Other hospital units, waiting in Paris for a location, called to see round Claridge’s, and amongst such visitors were the Duchess of Westminster, Lady Sarah Wilson and Lady Dudley. The surgeons belonging to these units were restive at being kept waiting so long and inclined to be envious of the Women’s Hospital Corps, which had been running for some weeks; but their hospitals had a large personnel, for which quarters were not so easy to find as they had been for the women’s smaller unit.
In December a cordial welcome was extended to Dr. Elsie Inglis and Dr. Frances Ivens, who, with a Scottish Women’s Hospital, were on their way to L’Abbaye Royaumont, to open the hospital which became so famous. At an earlier date Dr. Elsie Inglis had written to Dr. Garrett Anderson to ask if there were a vacancy for a surgeon in the Women’s Hospital Corps; but the Unit had its full complement of surgeons; and her suggestion to join it was regretfully declined. In view of what she afterwards initiated and accomplished, this was not the matter of regret which it seemed at the time. It was splendid to have another women’s hospital established under the French Red Cross, and to hear also of the other Scottish units which were going farther afield.
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The presence of their English colleagues was stimulating to the French medical women, and they did not fail to contrast their own position unfavourably with that accorded to their foreign sisters. Whereas English women were established in control of hospitals under the French Red Cross, the French women were serving in military hospitals as dressers, or as night orderly officers. They had no responsible work, and no professional position. One afternoon, Madame Paul Boyer brought a number of them to ‘Claridge’s,’ when a free discussion took place over the coffee cups.
Although the Paris University had opened its degree to women many years before the Universities of the United Kingdom, the number of women on the register fell far below the number in England. Educational facilities were equal in Paris for men and women, but after qualification the resident posts and staff appointments were still given to men, and women could only secure very subordinate work. They were not combined in any society, as the British women are. They had no association or council to promote their interests, and they had no hospitals of their own, staffed and supported by women, through which they might obtain responsible surgical work and experience.
When war broke out, their Government scorned their offer of service, and it was only as the result of the shortage of doctors that a few had obtained any footing at all in military hospitals. Dr. N.-K., a Russian lady of great ability and many years’ experience, was working as a dresser under a lieutenant of twenty-two years in the officers’ section at ‘St. Louis.’ Her work seemed to be largely that which a nurse would do in England. She took temperatures, dressed wounds, kept notes, directed the male orderlies, but was denied all responsibility in professional matters. Mme. Boyer was permitted to sleep in the ‘Val de Grace’ and attend to night calls. She lamented the absence of women, whether as nurses or doctors, in the French hospitals, and described in graphic terms the confusion and discomfort to be found there. Another, who spoke Polish, had been told that she might join a hospital on the eastern frontier if she were disguised as an infirmière, but that she must promise not to disclose to the Médecin-en-Chef that she was a doctor.
Most of these women doctors were married and very much domesticated, but they complained unanimously of having no opportunities, and were even a little bitter about the unfairness of their position. Dr. Garrett Anderson and Dr. Flora Murray pointed out that women must make their own opportunities, and told them of the societies, schools and hospitals for women in England. At last, stirred to emulate, they declared that they also must ‘faire un mouvement.’ Then one said that her husband did not like her to concern herself with ‘mouvements,’ and another that, if a ‘mouvement’ meant attending meetings at night, she could not come, because her husband could not bear to be left alone. And the enthusiasm began to dwindle. Pressed to consider the possibility of a hospital staffed by women, they admitted that it would be an advantage, and that such a scheme might be feasible, till Mme. Boyer said that they had had no chance of surgical experience and asked dramatically what they should do ‘if the first patient came with an énorme fibrome.’
But there were at least two silent onlookers, young women, one of whom had not yet finished her medical course but knew English, had been in England and had some knowledge of the women’s movement there. She and her comrade were not married, and they obviously had personal ambition. They had been touched by the modern spirit. Through them and through their contemporaries progress might come. They sat listening to their seniors with decorum and in silence. But their eyes were critical and in their hearts they judged them and found them wanting.
The English doctors realised that the new element was present, and that the advance had sounded for professional women in France.
