The first woman to become a doctor of medicine in England was born 100 years ago today. What those attendant on her childhood would have said had they been told that she would grow up to practise as a doctor and found a famous hospital passes conjecture. Public opinion in the thirties and forties recognized women as a ministering angel or a Sairey Gamp, but did not see her carrying out efficiently the many duties which custom had marked "for men only".
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson belonged to a circle of girls, mostly of good family and by no means blue-stockings in the frumpish sense of the word, who proved that this division of functions between the sexes was artificial. Millicent Fawcett was her younger sister. Emily Davies, a slightly older contemporary, who founded Girton, was among her closest friends. Louie, another of the Garrett sisters, is the heroine of the story in which, startled by her inquiry into the chances of women doing well in his art, a horrified hairdresser exclaimed, "Impossible, madam! Why it took me a fortnight to learn it."
Elizabeth spent her early years at Aldeburgh, in Suffolk, and then went with a sister to the Blackheath school kept by the Misses Browning, aunts of the poet. Here she enjoyed "every extra, including baths." These luxuries were taken in the washtub in the kitchen on Saturday nights, and the girls were known as "the bathing Garretts." She decided, while still in her teens, to be a doctor, and, although there was some not unnatural family opposition, she found an ally in her father. They trudged Harley Street together, seeking an opening into the great profession. Another Elizabeth, Dr. Blackwell, who was English born and held an American degree, had fired Miss Garrett with enthusiasm, but there were no precedents for women as English doctors. One consultant asked why she did not become a nurse. She answered, "Because I would rather earn 1,000 a year than 20." But she did dress as a nurse and get some training at Middlesex Hospital.
After further difficulties she was allowed to study anatomy and other subjects at St. Andrews and at Edinburgh. Most of her work was done under the most difficult and discouraging conditions, almost by stealth, but determination and youth saw her through, and finally she sat for examination and got the licence of Apothecaries' Hall. Steps were then taken to prevent her following her profession in any of the hospitals. She collected enough money and opened, in 1866, a small dispensary in Seymour Street. This was the beginning of the "New Hospital for Women," which, at the death of its founder, changed its name to the "Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital."
Despite considerable opposition, the dispensary flourished. Women anxious for treatment by one of their own sex came from all parts. Dr. Anderson used to see as many as 60 patients in one day. Six years after its foundation the dispensary had to be moved into larger premises, and two houses were taken in the Marylebone Road on the site of the present Great Central Hotel.
She was elected in 1870 to the Marylebone School Board with a majority of 48,000 votes over Professor Huxley. In 1908 she became Mayor of Aldeburgh - the first woman in the country to gain such civic distinction. In 1871 she married Mr. J.G.S. Anderson, of the Orient Line. She had two children. Dr. Louisa Garrett Anderson, who was in charge of the Endell Street Hospital during the war, and Sir Alan Anderson, M.P. After her marriage she still went on with her work, and devoted herself to the study and treatment of diseases of women and children. The hospital had, in 1899, to find still larger premises, and this time it moved to its present site in the Euston Road. When it first opened it had room for 42 in-patients. To-day it has 105 beds and treats 8,000 out-patients a year. It has also the Rosa Morison House of Recovery at New Barnet, where patients are drafted after treatment at the hospital.
It would be easy to work up moral indignation and contempt for our ancestors who put obstacles in the way of Dr. Anderson and her contemporaries. But this would do less than justice to the achievement of the pioneers. Progressive Victorians were dubious about the fitness of women for such exacting professions as medicine. Frederick Maurice, for instance, referred in his "Lectures to Ladies on Practical Subjects" to the unwisdom of letting one sex intrude "upon the province which, not the conventions of the world, but the will of God, has assigned to the other." Few women of the day would have disputed this view. Changed opinions waited on proof from such brilliant rebels as Dr. Anderson. That she triumphed is a measure of her charming personality as well as of her brain. "I do wish ... dressed better," she once wrote to Emily Davies, "she looks so awfully strong-minded in short petticoats and a close round hat and several dreadfully ugly arrangements...It is abominable and most damaging to the cause."
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