As a result of this petition, the American War Department communicated with the British War Office, asking a number of questions concerning the employment of women doctors. The right hand of the War Office never seemed to know what the left hand was doing, and three separate staff officers, each armed with notebook and pencil, called on three separate occasions to obtain the information which the American Government required from the Doctor-in-Charge.
Doctors working for the Army in isolated posts wrote to Endell Street to tell of difficulties or grievances arising out of their anomalous position. They were doing the work of officers and were supposed to exercise the authority of officers, yet they were not officers. In some cases, they were refused first-class travelling warrants and were furnished with third-class ‘as for soldiers’ families,’ while their R.A.M.C. colleagues and the nurses were issued with the former. Or, on the ground that they were ‘civilian women,’ the right to drive in an army motor-car would be withheld from them; or they would be excluded from the officers’ mess.
One wrote from East Africa, stating that her position had been excellent under a C.O. who allowed her to wear a captain’s badge of rank, but that his successor had ordered her to remove it, and she was therefore a discredited person in the hospital to which she was posted. Women working under R.A.M.C. colonels in R.A.M.C. hospitals were at the mercy of the wisdom or the prejudices of the officers-in-charge, and the pin-pricks and little indignities to which they were often subjected were very unfair. They were volunteers, in the best sense of the word, and if their services were accepted at all, no difference should have been made between them and the men they worked among.
In a women’s unit, internal difficulties like these did not arise; but the officer-in-charge of a military hospital is required to deal with small offences; and when the Doctor-in-Charge ‘admonished’ defaulters, she was conscious that her authority would have been greatly strengthened if she had been wearing the badges of a lieut.-colonel. In the casualty room, where men might not recognise a woman as an officer, the doctors were sometimes placed at a disadvantage; but the good feeling of the N.C.O.’s and the support which they gave to their medical staff avoided any real trouble.
Urged thereto by the President of the Medical Women’s Federation, Dr. Garrett Anderson and Dr. Flora Murray took up the question with the War Office, and asked for honorary rank or commissioned rank for women doctors serving with H.M. Forces. The Department refused, but it was interesting to find that many individual officers could see no objection to rank being held by women.
During the weeks of tension and anxiety which preceded the armistice, no further action seemed possible; but shortly after that event, the medical staff was unanimously in favour of reopening the matter. The campaign started with a letter from Dr. Garrett Anderson to The Times. But the Editor suppressed the correspondence which followed, and the doctors therefore circularised the House of Commons. A leaflet entitled ‘Bricks without Straw’ was sent out to all Members of Parliament in November 1918. It stated the disabilities complained of by medical women serving under the War Office, and called attention to the action of the Income Tax Commissioners, who had refused their claim to be assessed at the service rate.
Women had been recently enfranchised and the General Election was approaching. The circular received a large and sympathetic response. One member wrote:
As they are doing the same work as men in the military hospitals, I can see no reason why they should not be entitled to the same style or commission....
Other members wrote:
There is ample precedent for the grant of honorary rank to ladies in the Armies of Europe—and seeing that the practical value of it can be proved in this case, I think it should be given.