Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/32

 Eugène Gressin de Bois Girard, of Sancerre, France, by whom he had two daughters; secondly, in 1871 Laura Teresa (died 1909), daughter of [q. v.].  ALVERSTONE, (1842–1915), judge. [See ].

ANDERSON, ELIZABETH (1836–1917), better known as, physician, was born in London 9 June 1836, the second daughter of Newson Garrett, merchant, of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, by his wife, Louisa, daughter of John Dunnell. She was educated at a school at Blackheath, kept by the Misses Browning, aunts of the poet, Robert Browning, and women of considerable powers. She was early impressed by the desirability, for women no less than for men, of an engrossing interest in life, as well as of economic independence. Her attention was already attracted by the idea of the fitness of women for medical studies and the need for their services as doctors when, in March 1859, she attended three lectures on the question of the admission of women to the medical profession, given by Dr. [q. v.], an Englishwoman who, after much difficulty, had graduated M.D. in the United States and had just been admitted to the recently formed British medical register. Stimulated in her desire for medical training by contact with Dr. Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett found two problems confronting her: the difficulty of obtaining the necessary training; and that of inducing a qualifying body to examine her when trained. She obtained some casual teaching and experience at the Middlesex Hospital and began to study in earnest in 1860. But in spite of the kindness of individual doctors, her efforts to enter upon a regular course were frustrated, both by the London hospitals to which she applied, and by the universities of Edinburgh and St. Andrews, where most of the professors and students were violently opposed to the opening of medical courses to women.

After much alternating hope and disappointment, during which she was constantly supported by the practical help and championship of her father, Miss Garrett was at length advised that the Society of Apothecaries could not, by its charter, refuse to admit her to its examinations. She thereupon obtained from the Society the authorization to get her medical education privately from teachers of recognized medical schools, took the examinations of the Society, and in 1865 obtained its licence to practise, thus qualifying as a medical practitioner. The Society of Apothecaries, however, altered forthwith its constitution, so as to debar from qualification in the future those who had not been trained in a medical school. It looked as if the long fight had been fruitless in general results, and as if women would have to go to foreign universities for their medical qualifications. But Miss Garrett now had the right to practise, and in 1866 she opened a dispensary for women and children in Marylebone, which was quickly appreciated, and which before long was converted into a small hospital where women could obtain the medical services of those of their own sex. Known for many years as the New Hospital for Women, Euston Road, its name was changed in 1918 to the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital. It was the first hospital staffed by medical women.

In 1870, just before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, Miss Garrett obtained the M.D. degree of the university of Paris, both the Emperor Napoleon III and the British ambassador, Lord Lyons, giving her sympathy and support in her enterprise. In November 1870 she was a candidate for the London School Board; the husbands of her patients in Marylebone formed themselves into committees to support her candidature, with the result that her name appeared at the head of the poll with 47,000 votes, the highest vote, it is said, ever recorded in these elections; the poet Browning was among her enthusiastic supporters. In 1871 she married James George Skelton Anderson (died 1907), of the Orient steamship line, whose sympathy and co-operation constituted a great factor in her further success.

Thanks in great measure to the excellence of the work done by Mrs. Garrett Anderson, the British examining bodies gradually opened their examinations to women. After the foundation in 1874 of the London School of Medicine for Women by Dr. [q. v.], the requirement of training in a large general hospital was met by the London (afterwards the Royal) Free Hospital admitting women as students to its wards. If the battle was not yet  6