page_title: Elsie Inglis
section_title: Death and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Elsie Inglis / Death and legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: The former Elsie Inglis Memorial Maternity Hospital, Edinburgh
context_page_description: Elsie Maud Inglis was an innovative Scottish doctor, pioneering surgeon, inspiring teacher, suffragist, and founder of the Scottish Women's Hospitals, and the first woman to hold the Serbian Order of the White Eagle.
context_section_description: Inglis died on 26 November 1917, the day after she arrived back in England, at the Station Hotel, Newcastle upon Tyne. 
  Inglis's body lay in state at St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, and her funeral there on 29 November was attended by both British and Serbian royalty. The service included the 'Hallelujah Chorus' and the Last Post played by the buglers of the Royal Scots. The streets were lined with people as her coffin went through Edinburgh to be buried at the Dean Cemetery.
  The Scotsman newspaper wrote that it was an "occasion of an impressive public tribute". Winston Churchill said of Inglis and her nurses "they will shine in history." 
  A separate memorial service was held on 30 November in London, at St Margaret's Church in Westminster, the Anglican parish church of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. 
  Inglis is buried in the north section of Dean Cemetery, on a corner north of the central path. Her parents, John Forbes David Inglis (1820–1894) and Harriet Lowes Thompson (1827–1885) lie a few graves to the north. Her cousin, Sir Henry Simson, lies adjacent.
  A memorial fountain was erected in Inglis's memory in Mladenovac, Serbia, commemorating her work for the country.  A plaque marking her pre-war surgery from 1898 to 1914 was erected at 8 Walker Street, Edinburgh.  A portrait of her is included in the mural of heroic women by Walter P. Starmer unveiled in 1921 in the church of St Jude-on-the-Hill in Hampstead Garden Suburb, London.  In 1922 a large tablet to her memory (sculpted by Pilkington Jackson) was erected in the north aisle of St Giles Cathedral, in Edinburgh.
  Her main physical memorial was the building of the Elsie Inglis Memorial Maternity Hospital in 1925 which was operational until 1988.  This primarily ran as a maternity hospital and thereby had a female-only patient base.  Many Edinburgh children were born there during the 20th century. It was closed by the National Health Service in 1988 and sold off.  Part of it is now an old people's home, part is private housing, and parts are demolished; it is no longer recognisable as a hospital.  At its closure there were public protests that a new maternity unit should also be named after Inglis, which has not yet happened (2020). But a small plaque to Elsie Inglis exists near the south-west corner at the entrance to Holyrood Park.
  A nursing career development scheme in NHS Lothian is called 'the Elsies'.
  
  Inglis was commemorated on a new series of banknotes issued by the Clydesdale Bank in 2009; her image appeared on the new issue of £50 notes.  In March 2015, the British Residence in Belgrade was renamed 'Elsie Inglis House' in recognition of her work in the country.  The ceremony was conducted by the President of Serbia Tomislav Nikolic and the UK Ambassador Denis Keefe said
  “Elsie Inglis was one of the first women in Scotland who had finished high education and was a pioneer of medicine. She fought energetically against prejudice, for social and political emancipation of women in Britain. She was also a tireless volunteer, courageous organiser of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals and a dedicated humanitarian. Unfortunately, Elsie Inglis didn’t live long enough to see the triumph of some of her ideas, but she has had a tremendous influence on social trends in our country. In Scotland she became a doctor, in Serbia she became a saint.”
  And in 2020 it is noted that Serbia's first palliative care hospice will also be named after Elsie Inglis.
  In November 2017, a memorial plaque to Elsie Inglis and 15 women who died as a result of their service to the Scottish Women's Hospitals was set in Edinburgh Central Library.
  Inglis's name and picture (and those of 58 other women's suffrage supporters) are on the plinth of the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, London, unveiled in 2018.
  Inglis's younger sister Eva Helen Shaw McLaren wrote her biography 'Elsie Inglis, The Woman With the Torch' in 1920, and in 2009 a coloured illustrated edition was published, a reference is to Florence Nightingale  known as 'The Lady of the Lamp'. In Eva's papers was f
caption: The former Elsie Inglis Memorial Maternity Hospital
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