Dr. Elsie Inglis - Lady Frances Balfour

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had always staunch friends among the doctors. The names of many of them are written in gold in the story of the opening of the profession to women. It has been observed that St. Paul had the note of all great minds, a passion to share his knowledge of a great salvation, with both Jews and Gentiles. That test of greatness was not conspicuous in the majority of the medical profession at the time when Elsie Inglis came as a learner to the gates of medical science. That kingdom, like most others, had to suffer violence ere she was to be known as the good physician in her native city and in those of the allied nations.

      There are no letters extant from Elsie concerning her time with Dr. Jex Blake. After Mrs. Inglis’ death, Mr. Inglis decided to leave their home at Bruntsfield, and the family moved to rooms in Melville Street. Here Elsie was with her father, and carried on her studies from his house. It was not an altogether happy start, and very soon she had occasion to differ profoundly with Dr. Jex Blake in her management of the school. Two of the students failed to observe the discipline imposed by Dr. Jex Blake, and she expelled them from the school. Any high-handed act of injustice always roused Elsie to keen and concentrated resistance. A lawsuit was brought against Dr. Jex Blake, and it was successful, proving in its course that the treatment of the students had been without justification.

      Looking back on this period of the difficult task of opening the higher education to women, it is easy to see the defects of many of those engaged in the struggle. The attitude towards women was so intolerably unjust that many of the pioneers became embittered in soul, and had in their bearing to friends or opponents an air which was often provocative of misunderstanding. They did not always receive from the younger generation for whom they had fought that forbearance that must be always extended to ‘the old guard,’ whose scars and defects are but the blemishes of a hardly-contested battle. Success often makes people autocratic, and those who benefit from the success, and suffer under the overbearing spirit engendered, forget their great gains in the galling sensation of being ridden over rough-shod. It is an episode on which it is now unnecessary to dwell, and Dr. Inglis would always have been the first to render homage to the great pioneer work of Dr. Jex Blake.

      Through it all Elsie was living in the presence chamber of her father’s chivalrous, high-minded outlook. Whatever action she took then, must have had his approval, and it was from him that she received that keen sense of equal justice for all.

      These student years threw them more than ever together. On Sundays they worshipped in the morning in Free St. George’s Church, and in the evening in the Episcopal Cathedral. Mr. Inglis was a great walker, and Elsie said, ‘I learnt to walk when I used to take those long walks with father, after mother died.’ Then she would explain how you should walk. ‘Your whole body should go into it, and not just your feet.’

      Of these student days her niece, Evelyn Simson, says: —

      ‘When she was about eighteen she began to wear a bonnet on Sunday. She was the last girl in our connection to wear one. My Aunt Eva who is two years younger never did, so I think the fashion must have changed just then. I remember thinking how very grown up she must be.’

      Another niece writes: —

      ‘At the time when it became the fashion for girls to wear their hair short, when she went out one day, and came home with a closely-cropped head, I bitterly resented the loss of Aunt Elsie’s beautiful shining fair hair, which had been a real glory to her face. She herself was most delighted with the new style, especially with the saving of trouble in hairdressing.

      ‘She only allowed her hair to grow long again because she thought it was better for a woman doctor to dress well and as becomingly as possible. This opinion only grew as she became older, and had been longer in the profession; in her student days she rather prided herself on not caring about personal appearance, and she dressed very badly.

      ‘Her sense of fairplay was very strong. Once in college there was an opposition aroused to the Student Christian Union, and a report was spread that the students belonging to it were neglecting their college work. It happened to be the time for the class examinations, and the lists were posted on the College notice-board. The next morning, the initials C.U. were found printed opposite the names of all the students who belonged to the Christian Union, and, as these happened to head the list in most instances, the unfair report was effectually silenced. No one knew who had initialed the list; it was some time afterwards I discovered it had been Aunt Elsie.

      ‘She was a beautiful needlewoman. She embroidered and made entirely herself two lovely little flannel garments for her first grand-nephew, in the midst of her busy life, then filled to overflowing with the work of her growing practice, and of her suffrage activities.

      ‘The babies as they arrived in the families met with her special love. In her short summer holidays with any of us, the children were her great delight.

      ‘She was a great believer in an open-air life. One summer she took three of us a short walking tour from Callander, and we did enjoy it. We tramped over the hills, and finally arrived at Crianlarich, only to find the hotel crammed and no sleeping accommodation. She would take no refusal, and persuaded the manager to let us sleep on mattresses in the drawing-room, which added to the adventures of our trip.

      ‘On the way she entertained us with tales of her college life, and imbued us with our first enthusiasm for the women’s cause.

      ‘When I myself began to study medicine, no one could have been more enthusiastically encouraging, and even through the stormy and somewhat depressing times of the early career of the Medical College for Women, Edinburgh, her faith and vision never faltered, and she helped us all to hold on courageously.’

      In 1891 Elsie went to Glasgow to take the examination for the Triple Qualification at the Medical School there. She could not then take surgery in Edinburgh, and the facilities for clinical teaching were all more favourable in Glasgow.

      It was probably better for her to be away from all the difficulties connected with the opening of the second School of Medicine for Women in Edinburgh. The one founded by Dr. Jex Blake was the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women, and the one promoted by Elsie Inglis and other women students was known as the Medical College for Women. ‘It was with the fortunes of this school that she was more closely associated,’ writes Dr. Beatrice Russell.

      In Glasgow she resided at the Y.W.C.A. Hostel. Her father did not wish her to live alone in lodgings, and she accommodated herself very willingly to the conditions under which she had to live. Miss Grant, the superintendent, became her warm friend. Elsie’s absence from home enabled her to give a vivid picture of her life in her daily letters to her father.

‘Glasgow, Feb. 4, 1891.

      ‘It was not nice seeing you go off and being left all alone. After I have finished this letter I am going to set to work. It seems there are twelve or fourteen girls boarding here, and there are regular rules. Miss Grant told me if I did not like some of them to speak to her, but I am not going to be such a goose as that. One rule is you are to make your own bed, which she did not think I could do! But I said I could make it beautifully. I would much rather do what all the others do. Well, I arranged my room, and it is as neat as a new pin. Then we walked up to the hospital, to the dispensary; we were there till 4.30, as there were thirty-six patients, and thirty-one of them new.

      ‘I am most comfortable here, and I am going to work like anything. I told Miss Barclay so, and she said, “Oh goodness, we shall all have to look out for our laurels!”’

‘Feb. 7, ’91.

      ‘Mary Sinclair says it is no good going to the dispensaries on Saturday, as there are no students there, and the doctors don’t take the trouble to teach. I went to Dr. MacEwan’s wards this morning. I was the first there, so he let me help him with an operation; then I went over to Dr. Anderson’s.

‘Feb. 9.

      ‘This morning I spent the whole time in Dr. MacEwan’s wards. He put me through my facings. I could not think what he meant, he asked me so many questions. It seems it is his way of greeting a new student. Some of them cannot bear him, but I think he is really nice, though he can be abominably sarcastic, and he is a first-rate surgeon and capital teacher.

      ‘To-day, it was the

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