents and guardians, hitching rides in fishing boats and tramping miles to visit those resident in the Western Isles. She also had an interest in military psychiatry and ‘shell-shock’ as it was then known. One of her more colourful adventures was being arrested as a spy, though she was quickly released

In their personal lives too, many of these women defied expectations. Dr Flora Murray and Dr Louisa Garret Anderson lived happily and openly in a lifelong gay relationship while Dr Isabel Emslie carved out a fulfilling life for herself while separated from her husband for considerable periods of time, since he was in the military. Even when he was on leave she did not fit the stereotype of the ‘little woman’ awaiting his arrival home every evening.

During World War II Dr Maud Perry Menzies, a married woman of 31, joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1942 and was posted to work with the 79th British General Hospital in Normandy soon after the D Day landings in 1944. She served with the RAMC throughout the European campaign before returning to Glasgow to join the School Health Campaign.

Rosemary Bamforth nee Ince ,from Dowanhill in Glasgow enlisted in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) in World War II. Her precision in performing even the most basic tasks was spotted and she was conscious of being constantly watched. She was then recruited to undertake special duties, namely to become a bombe operator in Bletchley Park, something she never revealed to anyone till her father was dying and not again until the existence of the unit was made public in 1970. In 1944 and 1945, as a Petty Officer Wren at Bletchley’s Hut 11, she ran the Bombe machines and played a part in breaking German military ciphers.

After the war she worked as a forensic pathologist and did early research into lung disease related to asbestos in ship yard workers. This did not receive a much credence at the time, but of course we now know that there is a link between inhaling asbestos fibres and development of lung disease .

I hope that these cameos have whetted your appetite to read more about these varied and amazing women and that you will come to love them as much as I do!

Image of stained glass panel used with the permission of the Royal College of Surgeons Museum, Edinburgh.