| Administrative History | Elsie Inglis (1864-1917), suffragette and medical pioneer, has been called Scotland's Florence Nightingale. Born in India in 1864, she came to Edinburgh with her parents at a young age, and later studied medicine here. She improved maternity facilities and fought for better health-care for women in Scotland. In 1901 she set up a maternity hospital in Edinburgh staffed only by women and during the First World War, she set up hospitals for the troops in Serbia and Russia. In appreciation of her significant contribution, Inglis became the first woman to be awarded the Order of the White Eagle, the highest honour given by the Yugoslavian Government.
She died, ill and exhausted, in Newcastle (England) while returning from the war en route to Edinburgh.
This information has been taken from Edinburgh University's 'Gazetteer for Scotland' website (www.geo.ed.ac.uk/scotgaz/gaztitle.html ) |