Ministerio de Educación
DISPOSICIÓN N.º 532/DGIUR/
Australian female doctors faced restrictions and barriers when they tried to join the Australian Army Medical Corps. Major-General Neville Howse Director of the Australian Army Medical Services was not in favour, declaring angrily that his responsibilities were difficult enough dealing with the large number of nurses needed. 56 Female doctors were
53 NAUK, NATS 1/1283, Deputy Director Woman’s Section of Women’s Services, Miss Violet
Rosa Markham to Katherine Furse 23 May 1917: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ‘Violet Rosa Markham, (1872–1959), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/printable/34881 public servant, was born on 3 October 1872 at Brimington Hall near Chesterfield, Derbyshire, the fifth of five children (three sons and two daughters) of Charles Markham (1823–1888), engineer and managing director of a coal and iron company, and his wife, Rosa (c.1840–1912), daughter of Sir Joseph Paxton’.
54NAUK, NATS 1/1283, Ibid, Letter from Mrs. Furse to Miss Markham, 24 March 1917.
55 NLA, Murray papers, Op.cit., Ruth Murray-Prior to Dearest Just So, Duxhurst, 29 August 1915,
Box 4 Folder 25, Item 17/74.
56 S. Braga, Anzac Doctor: The Life of Sir Neville Howse, Australia’s First VC, Hale & Iremonger,
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also strongly discouraged from undertaking full military service in all parts of the dominions. British medical policy impacted heavily on the ability of Australian female doctors to serve outside of Australia during the war. One case in point was that of the British Red Cross who refused to employ female doctors, a policy also laid down in its Australian branch.
In London when the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) was organising the medical services, female doctors were not included. Male doctors in the RAMC on the other hand were commissioned as officers, a status denied to female doctors even though they were eventually ‘attached’ to the RAMC in officially sanctioned military hospitals.57 As ‘attached’ members of the RAMC, they had few
opportunities to work as surgeons and operate on fighting troops.58 Moreover, they did not have any authority over male orderlies which would have enabled them to fully carry out their duties. Reporting from Egypt in June 1918, a female doctor declared, ‘The M.Os [sic], openly taunt us with having no rank’.59 Additionally, female doctors who served with the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) had similar issues. Despite carrying out the same duties they did not receive the same rank and pay as male doctors in the RAMC, a policy which continued
throughout the war. In England on 14 November 1917 another female doctor confirmed this, adding ‘without the rank of the RAMC, promotion
57 Wellcome Library: SA/MWF/C. 163-164, Commissions in the Army for women doctors, 1917-
1919.
58 Ann M Mitchell, Proceedings of a Symposium: Festschrift for Kenneth Fitzpatrick Russell,
Queensbury Hill Press, 1978, p. 96.
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is nil’.60 Female doctors were not permitted to wear a uniform until 2 June 1916 and this exacerbated the situation. This caused problems of status or when imposing authority but also created difficulties when travelling. ‘Without a uniform, it is impossible to persuade the authorities that a person is eligible to travel’.61 It wasn’t until early 1916 that Sir Alfred Keogh called for forty female doctors to work, not on the front-line in France, but in hospitals in Malta.62 Nonetheless, female doctors were so keen to serve that instead of the original forty, eighty five women eventually sailed for Malta in July 1916. 63 On Malta they treated British troops suffering from malaria but, ‘they did not receive the same ration and billeting allowance that every male doctor received’.64 The unfairness and inequality of these policies was highly unsatisfactory for these professional women, many of whom had been earning their own living before the war.
Even though female doctors were a ‘homogeneous and coherent group of professionals’, as Jennian Geddes has described them, their intensive training may have compounded their problems.65
Qualifications which supposedly allowed them to have the same
60 Ibid.
61 Wellcome Library: SA/MWF/C.168, Medical Women in the War: A Statement of the Case for
granting them temporary commissions, 1917, Wellcome Library: SA/MWF/C. 163-164, Op.cit, Cairo 18 June 1918. Three Australian doctors served with the WAAC, Eleanor Elizabeth Bourne, Hilda Bull and Phoebe Chapple.
62 Flora Murray, Women as Army Surgeons: Being the History of the Women’s Hospital Corps in
Paris, Wimereux and Endell Street, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1920, p. 230.
63Leah Leneman, ‘Medical women in the first world war – ranking nowhere’, British Medical
Journal, Vol. 307, 18-25 December 1993, p. 1592.
64Wellcome Library: SA/MWF/C. 163-164, Op.cit, France, 23 May 1918.
65Jennian Geddes, ‘Women as Army Surgeons’: The Women’s Hospital Corps, MA, Department
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medical training as male doctors were seen ‘by many people as socially disturbing’.66 In the second half of the nineteenth century male doctors pushed strongly to retain their status as the sole practitioners of healing. Female doctors who were highly trained with the same
expertise and skills threatened this established status quo. When given the chance, they had to constantly prove their competence in this gender-divided profession. Even though by 1914 women were increasingly becoming doctors in universities across the world, there were still restrictions on women studying medicine at Oxford and Cambridge Universities and the London teaching hospitals.67
Because of limitations placed on female doctors in the military, two British doctors, Louisa Garrett Anderson and Flora Murray (former members of the feminist Women’s Social and Political Union) created the Women’s Hospital Corps. Anderson and Murray offered their services to Brassier De Thuy, President of the French Red Cross, who accepted their offer to set up hospitals in Paris and at Wimereux.
The offer by Dr Flora Murray and Dr Garrett Anderson has been most gratefully accepted by the Union des Femmes de France – one of the three only official Societies constituting the French Red Cross.68
In May 1915, due to positive reports given to the War Office about their work in France, Murray and Anderson were asked to set up a military hospital in Endell Street in the heart of London.
66Janet S.K. Watson, ‘Wars in the Wards: the Social Construction of Medical Work in First World
War Britain’, Journal of British Studies, Vol. 41, No. 1, 4 October 2002, p. 488.
67Leneman, Op.cit.
68Wellcome Library: SA/NWF/C168: Retrospective Accounts, M. Brassier de Thuy, to Croix-
Rouge Française, 31 August 1914; Five Australians, Eleanor Bourne, Emma Buckley, Rachel Champion, Elizabeth Hamilton-Brown and Vera Scantlebury worked at Endell Street.
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As exemplified by the previous example, because of military and government constraints, female doctors turned to other services to find work. One of these, the Scottish Hospitals for Home and Foreign Service (SHHFS) was formed because of the negative attitude of the War Office to women doctors in the military. Again as will be shown, Australian female doctors grasped the opportunity to work as doctors in a manner that gave voice to their professional skills. The SHHFS had evolved from the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS)
headed by Mrs Millicent Fawcett.69 In August 1914 despite being nearly fifty and unwell, Dr Elsie Inglis who had been fully involved in the suffrage movement, organized two hospitals which she offered to the Scottish Red Cross.70Even though their Committee agreed to her proposition, the War Office refused to use these hospitals which led to them being accepted by the French Red Cross.
Following are the SHHFS units and where they were stationed. Abbaye de Royaumont, France
Ajaccio, Corsica
American Unit at Lake Ostrovo, Macedonia Calais Contingent, Boulogne
Canteen units at Creil, Crepy-en-valois and Favresse, France Girton and Newnham Unit, first at Troyes in France,
then in Macedonia and Serbia (Funded by past students of Girton and Newnham Colleges)
London Units
Sallanches and Haute Savoie, France
Mladonovatz, Kaguievatz near Belgrade and Valjevo, Serbia71
69Kingdom of Heaven, http://kingdomofheavenflx.org/408/womens-suffrage-a-short-history-
of-a-great-movement.pdf, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Women’s Suffrage: A Short History of a
Great Movement, Portrayer Publishers, London, 2002.
70 Leah Leneman, In the Service of Life: The Story of Elsie Inglis and the Scottish Hospitals, Mercat
Press, Edinburgh, 1994, pp. 2-4.
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Again, it is not known how many Australian women served with the Scottish Hospitals. Research undertaken at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, has shown that lists of personnel that have survived do not always provide details of birth country.72 The Australian feminist and educator, Margaret Emily Hodge is known to have served on the London Committee of the SHHFS from 1916 to 1918.73
Unlike female doctors who were simply ‘attached’ to the army and those who served with the WAAC, the Scottish Hospitals recognised that their doctors should be paid a full salary and supplied with a
uniform. The Queenslander, Dr Lilian Cooper was fifty-five when she travelled to Serbia to join the American Unit of the Scottish Hospitals. She had faced prejudice on many levels for most of the time she had worked as a doctor in Brisbane but could not accept that her expertise and experience would not be used in wartime to help the wounded and dying. On 10 October 1916 she and her companion, Mary Josephine Bedford, sailed from Adelaide on the Kaiser-i-Hind. Disembarking at Port Said on 6 September, they travelled in another vessel to Salonica arriving there on 18 September. Cooper was to receive a salary of £200 and Bedford who was later employed as a driver, was paid her expenses but no salary. 74 These conditions were outlined in the British Medical Journal of 19 June 1915 below.
72 IWM, BRCS 24.3/10, Scottish Women’s Hospitals, List of members who served Abbaye de
Royaumont, France: Mitchell Library, Glasgow, Scottish Hospitals, Vol. 1, Tin 13, Salary Sheets and Letters Serbia, 1915.
73 Margaret Emily Hodge, Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au 74 ‘Medical Officers Wanted – Scottish Women’s Hospitals’, British Medical Journal, Vol. 1, Issue
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Medical Officers Wanted – Scottish Women’s Hospitals
The Scottish Women’s Hospital for Foreign Service would be glad to hear of any medical women or graduates in science as X-ray operators for work in Serbia or France. To fully qualified workers an honorarium is offered at the rate of £200 per annum, all expenses paid. No salary is attached to junior posts.75
In addition to Lilian Cooper: Elsie Dalyell, Mary Clementina De Garis and Agnes Bennett also served with the Scottish Hospitals as doctors. Bennett later became the Chief Medical Officer of the American Unit located at Ostrovo in Serbia.
Agnes Elizabeth Lloyd Bennett was born in Neutral Bay, Sydney on 24 June 1872, the sixth child of W.C. Bennett and his first wife Agnes Amelia, (nee Hays).76 She was educated in England at Cheltenham Ladies' College and Dulwich Girls' School gaining her medical degree in Edinburgh in 1911.77Bennett was working in New Zealand when the war began but was told that because she was a woman, she could not work as a doctor with the New Zealand Army. She therefore offered her services to the French Red Cross who accepted her immediately.
Interrupting her journey to France when she reached Cairo, Bennett came in contact with the Director of the New Zealand Medical Services (NZMS). In contrast to previous negativity where she had been refused enlistment with New Zealand, she was offered a position with the NZMS which she accepted. Bennett was awarded the rank and pay of a
75 Ibid.
76 Agnes Elizabeth Lloyd Bennett, Australian Dictionary of Biography,
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bennett-agnes-elizabeth-lloyd-5206
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Captain.78 In this regard she was fortunate as the conditions and pay she received were quite different to those given to other female doctors who served with the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) particularly, who were without status or appropriate remuneration equal to their experience.