Pioneering doctor and suffragist, founder of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals (SWH), an organization that evolved from within the suffrage movement and provided medical assistance in Europe, particularly in Serbia, during World War I. Elsie Inglis was born in India in 1863. Her family moved to Edinburgh after her father retired in 1878. She was one of the first women in Scotland to study medicine. She moved to London and taught at the New Hospital for Women, a teaching hospital run by women for women, which had been established by another pioneer, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first English woman doctor (unless one counts Dr. "James" Barry). When Inglis returned to Edinburgh, she followed Anderson’s example and established a women’s hospital with an all-female staff. By now a committed and dedicated suffragist and member of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), Inglis was an important force behind the setting up of a new organization, the Scottish Women’s Suffrage Federation (SWSF), and she took on the role of honorary secretary.
Dr. Elsie Inglis
"My good lady, go home and sit still."
Quote from British War Office Official to Dr. Elsie Inglis when she proposed to send a field hospital totally staffed by women to the battle front.
—Monica Krippner,
The Quality of Mercy: Women at War, Serbia 1915–18
(London: David and Charles, 1980), 30.
Ambulance Drivers of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals on the Serbian Front
"Miss Bedford, who had joined at Ostrovo with Dr. Cooper from Australia, was in charge of the cars, and a hard worker she proved. Owing to her great efforts to keep the cars on the road by begging or borrowing spare parts from all and sundry, she became known among the M.T. [motor transport] as far down as Salonika way as ‘Miss Spare Parts,’ and I fancy she earned the cognomen all right.
" . . . The road up to Gornicevo was an extraordinary track to take an ambulance car, even a Ford one, when we first made its acquaintance. And, mind you, all the ambulances were driven by the girl chauffeurs. After leaving Ostrovo village the tracks run . . . along the north edge of Lake Ostrovo, nearly two miles of deep sand furrowed by some dozen or more deep parallel ruts which went in and out of deeper holes and gullies in which the car more often than not stuck and had to be pushed out by main force. You could take your choice between the pairs of ruts, but whichever pair you picked out invariably appeared the worst. Then the climb up the mountain by the rocky track began, and though subsequently improved it remained a rocky track for most of the way, plentifully bestrewn with boulders and projecting rocky masses. In many places two cars could only just pass on the track with little to spare, and as the journey was usually made midst innumerable transport, horses, mules, carts, ammunition caissons, often with teams of eight horses, men mounted and afoot, and cars of all sorts and conditions in long convoys, the arduous nature of the journey can be dimly imagined. The cars boiled, literally boiled, going up, and for this reason alone had to be stopped several times to cool down; and the boiling usually upset the oiling, and the cars wouldn’t restart. But if going up was a difficult and appallingly bumpy business, the coming down was worse. No Ford car brakes which are necessarily light would hold on these mountainous tracks. The cars bumped down, now heeling over on one side, now on the other, as wheels jolted over great masses of rock or boulders it was impossible to avoid, and on the steep slopes on many a journey the reverse was the only method of preventing the car taking charge when the brakes became functionless—and this with two badly wounded men on the stretchers behind. . . .
"I should never have thought it possible that cars could negotiate such tracks. . . . We got into the habit of carrying a few heavy rocks on the foot-board. As soon as the car stopped the passenger had to hop out, seize the biggest piece of rock, and get it under the wheel of the slowly slipping car. . . . This, be it remembered, with a steep slope or precipice to go over if the driver failed to keep an open eye backwards, or the passenger was not smart enough with his props. . . . That we did not have serious accidents is due as much as anything to the skillful driving and extraordinary coolness of the girl drivers.
" . . . An ambulance going up to the dressing station got off its wheels on a large rock mass and fell over on its side. Riddell, of the R.A.M.C., who was with the driver, Miss Green, was shot out and rolled down the slope, being pulled up by a rock. He picked himself up, gave himself a shake, and finding he was not dead, climbed up to see what had happened to car and girl. The car lay on its side, the wheels still revolving, and the girl still clinging to her wheel, also lying on her side. The engine was stopped, the driver hauled out and stood on her feet, and the first thing those two did was to swear at each other because, though each had a camera, neither had thought of taking a photograph before she had been hauled out!
" . . . On the way back the driver came across an ambulance which had broken down. After spending some time in futile efforts to start it she offered to take over the wounded—luckily there were only two—but she already had three. Night had fallen long before she restarted, and she was alone. Her drive down that mountain track was very nervy work. But she stuck to it and eventually got back to the camp at 11 P.M. She had brought down seven wounded men that day (the ambulances only hold two lying-down cases or three sitting), and brought them down the Drina. It was a marvelous plucky feat. Her name is Miss Wardel."
—E. P. Stebbing, At the Serbian Front in Macedonia
(London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1917).
In 1914 when war broke out in Europe, Inglis offered her services and that of her trained staff as medical units on the western front. She was told by the War Office "to go home and be still." Far from taking the advice, Inglis formed the SWH with financial assistance from a number of organizations, in particular, the NUWSS. The suffragists were determined to show the British government and society in general that women, too, had a valuable contribution to make to the war effort. Having been denied a role with the British army, Inglis redirected her offer of help to the French and Serbian governments. Both governments accepted the offer, and three months later the SWH dispatched an all-female medical unit to Royaumont Abbey, 35 kilometers north of Paris, the first such unit ever to be sent to a war zone. The abbey, owned by Jules Edouard Gouin, was temporarily given over to the SWH, which established a 200-bed auxiliary hospital. It was in Serbia, however, that the SWH had its greatest impact and where it developed its strongest loyalties.
The role of the independent SWH in Serbia during the war was curious and unique. SWH medical units effectively attached themselves to the Serbian army; some medical personnel remained with the army for most of the war and during many of the major campaigns, including the retreat through Albania and the return to the Salonica front in 1916. The first SWH medical units arrived in Serbia at the end of December 1914 and set up a surgical hospital in the historic city of Kragujevatz. The most immediate and pressing concerns for the SWH were not injuries from the battlefields but a typhus epidemic that swept through Serbia and killed tens of thousands. The exact number of deaths is unknown, but Inglis claimed that "of the 425 doctors in Serbia, 125 died of the disease, and two-thirds of the remainder had it" (Inglis 2000, 264). The SWH organizing committee quickly dispatched urgently needed medical supplies and personnel. It took three months to bring the typhus under control, and in that time 12 members of the SWH became ill and 3 died from the highly infectious disease. In addition to Kragujevatz, 2 other medical hospitals were established by the SWH at Valjevo and Mladenovatz.
By the spring of 1915, Inglis herself was in Serbia. The three SWH establishments were functioning well, and further help had been extended by the SWH, which was now providing medical units to staff Serbian hospitals as well as staffing frontline dressing stations and field hospitals. In anticipation of an expected renewed campaign by the enemy Inglis ensured that all of the units were capable of performing surgical work. From October 1915, what followed was a complex story of advances by the Germans, Austrians, and Bulgarians, desperate retreats by the Serbians, notably through Albania, and the steadfast support of the SWH medical units throughout. Members of the SWH joined with the Serbian army and the vast numbers of ordinary Serbs fleeing in the face of enemy occupation through the frozen mountains of Albania, the SWH providing as much medical support along the way as they could. Two medical units headed by Dr. Holloway and Inglis were in the Serbian hospital in Kraguje-vatz when the Germans arrived and took over the town. They established a camp for Serbian prisoners of war near the hospital, and those who were wounded were hospitalized by the SWH. As the injured Serbians recovered, the services of the SWH doctors and nurses were no longer required, so the German arrested them and took them to enemy-controlled Belgrade. Eventually through the offices of the U.S. ambassador, all the medical staff were released and sent back to Britain.
In 1917, Inglis and seventy-five other seasoned veterans once more returned to provide medical support to the Serbian army, this time on the eastern front. The Russian Revolution in 1917 caused the withdrawal of the Russian army from the war and left the remnants of the Serbian army exposed and almost friendless. Through the efforts of Inglis, the British government was persuaded to evacuate the Serbian soldiers to England. Inglis had become seriously ill but would not leave for home ahead of the Serbian troops. When they were evacuated from Archangel on board British naval ships, she joined them on the journey. Sadly, notwithstanding the attentions of doctors, she died one day after arriving back in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in November 1917.
Despite losing their inspirational leader, the women of the SWH continued their dedicated work until the end of the war. During the hostilities, fourteen SWH medical units had operated in seven countries, but it was the Serbian people with whom a special bond was formed. After the war, members of the SWH helped in the recovery of the country through personal service and fund-raising efforts. In memory of Inglis’s life and work, the Elsie Inglis Memorial Maternity Hospital was opened in 1925 in Edinburgh using the surplus funds from the SWH. It remained part of the Scottish health system until it closed in 1988.
