August 16, 1864 – Birth of Elsie Inglis, Scottish Surgeon, Women’s Suffrage Activist, and WWI Hero

Elsie Maud Inglis was born on this day in India to Scottish parents working in the Indian Civil Service. Her parents were advocates of education for girls, and Elsie had been schooled initially in India, developing an interest in medicine. She continued her education in Edinburgh after her father’s retirement, and enrolled in the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women in 1887. After two fellow female students 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 Inglis 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 obtained 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.

Inglis’s dissatisfaction with the standard of medical care available to women led her to political activism through the suffrage movement. She was the secretary of the Edinburgh National Society for Women’s Suffrage in the 1890s while she was working toward her medical degree. She spoke at suffrage events around Scotland, and served as honorary secretary of the Scottish Federation of Women’s Suffrage Societies.

When WWI began, as a British Imperial War Museum website on “5 Inspirational Stories Of Women In The First World War” recounts, Inglis offered her services to the Royal Army Medical Corps. In response they told her to “go home and sit still.” Undeterred, she set up her own organization, the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, which treated troops in Serbia and Russia. She became the first woman to be awarded the Order of the White Eagle, the highest honor given by Serbia. Elsie and her medical team were evacuated following the Russian Revolution in November 1917. She died from cancer the day after returning to England.

Elsie Inglis, via IWM website