“Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, a lady with pow’rs of persuasion                  
became Britain’s first woman doctor, and pioneered women’s training
later she built a hospital, beside the road at Euston                                  
and so her vital influence enhanced the health of millions.”                     
 

Through the life of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, we see the role of women in Victorian Britain transformed in medicine, education and politics.

• Elizabeth wants to train as a doctor. British medical schools turn her down.
• Training as a nurse at The Middlesex, male students get her banned from lectures.
• She enrolls with The London Society of Apothecaries, who refuse to let her sit exams till her father threatens legal action. She gains her MD in Paris, where students cheer her.
• She is a leading figure in the establishment of the London Medical School for Women.  She gets a law passed enabling all British medical schools to accept women. She marries and raises a family.
• She establishes a women’s hospital on several sites, finally at Euston in 1890.
• Prominent in the campaign for votes for women, she retires to Aldeburgh and becomes Britain’s first woman mayor.
• After she dies in 1917, the hospital is named Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital.

A prediction. Elizabeth’s friend Emily Davies had vowed to improve women’s education, and founded Girton College. She predicted that Elizabeth would lead women in medicine, and that Elizabeth’s sister Millicent would get the vote for women. Millicent later led the women’s suffrage movement.