(1873-1943)
Cofounder of the British Women’s Hospital Corps (WHC) during World War I. Dr. Louisa Garrett Anderson, surgeon and militant suffragette, was born at Aldeburgh, Suffolk, on July 28, 1873, to Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, first female doctor in Britain, and James G. S. Anderson, a shipping magnate. She graduated from London School of Medicine for Women in 1897. Louisa then began private practice. Unlike her mother, Louisa Garrett Anderson did not face opposition to her medical education. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the right of women in Britain to study medicine and enter private practice was accepted. Nevertheless, subtle discrimination remained. The women of Britain had to struggle for emancipation, and Louisa took a leading part in this struggle.
Louisa Anderson was a militant suffragette and joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1906. The organization demanded voting rights for women. Its members utilized illegal methods when their demand was rejected by Parliament in 1906. In 1912, Anderson was arrested in one violent incident when shops were attacked and stones thrown at the prime minister’s residence, 10 Downing Street. At the outbreak of World War I, the suffragettes demanded the right to serve the nation. Anderson along with a fellow doctor and suffragette, Flora Murray, established the Women’s Hospital Corps (WHC) in September 1914. Anderson was the chief surgeon of the corps between 1914 and 1918. Because there was still considerable opposition in the British War Office to using the services of female surgeons, both went to work for the French Red Cross. They set up military hospitals for the French army in Paris and Wimereux. The War Office then recognized the work they were doing and asked the WHC to manage the En-dell Street Military Hospital in London, which was staffed completely by women. Anderson’s mother, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, also worked at the hospital. She and the other women doctors experimented with new treatments and gained a high level of medical experience. The hospital functioned until 1919 and treated 26,000 patients.
The efforts of Anderson and the other suffragettes were vindicated when British women gained the right to vote in 1918. Anderson, who did not marry, wrote medical articles after the war and in 1939 authored a biography of her mother. Anderson died on November 15, 1943, and was buried near her home at Paul End.
