# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Inglis, Elsie Maud

​INGLIS, ELSIE MAUD (1864–1917), physician and surgeon, the second daughter of John Inglis, of the East India Company's service, by his wife, Harriet Thompson, was born at Naini Tal, India, 16 August 1864. Her father was a descendant of the Inglis of Kingsmill, Inverness-shire. Her mother was the granddaughter of John Fendall, governor of Java. Elsie Inglis spent her childhood in India until her father retired in 1878, when the family came back to Scotland and settled in Edinburgh. She was educated there at the Charlotte Square Institution, and after a year at Paris returned to Edinburgh shortly before her mother's death in 1885. Between Elsie Inglis and her father there existed a strong bond of friendship. He was a wholehearted advocate of her choice of a medical career, and a wise counsellor in all her undertakings. At the time of her entry upon her medical studies the battle for the admission of women to the medical profession had been fought and won by Sophia Louisa Jex-Blake [q.v.], although there still remained a considerable amount of opposition. Her studies were begun in Edinburgh and continued at Glasgow, with some months in Dublin for a special course of midwifery. In 1892 she received her medical diploma, and returning to Edinburgh she inaugurated there a second school of medicine for women, a successful venture which became, after the closing of the first medical school founded in Edinburgh in 1886 by Sophia Jex-Blake, the only school of medicine for women, until the doors of Edinburgh University were thrown open to them (1894).
In 1892 Elsie Inglis was appointed house-surgeon to the New Hospital for Women in London (afterwards the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital), and later received the appointment of joint-surgeon to the Edinburgh Bruntsfield Hospital and Dispensary for women and children. Realizing the serious disabilities imposed on women by their exclusion from resident posts in the chief maternity hospital and Royal Hospital in Edinburgh, she conceived the bold scheme of establishing there a maternity hospital to be staffed by women. This scheme resulted in the foundation of a hospice for women, opened in 1901, which is still the only maternity training centre in Scotland managed by women. Dr. Elsie Inglis began private practice in 1895, first in partnership with Dr. Jessie McGregor, later by herself. In her profession she won the love and esteem of her patients in all classes of life. To the poor patients of the hospital she was more than a doctor, for they found in her a friend full of sympathy with their difficulties, and always ready to help in lightening the burden of their poverty.
In 1900 Elsie Inglis joined the constitutional movement for the political enfranchisement of women, under the leadership of Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett, devoting all her spare time to speaking and lecturing on women's suffrage. She was the founder of the Scottish Women's Suffrage Federation (1906), and it was at a committee meeting of the Federation in August 1914 that the idea was first conceived of forming a Scottish Women's Hospitals committee, to raise hospital units staffed by women for service in the European War. Elsie Inglis was the leading spirit of this venture, travelling all over the kingdom to make public appeals for funds to equip the units. Her enthusiasm roused a quick response from the public, resulting in a steady flow of funds and of offers from women for active service.
The first fully equipped unit left for France in November 1914, a second unit going out to Serbia in January 1915. Elsie Inglis carried on the work of organizing further units until April 1915, when she left for Serbia in order to take the place of Dr. Eleanor Soltau, who had contracted diphtheria. An epidemic of typhus, which had broken out at the end of January 1915, had nearly abated when she arrived, and she immediately proceeded to organize three hospitals in the north of Serbia in readiness for the autumn offensive of the Serbs.
The invasion of Serbia by German, Austrian, and Bulgarian armies in the autumn of 1915 drove the Serbs back, and the hospitals established at Valjevo, Lazarovatz, and Mladanovatz had to be hastily evacuated and moved to Kragujevatz, where Elsie Inglis had started a surgical hospital. The relentless tide of invasion drove the hospitals farther south to Krushevatz. Here she worked at the Czar Lazar hospital, having decided that she could give more effectual help to the Serbs by remaining at her post. This ​decision was welcomed by the Serbian medical authorities, who had experienced the benefit not only of her surgical aid but also of the moral support given by the Scottish Women's Hospitals units during their retreat. For three months after the entry of the Germans and Austrians into Krushevatz on 7 November 1915, she continued to work at the hospitals, until the great majority of the patients were removed to Hungary. On 11 February she and her unit were sent under a strong Austrian guard first to Belgrade and then to Vienna, where, owing to the intervention of the American embassy, they were released and allowed to return to England.
Elsie Inglis's offer to the War Office of a unit for service in Mesopotamia, where the need for medical aid seemed urgent, was refused; but, after her return from a visit of inspection to the Scottish Women's Hospitals units in Corsica, she received an appeal from the Serbian minister for aid for the Serbian division in Russia. This request met with an immediate response. The London committee of the Scottish Women's Hospitals supplied two units with motor transport attached. On 16 August 1916 Elsie Inglis left for Russia, going to the front at Megidia to join the Serbian division fighting in the Dobrudja. Here the units worked until the retreat of the Russians in October brought her to Braila, where perhaps the hardest task, and what to most would have seemed a hopeless one, was presented to her. Braila was one vast dumping ground for the wounded, who streamed in every day. Only seven doctors were in the town, and no nurses, when she arrived. The units were now attached to the Russian division, until the Serbs, whose losses were very heavy owing to the lack of Russian support, had been reformed. From Braila the units went first to Galatz and then on to Reni.
The revolution in Russia had broken out in the meantime, and the difficulties of the units were increased, but despite the general confusion and the suspicion with which spy-hunters regarded a foreign hospital, they managed to work smoothly until the hospital was evacuated in August 1917 and Elsie Inglis rejoined the Serbs at Hadji-Abdul. Their position, however, became serious, for there was not much hope of the Russians making a stand; and efforts were made to get the Serbs out of Russia. Moreover, Dr. Inglis's health showed grave signs of failure, and her condition was aggravated by the intense cold and the lack of food, fuel, and clothing. The Scottish Women's Hospitals committee sent a cable advising her withdrawal, but leaving the decision in her hands. Her reply was: ‘If there were a disaster none of us would ever be able to forgive ourselves if we had left. We must stand by. If you want us home, get them [the Serbs] out.’ Enfeebled as she was, she met the situation courageously. Her plans for the future work of the hospital, should the Serbs be called upon again to fight, were all laid down to the smallest detail, but fortunately, before these plans had been put in operation, the order came for the Serbs to leave for England.
Dr. Inglis's cable home on 14 November announced their departure: ‘Everything satisfactory, and all well except myself’—the first intimation which the committee had received of her being ill. She bore the journey home with great fortitude and endurance of physical pain, and on arriving at Newcastle (25 November) refused to allow herself to be carried, but walked down the ship's gangway. Almost to the last her thoughts were of future plans, and in her message to the London committee was a request to them to continue their support of the Serbs, whom she had served so faithfully. One of those present among her family and friends spoke to her of the great work which she had accomplished. She replied: ‘Not I, but my unit.’ The end came at Newcastle on 26 November. The intrepid spirit met death as calmly as she had faced life. She was buried in the Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh, on 29 November.
[Lady Frances Balfour, Dr. Elsie Inglis, 1918; Mrs. Shaw McLaren, A History of the Scottish Women's Hospitals, 1919, and Elsie Inglis, 1920.]
E. P.