Dr. Elsie Inglis

by Lady Frances Balfour

After mobilisation, military authorities had to make provision for the wounded. We can remember the early sensation of seeing buildings raised for other purposes taken over for hospitals. Since the Crimea, women as nurses at the base were institutions understood of all men. In the vast camps which sprang up at the commencement of the war, women modestly thought they might be usefully employed as cooks. The idea shocked the War Office till it rocked to its foundations. A few adventurous women started laundries for officers, and others for the men. They did it on their own, and in peril of their beneficent soap suds, being ordered to a region where they would be out of sight, and out of any seasonable service, to the vermin-ridden camps.

The Suffrage organisations, staffed and equipped with able practical women Jacks of all trades, in their midst, put themselves at the call of national service, but were headed back from all enterprises. It had been ordained that women could not fight, and therefore they were of no use in war time. A few persisted in trying to find openings for service. Among these were Dr. Inglis. It is one thing to offer to be useful without any particular qualification; it is another to have professional knowledge to give, and the medical women were strong in the conviction that they had their hard-won science and skill to offer.

Those who have read the preceding pages will realise that Dr. Inglis carried into this offer a perfect knowledge how women doctors were regarded by the community, and she knew political departments too well to believe that the War Office would have a more enlightened outlook. In the past she had said in choosing her profession that she liked ‘pioneer work,’ and she was to be the pioneer woman doctor who, with the aid of Suffrage societies, founded and led the Scottish Women’s Hospitals to the healing of many races.

After bringing the story of Dr. Inglis to this point, it is easy to imagine the working of her fertile brain, and her sense of vital energy, in the opening weeks of the war. What material for instant action she had at hand, she used. She had helped to form a detachment of the V.A.D. when the idea of this once despised and now greatly desired body began to take shape. Before the war men spoke slightingly of its object, and it was much depreciated. Dr. Inglis saw all the possibilities which lay in the voluntary aid offer. Dr. Inglis was in Edinburgh at the commencement of the war, and the 6th Edinburgh V.A.D., of which she was commandant, was at once mobilised. For several weeks she worked hard at their training. She gave up the principal rooms in her house for a depot for the outfit of Cargilfield as an auxiliary hospital. The hospital was not accepted. If it had been, and Dr. Inglis put in charge of it, the wider work of her life might never have had its fulfilment. Dr. Inglis from the first advocated that the V.A.D. should be used as probationers in military hospitals, and the orderlies who served in her units were chiefly drawn from this body.

In September she went to London to put her views before the National Union and the War Office, and to offer the services of herself and women colleagues. Miss Mair expresses the thoughts which were dominating her mind. ‘To her it seemed wicked that women with power to wield the surgeon’s knife in the mitigation of suffering and with knowledge to diagnose and cure, should be withheld from serving the sick and wounded.’

Her love for the wounded and suffering gave her a clear vision as to what lay before the armies of the Allies. ‘At the root of all her strenuous work of the last three years,’ says her sister, ‘was the impelling force of her sympathy with the wounded men. This feeling amounted at times to almost agony. Only once did she allow herself to show this innermost feeling. This was at the root of her passionate yearning to get with her unit to Mesopotamia during the early months of 1916. “I cannot bear to think of them, our Boys.” To the woman’s heart within her the wounded men of all nations made the same irresistible appeal.’

In that spirit she approached a departmental chief. Official reserve at last gave way, and the historic sentence was uttered—‘My good lady, go home and sit still.’ In that utterance lay the germ of that inspiration which was to carry the Red Cross and the Scottish women among many nations, kindreds, and tongues.

It is easy to picture the scene. The overworked red-tape-bound official: the little figure of the woman with the smile, and the ready answer, before him. There is a story that, while a town in Serbia was under bombardment, Dr. Inglis was also in it with some of her hospital work. She sought an official in his quarters, as she desired certain things for her hospital. The noise of the firing was loud, and shells were flying around. Dr. Inglis seemed oblivious of any sound save her own voice, and she requested of an under officer an interview with his chief. The official had at last to confess that his superior was hiding in the cellar till the calamity of shell-fire was overpast. In much the same condition was the local War Office official when confronted with Dr. Inglis and her practical importunity. No doubt she saw it was useless to continue her offers of service. Mrs. Fawcett says:

‘Nearly all the memorial notices of her have recorded the fact that at the beginning of her work in 1914 the War Office refused her official recognition. The recognition so stupidly refused by her own country was joyfully and gratefully given by the French and later the Serbian A.M.S. and Red Cross.’