Dr Elsie Inglis and Women’s Contribution to World War One

John Lamont Excerpts

Tuesday 28th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate and thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) for securing this debate on an important part of our world war one history that at times is unfortunately overlooked. The contribution made by women in the great war, in particular Dr Elsie Inglis, should not be understated, and it is a pleasure to pay tribute to them today.

As the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk, I am proud to draw Members’ attention to the role played by women of the borders at that challenging time, especially those who served alongside Elsie. While reading about the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, I could only imagine the harrowing scenes that they saw. One of those women was Sarah Dempster Allan, born in 1889 in the small village of Sprouston near Kelso in my constituency. On the outbreak of war, Sarah joined the Scottish Women’s Hospitals and was posted to a chateau near Troyes, where she performed her duties in a canvas tent. I am sure that it felt a long way from the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, which she had left to join the cause.

Because their unit was housed in a portable tent, she was then moved to Salonika in Greece before moving on to Macedonia. Unfortunately, her time helping the Serbs was short-lived; she was forced to evacuate back to Greece, and return to the United Kingdom shortly after. Despite being born in 1889, Sarah lived well into the 20th century, dying at the age of 102. It is an honour to tell colleagues her story here today.

Of course, the Scottish Women’s Hospitals were only one way that women helped to win the war. Munitions factories, the civil service and agriculture would have been crippled by the flight of young men to fight on the frontlines had women not stepped forward to help the cause. Propaganda posters from the time give us a visual reminder of the huge need for women to do their bit for the war effort. There can be no question but that that call was answered; Elsie is proof of that. Even when the Government refused to help her, Dr Inglis and her team went above and beyond the call of duty by travelling the 2,000 miles to Serbia to help those in dire need.

That does not even come close to giving a full picture of the time. Many women, while taking on extra practical duties for the war effort at home or abroad, had to endure tremendous heartache and sorrow. Living in constant fear of bad news from the front about their fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, uncles and cousins would have been an experience tantamount to torture, never mind living with the constant threat of invasion. We must not forget the many women who set up or joined branches of the women’s institute, women’s guild and “the rural”, many of which continue today, including in my constituency, as part of that important war effort. Turning surplus produce into vital rations for the frontline was as important a task as any other.

Without the contribution of women such as Elsie Inglis of Edinburgh or Sarah Allan of Kelso, our brave men on the frontline would have gone without bullets in their guns, uniforms on their backs and food in their rations; they would have been left for dead on the battlefield with their injuries unattended. Almost certainly, we would have lost the war, and we may not have been standing in this place today. As the then Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, put it:

“For this service to our common cause humanity owes them unbounded gratitude.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

It is, as always, a great honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) on securing this timely and important debate.

Dr Elsie Inglis made an enormous contribution to humanity. She set up hospitals that helped thousands of injured men, woman and children, combatants and civilians, who were caught up in the horror of world war one in Serbia. She battled to improve hygiene and cleanliness against typhus and other diseases. It is also beholden on us, however, to give credit to her political thinking and the women’s suffrage movement, in which she became involved in the 1890s to protest about the grossly inadequate medical facilities available to women at the time. That led directly to her founding the medical school for women.

We have heard Members speak eloquently about Dr Inglis, a woman who led in making a better world, but I will take this opportunity to discuss a colleague of hers, Bessie Dora Bowhill, another woman who organised and improved others’ lives. She was the daughter of a prosperous farmer in Berwickshire, then part of the constituency of the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont). She was born on 12 April 1869 at Marygold in the parish of Bunkle and Preston.

[John Lamont]

May I correct the hon. Gentleman’s pronunciation of “Marygold”? I wish to ensure that the official record is accurate.

[Martin Whitfield]

I am grateful for that intervention. Bessie’s parents retired to Dunbar, which was then part of the constituency of Berwickshire but is now part of East Lothian. Bessie embarked on a nursing career that took her not only all over Scotland, but on two major overseas adventures. She trained in Edinburgh in the 1890s and she was night superintendent at the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary until May 1900, when the Boer war started. She enlisted in Princess Christian’s Army Nursing Service Reserve and was sent to the No. 13 Stationary hospital outside Durban in South Africa, where she served for the duration of the Boer war. On her return, she worked in hospitals in Falkirk, Dundee and again in Aberdeen before being appointed matron of Perth Royal Infirmary in 1909.

After the outbreak of world war one, she volunteered with Dr Elsie Inglis in the Scottish women’s hospital in Serbia, where she retained her senior position as matron of the unit and served until 1916. When she returned home, our local paper carried Bessie’s report of her ordeal, “Dunbar Nurse’s Experience in Serbia A Tale of Privation and Adventure”, in her own words, including the following account:

“At night the Prussian Guards simply walked into the town without any fuss whatever, and took it. Dr Inglis and her staff were told to prepare beds for 50 Germans, and next morning we received orders to leave the hospital to them. Only half-an-hour was given to us to get out, and all we were allowed to take was our beds and bedding.”

Bessie was awarded the British War Medal and the British Victory Medal for her work in Serbia. She was also awarded Serbia’s Cross of Mercy.

After that, Bessie slips from the historical record. Perhaps she was unable to carry on in nursing after what she witnessed in Serbia. I have found only two subsequent mentions of her: on 26 February 1916, the minutes of the Scottish Matrons Association record that its members agreed to send her a telegram to express their admiration for her heroism; and on 10 June 1916, she hosted tea at her nurses’ home. She died in York on 12 September 1930, aged 61.

I raise Bessie’s case today to highlight the enormous contributions made by women, which far too often go unnoticed and without thanks, but which have been crucial to shaping and deciding the future of us all, and often illuminate and focus the true meaning of moments in history. I think of the strength of the contribution made by women during the miners’ strike of 1984-85. The roots of the strike go back to the aftermath of the devolution debacle in the 1970s. The Labour Government fell in 1979, when they were defeated by one vote in a vote of no confidence; Scottish National party Members were among those who voted against them. The result was the 1979 election and the victory of a Conservative Government under Britain’s first female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. In 2014, in moving a motion in the Scottish Parliament on the miners’ strike, Iain Gray said:

“With so much at stake, it was no surprise, then, that when the dispute came, it was not just any strike... In East Lothian, the Labour club was turned over to the strikers as their headquarters and soup kitchen. The Co-operative was generous to those who were its members as well as its customers. The Royal Musselburgh Golf Club felled its trees for fuel and the council set up a hardship fund.

The wider labour movement mobilised too, in practical ways, collecting food and money to keep the miners—”—[Scottish Parliament Official Report, 20 March 2014; c. 29224.]