Surgeon and Medical Reformer

There is a plaque at 219 High Street

Surgeon, suffragette and reformer, Elsie Inglis was one of the first women medical student at Edinburgh University. She inaugurated the second medical school for women in Edinburgh, then moved for a period to London to take up a post as house surgeon, before returning to Edinburgh.

Elsie Inglis was deeply concerned about the plight of working-class women and their families in Edinburgh. She saw the cramped slum conditions where they lived in sickness and poverty, bringing up children in miserable circumstances. Appalled at the lack of provision of maternity facilities and at the prejudice against women doctors from amongst her own profession, she founded a maternity hospital in Edinburgh in 1902, which was completely staffed by women.

This eventually became the Elsie Inglis Maternity Hospital at Abbeyhill and, until the controversial decision to close it in the 1980s, it remained a respected and popular maternity unit which consistently maintained Elsie Inglis' ethos.

In 1906 Elsie Inglis founded the Scottish Women's Suffragette Federation and at the outbreak of the 1914-18 War, formed a medical organisation, the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service. Through Elsie Inglis' efforts two women's ambulance units were sent to France and Serbia and she set up three military hospitals in Serbia in 1916. She did not restrict her role to military personnel but extended it also to the civilian population who equally suffered from sickness, injury, hunger and death. Elsie Inglis fell into enemy Austrian hands but was repatriated and, undaunted, returned with another Scottish Women's Hospital Unit to Odessa from where she and the Unit were eventually evacuated by the Navy in 1971.

After a long illness Elsie Inglis died the day after she returned to Britain. Her funeral took place in Edinburgh with full military honours and thousands lined the streets while her coffin passed. The whole of the British Serbian community attended and Serbia awarded Elsie Inglis their highest order, the Order of the White Eagle, saying "Scotland made her a doctor but Serbia made her a Saint".

More on Elsie Maud Inglis at Great Scots Scotsman.com