Women wanted: The story written in blood red letters on the horizon of the Great World WarDaggett, Mabel Potter
History
Women wanted: The story written in blood red letters on the horizon of the Great World War
Daggett, Mabel Potter
Women -- Employment; World War, 1914-1918 -- Women
Dr. Anderson was the second woman physician of modern times, the first
in England. When as Elizabeth Garrett she came to London to be a doctor
in 1860, there was no University in her land that would admit her.
Physicians with whom she wished to study, were some of them scornful
and some of them rude, and some were simply amazed. “Why not become a
nurse?” one more tolerant than the rest suggested. The girl shook her
head: “Because I mean to make an income of a thousand pounds a year
instead of forty.” The kindly old doctor who finally yielded to her
importunities and admitted her to his office, also let her in to the
lectures at the Middlesex Hospital with the specific arrangement that
she should “dress like a nurse” and promise earnestly “not to look
intelligent.” Her degree she had to go to Paris for. Like that she
got into the medical profession in 1871 a year before her marriage to
the director of the Orient steamship line. Dean of the London School
of Medicine for Women and founder of the New Hospital for Women, she
came through the difficult days when it was only in “zenana” practice
in India that English women doctors had a free field. Russia too
dedicated her pioneer medical women to the heathen, modestly designing
them for the Mussulman population and at length permitting them the
designation “physician to women and children.” That idea lingered long
with civilisation. As late as 1910 a distinguished British surgeon in
a public address allowed that there was this province for the woman
physician, the treatment of women and children. But any medical woman
“who professed to treat all comers,” her he held to be an “abomination.”
Then the world turned in its orbit and came to 1914. And Elizabeth
Anderson’s eyes looked on the glory of Endell Street. Do you happen
to be of that woman movement which but yesterday moved upward toward
the top in any of the professions so laboriously and so heavily
handicapped? Then for you also, Endell Street is the shining citadel
that to-day marks the final capitulation of the medical profession to
the woman’s cause, as surely as the New York Infirmary in Livingston
Place still stands as the early outpost established by the brave
pioneers. But the ordinary chance traveller who may search out the
unique war hospital in the parish of St. Giles in High Holborn, I
suppose may miss some of this spiritual significance to which a woman
thrills. The buildings which have been converted from an ancient
almshouse to the uses of a hospital are as dismal and as dingy as any
can be in London. They are surrounded by a fifteen foot high brick wall
covered with war placards, a red one “Air Raid Warning,” a blue one
“Join the Royal Marines,” and a black one “Why More Men are Needed.
This is going to be a long drawn out struggle. We shall not sheathe the
sword until—” and the rest is torn off where it flapped loose in the
winter wind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account