Grace Ross Cadell – Doctor, Suffragist and Bonny Fechter

Grace Ross Cadell

Introduction

When Professor Robert Christison, Professor of Medical Juruisprudence and Toxicologist at Edinburgh University, stated his oppostion to women studying medicine on the grounds that their admission would diminish the quality of the medical field, because they were less intelligent, and too fragile to endure the rigorous course work, he did not bargain on the intelligence, resilience and energy of women such as Grace Ross Cadell. Despite a marking system deliberately weighted against them so as to deny them scholarships, both she and her sister Martha (known as Ina) won several prestigious medals and awards in the course of their medical training..

This same sense of uncompromising commitment and integrity must also  have been felt by the Sherriff’s Officer who collected payment for a fine from Dr Grace Cadell’s address in 1913. Having failed to stamp her servants’ insurance cards on the grounds that there should be ‘no taxation without representation’, she was fined £10. When he arrived to collect the money, she presented him with the £10 all in copper coins. The poor man staggered back to the office lugging a bag estimated to weigh at least 50lb.

Despite this and other larger than life escapades, the inscription on Grace Cadell’s family gravestone in Morningside Cemetery is simple.

In Memory of Grace Ross Cadell LRCP&S Ed.Daughter of George P. Cadell Born 25 Oct. 1855, Died 19 Feb. 1918

Who would ever guess that this was the resting place of one of Scotland’s pioneer women doctors and most feisty suffragists?

Life and Medical Training

Grace Cadell was born on 25 October 1855 at Grange House, Carriden, West Lothian.

She was the eldest of the family of George Cadell, a coalworks superintendent , and his wife Martha Duncanson Fleming. Her family had owned the coal works around Bo’ness for several generations. Grange House, though built in grand Scottish Baronial style, was run down and so poorly maintained that it was demolished at the end of the century. This lack of maintenance may have been due to her father’s fragile mental state. He spent many years in  Saughton Hall Private Asylum in Edinbugh before dying at the age of 75 in the Crichton Royal Institution in Dumfries.

Grace’s closest sibling was Martha (known as Ina), born in 1858. Ina also studied medicine in Edinburgh and completed her training in Brussels, before returning to Scotland, where she became a prestigious obstetrician.

In 1887, Grace and Ina, along with Elsie Inglis, were students at the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women set up by Sophia Jex-Blake. Their lectures took place at Surgeon’s Square and the clinical teaching was at Leith Hospital.

In May of that year, the Edinburgh Evening News announced

‘Miss Grace Cadell, the first lady student  in the Edinburgh Extra-mural medical school who has presented herself for examination, has passed the first professional examination of the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons for their triple qualification.

All was not well however, and  shortly after, the Cadell sisters and others were expelled for breaking Jex-Blake’s notoriously strict rules. They were supposed to leave Leith Hospital where they undertook clinical practice, by 5pm, but on the admission of a patient with a head injury, they remained on duty to observe his care.

Elsie Inglis felt that the sisters’ dismissal was unfair and she encouraged them to stand up to Jex-Blake.  Grace and Ina Cadell subsequently sued Sophia Jex-Blake and her school and won £50 each in compensation.

Partly because of her unease about how the Cadell situation had been handled, Elsie Inglis and her father John then set up the Medical College for Women, in Edinburgh. It was in Chambers Street, in a building where the former Edinburgh Dental Hospital Building now stands. The Cadell sisters enrolled as students. They were academically able, winning among other awards, medals for Materia Medica, Chemistry, and Medical Jurisprudence. As women could not sit for a university degree, Grace sat the Triple Qualification examinations in 1891.

The Triple Qualification was set up jointly by the three Scottish Medical Royal Colleges to allow those not able to enter university to sit exams equivalent to those sat by university students. This enabled their names to go on to the the Medical Register and allowed them to practice as doctors. Women did not graduate in medicine from a Scottish University until 1894. Many eminent medics began their working lives with the Triple Qualification, Dr Anne Louise McIlroy, the first woman professor in the UK being a prime example.

The Triple Qualification was undertaken not only by women, but also by overseas students, or those who sought to convert an overseas degree to a UK qualification. It assisted successive waves of medically qualified refugees from countries such as Lithuania, Poland and Uganda to convert their home qualifications and provided them with a license to practice.   The Triple Qualification ended in 1993, but given the current shortage of medical staff in the National Health Service, and the desperation of refugee doctors to be allowed to practice, one cannot but wish it was still available.

On qualifying, Grace was invited to join The Medical Women’s Club that had been set up by Elsie Inglis in George Square, Edinburgh in 1899, and she was soon a member of the Medical Committee. The Western Morning News reported in August, 1898 that

Edinburgh is home to a unique club…a medical women’s club. In Edinburgh, there are 20 medical women, all in practice. Last week, when the Brtish Medical Association (meeting) filled Edinburgh…they gave an ‘at home’. Dr Grace Cadell and Dr Beatrice Russell, President and Vice-President received the guests…Among them were Mrs Garret-Anderson…and Drs Alice and Agnes McLaren…How our grandmothers would have stared 50 years ago! 

Almost inevitably, and tediously, the article then describes how the women were dressed, rather than detailing their medical careers.

In 1904 Grace Cadell was appointed to the staff of  ‘The Hospice’, founded by Elsie Inglis and Dr Jessie McLaren MacGregor in the High Street of Edinburgh. It had an all-woman staff who provided care to the poorest women and their children in the Old Town. By 1911, she was in charge of the Hospice, which was in part, forerunner to the Hospital for Women, later Bruntsfield Hospital in Morningside, Edinburgh. The Hospital for Women was developed when Sophia Jex-Blake left Edinburgh.  Jex-Blake’s Edinburgh Hospital and Dispensary for Poor Women and Children in Grove Street,  merged with The Hospice and The Medical Women’s Club which had by now, moved from George Square.  The Trustees of the new venture aquired Jex-Blake’s old home at Bruntsfield Lodge in which to situate the new 18 bed Women’s Hospital.

 

Following her time at The Hospice, Crace Cadell then spent a period in London where she was Registrar at the New Hospital for Women, later the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital for Women.

Suffrage Activity and Medicine

Alongside her enthusiasm for medicine, another passion was developing in Grace’s life., the cause of women’s suffrage. She joined the Leith Branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1907 and was soon President. In the summer of that year however, after a disagreement about campaign tactics, she left to join the less militant Women’s Freedom League, becoming its President. At the Leith Branch in the Kinnaird Hall, she invited eminent suffragists such as Charlotte Despard and Theresa Billington-Greig to speak.

In 1909, Grace was one of the leaders of the ‘Gude Cause’ pageant through Edinburgh. Billed as “The Great Procession and Women’s Demonstration” Flora Drummond led the procession mounted on a horse while nine-year-old Bessie Watson played the bagpipes. A pageant of women dressed as well-known female historical figures processed along Princes Street, while thousands of people turned out to watch.

The migration to the Women’s Freedom League did not mean that Cadell was against all militancy. ‘Votes For Women’ of November 1910 published a list of prisoners arrested the previous day.

Among the group of fifty two women arrested for rushing Palace Yard and St Stephen’s Hall in London, Grace Cadell appeared at Bow Street Magistrates Court charged with assaulting a police officer by striking him on the face. She denied hitting him, but admitted trying to knock off his helmet by slipping her fingers under the strap. She refused to apologise but said that she would have been sorry if she had struck him. She stated that as she had patients awaiting her care, she would express regret for her actions, and she was accordingly discharged.

Her interest in isssues of women’s equality spanned more than just enfranchisement, She was also interested in the wider issues that affect women’s lives, whether psychological, physical or spiritual. In March 1910, she hosted an ‘at home’ where he guest speaker discussed the arguments against equality taken from the Bible. A discussion followed and attendees expressed concern that manhood suffrage should not come before women were enfranchised at all. The group also did a rehearsal of a ‘Women’s Parliament’.

Cadell was also interested in how male sexual behaviour impacted on women and she produced a commentary on a book written by Christabel Pankhurst titled The Great Scourge And How To End It. The ‘Great Scourge’ was venereal disease and Pankhurst believed that the answer to the problem was ‘Votes for Women, and Chastity for Men’.  Cadell asserted that ‘If men lived up to the same standards of chastity that they demand of women, there would be no deaths from syphilis or gonorrhoea’. She believed that up until then, venereal disease had been seen from the viewpoint of men and that if women were enfranchised and their influence allowed to disseminate, it would influence men’s behaviour.

We know to what bodily and spiritual corruption the subjection of women has brought humanity. Let us see what cleanness and nobility we can bring through her emancipation.

She states that everyone should read Pankhurst’s book since it would be ‘simpler to prevent venereal disease than to prevent tuberculosis’. While today we may see this as a rather simplistic answer to an age-old problem, and object to the premise that women must take responsibilty for the behaviour of men, at least Pankhurst and Cadell are trying to address how these issues affect women, rather than regarding men as the ‘norm’.

Grace Cadell was never afraid to challenge norms. In 1912 she joined the tax resisters, refusing to pay inhabited house duty on a property she owned. In response, the authorities attempted to publicly humiliate her and some of her furniture was sold at the Mercat Cross in Edinburgh. The attempt at humiliation was a total failure. Her friends bought back the furniture for £4-5s and they turned the event into a suffrage protest with a carnival atmosphere, bringing along carriages and banners decorated in suffrage colours.

During the Scottish suffrage campaign of attacks on buildings in 1913, Cadell was the medical advisor to women hunger strikers.  They were released into her care under the Cat and Mouse Act, more properly known as the Prisoners Temporary Discharge for Ill Health Act. She not only provided a house of refuge, she also helped women escape. Arguably, the most famous of the prisoners under her care was Ethel Moorhead, the great Dundee suffragette and rabble-rouser.

When it came to rabble-rousing, Grace too, was not backwards in coming forwards, most notably at the trial of Maude Edwards in Edinburgh Sherriff Court. Edwards was arrested for slashing a portrait of King George V in the Royal Scottish Academy. As the trial progressed, the suffragettes in attendance in the public gallery became rowdy. When the Judge ordered the gallery to be cleared,  it was said that Dr Cadell resisted so strongly, it took three police constables to remove her. (One cannot help but think that these days she would be hauled before a BMA disciplinary commitee for such behaviour!)

Our heroine showed tenacity in other ways too. She chaired a meeting on the Mound in Edinburgh to protest at the imprisonment of ‘Mrs Harvey’, a suffrage activist.  ‘ Eunice Murray was also present and many of the others in the group were teachers visiting Edinburgh for an Educational Institute of Scotland Meeting.

The ‘Vote’ newspaper of 26 September 1913 praised the fact that in her speech, Dr Cadell reiterated that she was unable to appear in court personally since she was ‘not a person’.  When previously charged under the Revenue Act for not having a licence for one of her carriages, she wrote a letter to the Clerk of the Court stating that, as she was not a person in the eyes of the law, it was impossible for her to appear in court.  The audience on the Mound cheered this sentiment loudly. The author of the article expressed gratitude that Dr Cadell’s inability to appear in person did not extend to suffrage platforms.

Grace Cadell’s involvement with the Scottish hunger-strikers was significant.

The Jedburgh Gazette of 30 May, 1913 tells us of the lives of three women whilst in prison, and of their subsequent release from Calton Jail.

Arabella Scott, Edith Hudson and Elizabeth Thomson who were convicted at Jedburgh on a charge of attempting to set fire to the grandstand at Kelso Racecourse, were transferred from Jedburgh to Calton Jail in Edinburgh. They immediately went on hunger strike but no attempt was made to force feed them. Elizabeth Thomson soon became ill, and she was liberated under the Cat and Mouse Act. Arabella Scott was then released. She stated that the treatment was better in Scotland than in England since there was no attempt at force-feeding, and she was let out because her heart was weak.

She told of how food was left in their cell if they wanted it, though they refused. Flowers were left in their cell and Eau-de-Cologne was supplied. Two doctors visited frequently. They were refused newspapers, letters and visits from friends., but  ‘We fought against that tyranny in Holloway. Our fight in Scotland will be as political prisoners’.

On release, Edith Hudson was very weak and she was conveyed to the home of Dr Grace Cadell at 145 Leith Walk.

Dr Cadell reported that Miss Hudson’s pulse was very weak and she was confined to bed. As a result of her hunger strike she was now an invalid and was unable to take a normal diet. She could not say that Miss Hudson would make a good recovery.

Doctor Cadell was said to be well known locally as an ardent supporter of the women’s movement.

Notably, Cadell cared for Ethel Moorhead. Moorhead was born in England and raised in India, before training as an artist in Paris. She moved to Dundee to care for her parents and is believed to have been the first suffragette to be force-fed in Scotland.

Moorhead was famously arrested for attempted fire-raising in a Glasgow property in Park Gardens, along with Dorothea  Chalmers Smith.

The two women were sentenced to 8 months imprisonment for breaking into a residence with intent to set it on fire. After a chaotic trial where they insisted on conducting their own defence, when the sentence was announced, their supporters threw apples at the Judge. They missed, but caught one of the jurors.

In February 1914, The Women’s Social and Political Union reported that Moorhead had been released from prison as she was critically ill. This was attributed to repeated force-feeding in the Calton Jail.

The Suffragette newspaper asserted that Edinburgh doctors had refused to force feed her so two outside doctors had been brought in. A combination of incompetence and Moorhead’s resistance resulted in the food entering her lungs. The news of her poor condition led to a large public demonstration against force feeding that same evening.

When Moorhead was released. as with so many others, it was into the care of Dr Grace Cadell who reported that she had first seen the patient the day after the onset of pneumonia in prison.

Her temperature was 90.4 F, her pulse 108. She had severe axillary pain with long bubbling sounds over the area and at the base of both lungs. The patient was breathless. I feel sure…that it is due to the ingestion of food into the lungs. She was also suffering from an enlarged heart. It is almost a week since she came to my house and she is improving, but it will take time before she regains perfect health again.

Moorhead did recover, and eventually died at the ripe old age of 86 in a nursing home in Dublin.

Caring for hunger-strikers was not without price. Documents from the National Records of Scotland reveal that Cadell, who in other times would have been regarded as a pillar of the community, was under constant surveillance by the authorites.

A Home and Health Department file on the suffragettes, Ethel Moorhead and Dorothea Lynas (NRS, HH16/40), includes documents from March 1914 relating to Grace Cadell. Her letter requesting that Ethel Moorhead’s licence be extended due to her condition, was annotated by the Governor of Edinburgh Prison: ‘Dr Cadell is an advanced suffragette’. The Chief Constable of Leith reported that police officers had been detailed to keep her house under surveillance. James Dunlop for the Prison Commissioners minuted that he had visited Dr Cadell’s house to ascertain the condition of Miss Moorhead but was told she was not present. 

Personal Life

Though she never married, at some point in her life that I have not yet ascertained, Grace Cadell fostered four children. (Some publications say ‘fostered’, while others state they were ‘adopted’). As the older generations of her family died, and she inherited various properties, both in and outside of Edinburgh, she became a wealthy woman.  The children would have been well provided for and as was the culture of the day, she would have had staff to care for them while they remained small. This was not a short-term token gesture however, as Grace Cadell remained committed to them until death and beyond.

On her death from breast cancer on 19 February, 1918, she ensured that they were well provided for and her will begins with them: Margaret Frances Clare Sydney, George Bell, Grace Emmeline Cadell and Maurice Philip Shaw. She makes provisions for their education, clothing and guardianship.

Grace Emmeline was the only one to take her name and it has been said that she was named in honour of Mrs Pankhurst. Grace Cadell spent much of her life caring for women and children and she had a particular affinity for the latter.  It is believed that she rescued Margaret, George, Grace and Maurice from Dean Park Orphanage and the Edinburgh Magdalenes.

Despite all her accomplishments in medicine and in the battle for women’s suffrage, perhaps her greatest achievement was to give these four children a good home and a secure future, yet this is the part of her life about which we know least.

Her obituary in The Suffragette of 1 March, 1918 recalled

Her work with children and her devotion to their welfare was remarkable. She adopted a number of children, and her work for the vote, which included her resistance was prompted largely by her realisation of its value as a means of securing better conditions for the nations children. Dr Cadell has passed away at a time when her ardent and enlightened spirit of citizenship would have been invaluable and her loss is keenly felt by colleagues and friends in the Women’s Party. 

Grace Cadell was a shining star in so many ways that her story needs to be far better known throughout Scotland and beyond. I continue to research her story and hope to publish a further blog on her life at a later date.

 

Some Sources

The New Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women Eds. Ewan, Pipes, Rendall and Reynolds, Edinburgh University Press.

A Gude Cause Maks A Strong Arm, City of Edinburgh Council , edinburghmuseums.org.uk

http://www.rcpe.ac.uk/journal/issue/journals The Triple Qualification

Jedburgh Gazette 30 May 1913 and 13 June 1913

The National Archives of Scotland  https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk

Newspapers as referenced sourced from http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk

Genealogical Information from http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk and

With many thanks to the Archivists of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh for allowing me to photograph and use the images of Grace Cadell’s medals.