| Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service | |
|---|---|
_and_some_of_her_sisters_-_1916.png) Elsie Inglis and other members of the SWH | |
| Organisation | |
| Funding | National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, Red Cross, donations |
| History | |
| Opened | 1914 |
| Closed | 1919 |
TheScottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Services (SWH) was founded in 1914. It was led by DrElsie Inglis and provided nurses, doctors, ambulance drivers, cooks and orderlies. By the end ofWorld War I, 14 medical units had been outfitted and sent to serve in Corsica, France, Malta, Romania, Russia, Salonika and Serbia.[1]
At the outset of the war, DrElsie Inglis was secretary for theScottish Federation of Women Suffrage Societies, affiliated with theNational Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) headed byMillicent Garrett Fawcett.[2] The SWH was spearheaded by Dr Inglis, as part of a widersuffrage effort from the Scottish Federation of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and funded by private donations, fundraising of local societies, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies[3] and theAmerican Red Cross.[4]
Fawcett wished to include "Women's Suffrage" in the name, but Inglis opposed this on the grounds that "suffrage" had controversial political connotations based on the example of those who advocated civil disobedience such asEmmeline Pankhurst. While not all volunteers supported the suffrage movement, the letters "NUWSS" appeared on SWH letterhead and many of their vehicles, and the French press often referred to their facilities as "Hospital of the ScottishSuffragists", and the NUWSS provided financial support.[2]
Initial fundraising was highly successful after Fawcett invited Inglis to speak in London, and by the end of August 1914 they had raised more than £5,000. Established shortly after the outbreak ofWorld War I as voluntary all-women units, the Scottish Women's Hospitals offered opportunities for medical women who were prohibited from entry into theRoyal Army Medical Corps.[5]
The headquarters were inEdinburgh throughout the war, and there were also committees in Glasgow and London, working closely with the London office of theCroix Rouge Francaise (French Red Cross).[3]
DrAlice Hutchison was the first doctor of SWH sent to France to establish the first hospital. She initially placed it inBoulogne. While searching for a building for a hospital, atyphoid epidemic broke out amongst Belgian refugees inCalais. She, along with another doctor and ten nurses, treated the patients. She was noted for having the lowest rate of deaths of typhoid in her hospital.[6][7][8]
In December 1914, a hospital was established with 200-beds atRoyaumont Abbey, known asScottish Women's Hospital at Royaumont, officially called Hôpital Auxiliaire 301.[9] The initial staff included Inglis, Alice Hutchison,Ishobel Ross,[10]Cicely Hamilton,[4]Marian Gamwell,[11] andKatherine Harley. The Scottish Women's Hospitals serviced 14 medical units across mainland France andCorsica,Malta,Romania,Russia, Salonika andSerbia.[1] In April 1915, Dr Inglis was head of a unit based in Serbia. Within seven months of mobilising, the SWH were servicing 1,000 beds with 250 staff which included 19 female doctors.[3]
The first Scottish Women's Hospital was, in November 1914, staffed, equipped and established at Calais to support theBelgian Army. Vicomtess de la Panouse, wife of the French military attaché to the French embassy in London helped the group identify another location at the ancient Royaumont Abbey.[2] The abbey was the property ofÉdouard Goüin [fr], a rich industrialist and philanthropist whose poor health rendered him unable to fight. By December a second hospital was based there. It remained operational throughout the war and treated wounded from theFrench Army under the direction of theFrench Red Cross. A further hospital was opened atTroyes (Château de Chanteloup,Sainte-Savine) andVillers-Cotterets along with the popular and supportive canteens atCreil,Soissons andCrepy-en-Valois.
Also in December, a hospital led by DrEleanor Soltau was dispatched to Serbia. Other units quickly followed and Serbia soon had four primary hospitals working night and day. The conditions in Serbia were dire. TheSerbian army had a mere 300 doctors to serve more than half a million men, and as well as battle casualties the hospital had to deal with a typhus epidemic which ravaged the military and civilian populations. Serbia had fought a surprisingly successful military campaign against the invadingAustrians but the fight had exhausted the nation. Both soldiers and civilians were half starved and worn out and in those conditions diseases thrived and hundreds of thousands perished.
From December 1914 to November 1915, the hospital was based inKragujevac. TheImperial War Museum's "Lives of the First World War" has a list of all those who worked in that location.[12]
Four SWH staff,Louisa Jordan,Madge Fraser,Augusta Minshull andBessie Sutherland died during the epidemic, the first two are buried inNiš Commonwealth Military Cemetery. By the winter of 1915 Serbia could hold out no more. The Austrians had been joined by German and Bulgarian forces who again invaded, and the Serbs were forced to retreat intoAlbania.
_-_resting_during_the_retreat.png)
The SWH staff had a choice to make, stay and go into captivity (or worse) or go with theretreating army into Albania. In the end some stayed and some went. Elsie Inglis, Evelina Haverfield, Alice Hutchison,Helen MacDougall and others were taken prisoner and were eventually repatriated to Britain. The others joined the Serbian army and government in its retreat and suffered the indescribable horrors of that retreat and shared the hardships endured by the Serbian army.
The Serbian army retreated over the mountains of Albania andMontenegro in the depths of winter with no food, shelter or help, and thousands upon thousands of soldiers, civilians, and prisoners of war died during the retreat. One SWH nurse,Caroline Toughill, had her skull fractured when the car in which she was travelling fell off a cliff near the town ofRača. Despite treatment by a Serbian major and another passenger from the car, (nurseMargaret Cowie Crowe) in a Red Cross camp to which she was taken, she died.[13] Those who made it to the safety of theAdriatic Sea continued to give what help they could to soldiers, civilians and in particular to the many boys who had joined the retreat. As a direct consequence of this the SWH set up a convalescent hospital in Corsica in December 1915 to help displaced Serb women and children.
During this period the hospital at Troyes in France was ordered to pack. Designed as a mobile rather than a fixed hospital it was equipped with tents and vehicles. It was attached to a division of the French army and was dispatched toSalonika in Greece when their French division was transferred there as part of a belated move by the Allies to provide practical help to the beleaguered Serbs. The hospital (known as theGirton &Newnham Unit after theCambridge University women's colleges which funded it) was set up in a disused silkworm factory in the border town ofGevgelia, though it soon had to be relocated to the city of Salonika when the rapid Bulgarian advance threatened. Much of the work at Salonika was spent fightingmalaria, a huge killer made worse by the lack of suitable clothing supplied by the Allied armies.
It was joined in August 1916 there by theOstrovo Unit or the American Unit. This hospital was funded chiefly by American donors and was so named in gratitude to them. The unit was moved in early September 90 miles north–west of Salonika to Lake Ostrovo (nowLake Vegoritida in Greece), and supported the Serbian Army's push back into its homeland. Also sent to Ostrovo was a Transport Column. This was a motor ambulance unit which allowed SWH to collect casualties quickly rather than wait for casualties to be brought to them, including volunteer women motor ambulance drivers, likeElsie Cameron Corbett.
Following her repatriation to the UK in February 1916, Dr Inglis set about equipping and staffing a hospital to serve in Russia. Other veterans of the first Serbian hospital, including Dr Lilian Chesney andEvelina Haverfield, joined her. A hospital and attendant transport column of ambulances and support vehicles was sent to Russia. It served in southern Russia (Bessarabia andMoldova) and in Romania, providing medical care chiefly to theSerbian Division of theRussian army. This division was primarily made up of volunteers from the Serbian diaspora along with ethnic Serbian and south Slavic prisoners of war from theAustro-Hungarian army, who after their capture by Russia sought the opportunity to fight for their people. The Serb division had no medical facilities so these were provided by SWH to some 11,000 men with only seven doctors. Led by Elsie Inglis[14] who had a strong affinity to the Serbian army and people and was recognised in their highest award (The Serbian Order of the White Eagle) for her service,[15] the SWH staff once again endured the hardship of the war when they had to take part in a chaotic and painful retreat after the Romanian army was routed in 1917. Russia was then plunged intorevolution and, when it became clear that the Russian army was unlikely to resume operations, the hospital was withdrawn. A division of Serb soldiers and officers, along with Inglis, sailed fromArchangel through submarine infested waters to the UK. Tragically, the day after they arrived back in Britain, Elsie Inglis, who had been very sick withbowel cancer for some time, died. Soon after the Elsie Inglis Unit was established in her memory and sent out to join the Girton & Newnham and the American units both providing medical support to the Serb army in Macedonia. Together they provided much needed help during the campaigns of 1918 which saw the Serbs and their British, French, Russian, Greek and Italian allies drive the Germans, Austro-Hungarians and Bulgarians out of Macedonia and Serbia.
Towards the end of the war SWH in Serbia itself provided medical help to soldiers, civilians and prisoners of war (as well as continuing to provide care to refugees in Corsica and at the TB hospital inSallanches in France). A new fixed hospital was established inVranje for 300 patients, but by early 1919 this had been handed over to the Serbian authorities - more or less bringing to an end the SWH. While most SWH members went home and resumed their pre war lives, many SWH staff and ‘veterans’ chose to stay on to provide much needed medical care in Serbia. DrKatherine Stewart MacPhail opened a hospital for sick children inBelgrade (and continued this work until forced out byTito's government in 1947);Evelina Haverfield ran a hospital for orphans until her tragic death in March 1920; and some others did what they could to help, often using their own money, to single-handedly help destitute soldiers, refugees or the many orphans and widows who were all in desperate need of assistance. Others did relief work elsewhere.Isabel Emslie Hutton, for example, went to work with refugees from theRussian Civil War inCrimea.
Over 1,000 women from many different backgrounds and many different countries served with the SWH. Only the medical professionals such as doctors, nurses, laboratory technicians and x-ray operators received a salary and expenses; while non-medical staff such as orderlies, administrators, drivers, cooks and others received no pay at all (and were in fact expected to pay their way).[citation needed]
In keeping with the aims of the SWH it was a deliberate policy that, as far as possible, all members of SWH units should be women, so allowing opportunities for unqualified women who could nonetheless get the chance to both serve the war effort in some capacity and the cause of women's rights. Some women joined because it was one of the few opportunities open to women to help the war effort; others saw it as a rare chance for adventure in a world that up till then offered women very few chances; and all shared, with varying degrees, the desire to improve the lot of women. Over £500,000 was raised by every manner possible to fund the organisation and during the war years it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of patients' lives were save; all nursed and helped by the SWH.
In 2025 the erection of astatue to Elsie Inglis was approved by members of the City of Edinburgh Council's development management sub committee. Some of Inglis's last words included "not me, my unit" in answer to praise of her work. The statue will honour the 1,500 women volunteers who served with the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service from Scotland, New Zealand, Australia and Canada.[16]
Elsie Inglis' archives are held at theMitchell Library in Glasgow, including the SWH Archives collected by the organisation's Honorary Treasurer, Jessie Laurie. A large cardboard box, ref TD1734/20/4, containing many individual accounts of the flight from Serbia, can also be found there, In June 2022 Archivist Barbara Neilson posted a summarised account of the SWH collection in as part of a "Glasgow LifeTimes Past series.[18]
Scottish Women's Hospital Archives are also held atThe Women's Library at the Library of the London School of Economics, ref 2SWHThe Women's Library also holds a Scrapbook on Scottish Women's Hospital from the time, ref 10/22. Papers of individuals who were part of SWH now held atThe Women's Library include the Papers ofElsie Bowerman ref 7ELB the Papers ofVera "Jack" Holme ref 7VJH, as well as individual books, postcards and photographs related to the Scottish Women's Hospital and of several of the women who served.
The Women's Work Collection at theImperial War Museum holds many photographs of the SWH.
Additional SWH members' materials are held in various archive offices: memoirs of Katherine North née Hodges are in the Leeds Russian Archive; the journals of Mary Lee Milne are held by theNational Library of Scotland, papers of Lilas Grant and Ethel Moir are in theCentral Library, Edinburgh; the Lothian Health Archives hold the letters of Yvonne Fitzroy and more than sixty other documents relating to the hospital; a Photograph album relating to the Scottish Women's Hospital in Salonika, 1907–1918 (ref RCPSG 74) is held at theRoyal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, whilst theSchlesinger Library, Harvard University holds the papers ofRuth Holden. ThePublic Record Office of Northern Ireland also holds papers of the Scottish Women's Hospitals in Serbia papers ref D1982. TheNational Library of Scotland holds film footage of a Scottish Women's Hospitals unit in action[19][20] andScottish Screen has a documentary silent film, 'one of the earliest documentaries' of the front line medical and nursing activities, taken at the SWH units inVillers-Cotterês and inSalonika.[21]
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{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)Films:
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