Dr Elsie Maud Inglis/ James Mentiplay

Category

Library Item

Item no

37813

Title

Page from Leith Miscellany, volume VIII, Dr Elsie Maud Inglis/ James Mentiplay

Date

1983

Type

Photograph; Postcard

This bronze bust by the Croatian sculptor Ivan Mestrovic is in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

Elsie Inglis was born in 1864 in India, where her father worked for the Civil Service, and she moved to Edinburgh in 1878 when he retired. She studied at the newly opened Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women under Dr Sophia Jex-Blake, then under Sir William McEwan at the University of Glasgow, where she became interested in surgery.

After qualifying as a doctor in 1892, she worked in the New Hospital for Women in London, where she was unhappy with the conditions and standards of medical care, then in 1894 returned to Edinburgh, establishing a practice with another female doctor. In 1904 she set up a small maternity hospital, the Hospice, for the poor in the High Street, staffed entirely by women. In 1906 she started the Scottish Women's Suffrage Federation.

At the start of the First World War in 1914 she founded the Scottish Women's Hospitals Committee and set up a 200 bed military hospital staffed entirely by women, supported by the French government as the British government had already turned her down. She also set up a field hospital in Serbia, where she was captured by Austrian forces in 1915, but released after the intervention of the US. On returning to the UK she raised funds for a hospital for Serbian forces in Russia and went there in 1916, but she became ill and died of cancer on her return to Britain in 1917.

During the First World War the Scottish Women's Hospitals Committee sent 14 medical units comprising over 1000 female doctors, nurses, orderlies and drivers to war zones across Europe and created four Scottish Women's Hospitals which had much lower death rates from disease than traditional military hospitals.

The Elsie Inglis Memorial Maternity Hospital was opened in 1925 to replace the Hospice and continue Elsie Inglis's legacy, but was closed in 1992.

James Mentiplay, latterly foreman with Forgan's, clubmakers, displays an old feathery golf ball and the top hat full of feathers which went into the fashioning of each ball.

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Architecture > Monuments > Busts

People > Adults > Men

People > Adults > Older people

People > Adults > Women

People > Health and safety > Doctors

People > Industry > Factory workers

Places > Edinburgh areas > Leith

Places > Scotland > Edinburgh

Plants > Trees > Trees

Sport and leisure > Sports and recreation equipment > Golf clubs