BOOK REVIEW
Fact and fiction: Medical Women at War
Wendy Moore is a prize-winning journalist and author of five non-fiction books on medical and social history. She writes for the Lancet, Guardian and Times Literary Supplement. Her second book, Wedlock, was a number one Sunday Times bestseller. Endell Street: The trailblazing women who ran World War One’s most remarkable military hospital (Atlantic Books, £17.99) was published in April. Headshot credit: Colin Crisford
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson battled discrimination to become the first woman trained in Britain to join the UK Medical Register in 1865. But almost 50 years later there were still only about 1,000 women doctors registered in Britain and almost all of them worked in hospitals run by women to treat only women and children. Women had won the right to qualify in medicine but they were still barred from training in most medical schools and from working in most mainstream hospitals. The First World War changed everything. When war broke out on 4 August 1914, women doctors immediately offered their services to the country. While they were just as keen as men to do their patriotic duty, medical women also saw war as a unique opportunity to gain experience and prove they were equal to their male colleagues. The Association of Registered Medical Women, forerunner of the Medical Women’s Federation (MWF), was at the forefront of this drive. Ten days after the outbreak of the war, the MWF collected the names of more than 60 women doctors willing to volunteer at home or overseas. Others approached the War Office directly with offers of help. At first the government was adamant that women doctors were not wanted. The Scottish surgeon Elsie Inglis was famously rebuffed with the words, ‘My good lady, go home and sit still.’ Determined they were not simply going to sit out the war, women such as Inglis took matters into their own hands and immediately began organising allfemale medical units to serve abroad. The first such unit, which set out for France on 17 September 1914, was the Women’s Hospital
Detail from staff photo at Endell Street, showing Louisa Garrett Anderson, centre with black dog, and Flora Murray on her right - credit Women’s Library LSE
32 Medical Woman | Autumn/Winter 2020
Corps led by Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson. Anderson, a surgeon and daughter of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, and Murray, a physician and anaesthetist, had more than 10 years’ experience apiece. Both had trained at the London School of Medicine for Women (LSMW) although Murray finished her degree at Durham. Both had been active suffragettes – Murray was Emmeline Pankhurst’s doctor and Anderson had served time in prison for breaking a window – and they were also life partners. Knowing it was pointless approaching the War Office, they volunteered their services instead to the French Red Cross. Within weeks Anderson and Murray had raised £2,000 for medical supplies and recruited a unit of 18 personnel comprising of three more women doctors, eight nurses, three female orderlies and four male helpers. Kitted out in military-style uniforms, they sailed for France where they established a hospital in a luxury new hotel, Claridge’s, in Paris. Two days later they accepted their first wounded – British and French soldiers from the nearby frontline – and within days Claridge’s was full. Army officials who came to visit were initially sceptical but were so impressed they invited the women to run a second military hospital near Boulogne under army authority. Then in early 1915, Anderson and Murray were asked by the War Office to run a major military hospital in the heart of London.
Ward at Endell Street - credit Cook-Dickerman Collection, National Park Service, US.
