Elsie Inglis

Some local history today! Elsie Maud Inglis (1864 – 1917) was an innovative Scottish doctor, pioneering surgeon, teacher, suffragist, and founder of the Scottish Women's Hospitals. She was also the first woman to hold the Serbian Order of the White Eagle.

Elsie (Eliza) Maud Inglis was born in Naini Tal, India(!). She was one of eight children of Harriet Lowes Thompson and John Forbes David Inglis, a magistrate who worked in the Indian civil service as Chief Commissioner of Oudh through the East India Company. Luckily for Elsie, her parents were forward thinking and considered a woman’s education to be of equal importance to a man. Inglis's father was religious and used his position in India to “encourage native economic development, spoke out against infanticide and promoted female education." Thus, they unconventionally had her schooled in India. From a young age, it was clear that Elsie was destined for a medical career, as she and her sister 40 dolls which she used to treat for 'spots' (measles) she had painted on.

Medicine and feminism were in her blood - she was a cousin of the eminent gynaecologist Sir Henry Simson and of fellow female medical student Grace Cadell who was the first Scottish woman to obtain a medical licence.

When Inglis's father retired, the family returned to Edinburgh via Tasmania, where some of her older siblings settled. In Edinburgh, Elsie received a private education (leading a successful campaign for the schoolgirls to be allowed the use of private gardens in Charlotte Square). She also went on to finishing school in Paris (this gal was living my dream, I hate her!). Her decision to study medicine was delayed by nursing her mother, during her last illness (scarlet fever) and her subsequent death in 1885, after which Elsie felt obliged to stay in Edinburgh with her father.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In 1887, the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women was opened by Dr Sophia Jex-Blake (see an early herstory post for more info on this queen!) and Inglis was among its first pupils. In response to Jex-Blake's uncompromising ways, and after two fellow students Grace and Georgina Cadell were expelled, Inglis and her father founded the Edinburgh College of Medicine for Women, under the auspices of the Scottish Association for the Medical Education of Women whose sponsors included Sir William Muir, a friend of her father from India, now Principal of the University of Edinburgh. Inglis's sponsors also arranged clinical training for female students under Sir William MacEwen at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

In 1892, she obtained the Triple Qualification, becoming a Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. She was appalled by the standard of care and lack of specialisation in the needs of female patients, and was able to obtain a post at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson's pioneering New Hospital for Women in London, and then at the Rotunda in Dublin, a leading maternity hospital. Inglis gained her MBChM qualification in 1899, from the University of Edinburgh, after it opened its medical courses to women.Her return to Edinburgh to start this course had coincided with nursing her father in his final illness before he died on 4 March 1894, aged 73. Inglis at the time noted that 'he did not believe that death was the stopping-place, but that one would go on growing and learning through all eternity'. She later said that 'whatever I am, whatever I have done - I owe it all to my father'. (Cute but lets not give men all the credit for our female achievements pls)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Inglis returned to Edinburgh in 1894, completed her medical degree and became a lecturer in gynaecology at the Medical College for Women and then set up a medical practice with Jessie MacLaren MacGregor, who had been a fellow student. Recognising the horrendous underfunding of women’s medicine, she also opened a maternity hospital, named The Hospice, for poor women alongside a midwifery resource and training centre, initially in George Square. Later, The Hospice was endowed with an accident and emergency department as well as a maternity word and operating theatre. It later opened at new premises on the Royal Mile (I lived on the mile for a year and have worked there for 5 years and never knew this wtf!) In 1913, Inglis travelled across to the USA to learn from a new type of maternity hospital.

Her caring nature is also evident in the fact that she often waived the fees owed to her and would pay for her patients to recuperate by the sea-side. In addition, Inglis surgical skills were recognised by colleagues as “she was quiet, calm, and collected, and never at a loss, skilful in her manipulations, and able to cope with any emergency.”

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Else’s dissatisfaction with the standard of medical care available to women inspired her to political activism through the suffrage movement. While studying for her degree, she served as the secretary of the Edinburgh National Society for Women's Suffrage in the 1890s, supported by her father.

Inglis worked closely with Millicent Fawcett, the leader of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (the NUWSS), speaking at events all over the country. By 1906, "Elsie Inglis was to the Scottish groups what Mrs. Fawcett was to the English; when they too formed themselves that year into a Federation, it was Elsie who became its secretary."From the early years of the Scottish Federation of Women's Suffrage Societies, Inglis was honorary secretary from 1906 and continued in this role right up to 1914.

A century later, a relative noted Inglis had said 'fate had placed her in the van of a great movement' and was a 'keen fighter'.Inglis's personal style was described by fellow suffragist Sarah Mair as 'courteous, sweet-voiced' with 'the eyes of a seer', a 'radiant smile' when her lips were not 'firmly closed with a fixity of purpose such as would warn off unwarrantable opposition or objections...'

The Scottish Federation's most important initiative was the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service. Inglis felt that it was important for the hospitals to have a neutral name in order to attract "wide support from men and women". Inglis was able to use her connections to the suffrage movement to raise money for the Scottish Women's Hospitals (SWH). Inglis first assumed that the Scottish Red Cross could help with funding, but the head of the Scottish Red Cross, Sir George Beatson denied Inglis’ request stating that the Red Cross was in the hands of the War Office and he could have “nothing to say to a hospital staffed by women.”

To help get the ball rolling for the SWH, “she opened a fund with £100 of her own money.” Milicent Fawcett took up the cause and invited Inglis to speak about the SWH in London, and by the next month, Inglis had her first £1,000. The goal was £50,000. Collection boxes had the NUWSS logo in small print, one is held in the National Museum of Scotland (where I worked for almost 5 years and never noticed this, wtf is wrong with me!). Inglis's medical career overlapped into her suffrage involvement and her suffrage action overlapped into war work.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As if she hadn’t achieved enough, Inglis also won acclaim for her efforts to treat the wounded at the front during World War One (which began when she was 50). Despite government resistance, Inglis was instrumental in establishing the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service Committee, an organisation funded by the women's suffrage movement with the express aim of providing all female staffed relief hospitals for the Allied war effort, including doctors and technical staff (paid) and others as volunteers. The organisation eventually sent 14 teams to Belgium, France, Serbia and Russia.

When Inglis approached the Royal Army Medical Corps to offer them a ready-made medical unit staffed by qualified women, the War Office told her "Go home and sit still". It was, instead, the French government that took up her offer and established a unit in France and she led her own unit in Serbia. Inglis was involved in all aspects of the organisation of this service down to the colours of the uniform 'a hodden grey, with Gordon tartan facings'.[Gordon is my clan btw, so I’m claiming her as my own, sorry]. Inglis had initially offered a 100-bed hospital but it grew to hold 600 beds as it coped with the severity of battles, including the Somme.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Inglis accompanied her teams where her hygenine procedures aided the typhus epidemics and other diseases plaguing the armies. In 1915, Inglis was captured by German forces after staying behind to aid the wounded. Inglis was imprisoned at Krushevatz (Krushevac) Hospital in Siberia. Inglis and others were repatriated via neutral Switzerland in February 1916, but upon returning to Scotland, she at once began organising funds for a Scottish Women's Hospital team in Russia. She again headed the team when it left for Odessa, Russia in August 1916. There she met a Romanian officer who had been in Glasgow and knew 'British 'custims' (sic).This brought comfort to Inglish who could now think of her homeland 'there, quiet, strong and invincible, behind everything and everyone'. Alongside just six other doctors, only one surgeon, Inglis was involved in treating 11,000 wounded soldiers and sailors, many of whom were behind a letter in tribute to Inglis written in the name of 'The Russian Citizen Soldiers' written at Easter to 'express our sincere gratitude for all the care and attention bestowed on us, and we bow low before the tireless and wonderful work of yourself and your personnel, which we see every day directed towards the good of the soldiers allied to your country'.Sadly, Inglis got news that her own nephew was shot in the head and blinded on the day she was leaving for Reni (Ukraine) which caused her to question the eternal battle of good and evil put about in wartime, as Inglis wrote to her sister expressing her sorrow for her nephew ending 'we are just here in it, and whatever we lose, it is for the right we are standing...it is all terrible and awful, and I don't believe we can disentangle it all in our minds just now. The only thing is just to go on doing our bit.'

Inglis, 'an indomitable little figure' lasted a summer in Russia, before she too was forced to return in poor health to the United Kingdom, dying almost on arrival, suffering from bowel cancer. Her final journey with Serb officers being evacuated saw her stand on deck saying farewell to each one 'in quiet dignity.' She died on 26 November 1917, the day after she arrived back in England, at the Station Hotel, Newcastle upon Tyne.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Inglis's body lay in state at St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, and her funeral there on 29 November was attended by both British and Serbian royalty. The service included the 'Hallelujah Chorus' and the Last Post played by the buglers of the Royal Scots. The streets were lined with people as her coffin paraded through Edinburgh to be buried at the Dean Cemetery alongside her family. The Scotsman newspaper wrote that it was an "occasion of an impressive public tribute". Winston Churchill said of Inglis and her nurses "they will shine in history."

Memorials were also heard in London, and she is commemorated by statues, plaques, and even a fountain in Edinburgh, London, and Serbia.  Her most enduring legacy however was the Elsie Inglis Memorial Maternity Hospital in 1925 which was operational until 1988. This primarily ran as a maternity hospital and thereby had a female-only patient base. Many Edinburgh children were born there during the 20th century. It was closed by the National Health Service in 1988 and sold off. Part of it is now an old people's home, part is private housing, and parts are demolished; it is no longer recognisable as a hospital. At its closure there were public protests that a new maternity unit should also be named after Inglis, which has not yet happened. But a small plaque to Elsie Inglis exists near the south-west corner at the entrance to Holyrood Park.

Inglis was commemorated on a new series of banknotes issued by the Clydesdale Bank in 2009; her image appeared on the new issue of £50 notes. In March 2015, the British Residence in Belgrade was renamed 'Elsie Inglis House' in recognition of her work in the country. In 2020, Serbia’s first palliative care hospice will be named after her:

“Elsie Inglis was one of the first women in Scotland who had finished high education and was a pioneer of medicine. She fought energetically against prejudice, for social and political emancipation of women in Britain. She was also a tireless volunteer, courageous organiser of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals and a dedicated humanitarian. Unfortunately, Elsie Inglis didn’t live long enough to see the triumph of some of her ideas, but she has had a tremendous influence on social trends in our country. In Scotland she became a doctor, in Serbia she became a saint.”

Inglis's younger sister Eva Helen Shaw McLaren wrote her biography 'Elsie Inglis, The Woman With the Torch' in 1920, alluding to Florence Nightingale’s nickname, 'The Lady of the Lamp'. In Eva's papers was found an unpublished manuscript novel by Inglis, the Story of a Modern Woman whose heroine, Hildeguard Forrest, may be seen as autobiographical in part.

In the public eye, Inglis is possibly rated as one of the 'greatest-ever' Scottish women, 'a great role model and someone young Scots can be proud of'. A journalist called on the Scottish Ministers to name Edinburgh' new (and troubled) Royal Hospital for Children and Young People after Elsie Inglis. Sir Winston Churchill wrote of the SWH ' No body of women has won a higher reputation in the Great War.....their work, lit up by the fame of Dr. Inglis, will shine in history'.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As an Edinburgh gal, and daughter of a nurse, I have always known the name Elsie Inglis – but there is so much I didn’t know of her story. I knew that she was a doctor who had founded a hospital but there is so much more to her: her exotic/international beginnings, her pioneering studies, her bravery and tribulations during the way, her tragic death, or her strong activism. It makes me sad that I have lived in Edinburgh for 24 years, worked in tourism here for 5, lived on the street of her major hospital, and created a female history blog and still not have known about all of that! That a woman who was once publicly praised by the most famous Prime Minister Britain has ever had and yet has now faded almost into obscurity is really herstory at it’s best – in my (totally unbiased) opinion, Elsie should be more famous than Churchill: she dedicated her life to helping people regardless of their race or creed, smashed educational expectations and limitations, she had real world experience of different places and cultures rather than starting wars with them, she repeatedly put herself in danger for the greater good, fought peacefully for the rights of women, was directly imprisoned during the war and ultimately gave her life for the service of others. While the men of her day started wars and wounded the world, Elsie did everything in her power to improve it for men and women. Although born in India, Edinburgh has claimed Elsie and I for one am immensely proud to live among the legacy of such a powerhouse. Every time I visit the doctor from now on, I’ll walk past the royal mile and thank her.