Dan Snow's History Hit - Britain's First All Women Military Hospital

Episode Date: July 13, 2020

When the First World War broke out, the suffragettes suspended their campaigning and joined the war effort. Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson headed out to France, setting up two small military hospitals - whilst battling fierce opposition on account of being women. But Flora and Louisa proved so effective that the War Ministry requested they returned to London and establish a hospital in a vast and derelict old workhouse in Covent Garden's Endell Street. The medical marvel which sprung up contained 573 beds, treated 26,000 wounded men over the next four years, and was staffed entirely by women. Wendy Moore joined me on the pod to tell this remarkable story, and discuss the legacy of these pioneering women. Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everybody, welcome to History. I've got a great story for you this time. I've got Wendy Moore on the podcast and she's written about the absolutely extraordinary tale of the pioneering suffragette doctors and life partners Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson. They wanted to volunteer in the First World War to go and help deal with the Thai flood of casualties that were being created on the terrible battlefields of the First World War. But of course, they weren't allowed because they were women. So they actually set up a hospital in London in a derelict old workhouse in Covent Garden and employed, from the top to the bottom, women. Surgeons, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, everyone, porters, everybody was a woman. And

predictably enough, it became the best regarded, the most desirable hospital to be sent to if you were a wounded soldier. The quality of care of mind and body was thought to be much higher than anywhere else. This over 500 bed hospital ended up looking after 26,000 wounded men over the next four years. Soldiers begged to be sent to Endell Street. You'll listen to the pod, but at the end of war, you'll be terribly surprised to learn that Flora, Louisa and their staff were sidelined out of the medical profession, largely. There's another extraordinary story about the First World War, but also the struggle for equality. It really is fascinating stuff. You can get more of these podcasts. The whole back catalogue is available on our subscriber

channel, History Hit TV. It works like Netflix, but it's for history. We've got all the podcasts, but we've also got hundreds of documentaries on there. If you go to historyhit.tv, if you use the code POD1, P-O-D-1, you'll get a month for free, and then you'll get your second month, just one pound, euro, or dollar. If you're interested in the First World War, there's plenty on there, or medical history as well. Please go and check it out. In the meantime, here's Wendy Moore. Wendy, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. It's a pleasure to join you. What a wonderful story this is. Okay, well, let's start before the war. The subjects of your book, what are they up to? The two main characters in the book, Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson, are women doctors.

They've been suffragettes before the war and practised as women doctors. They were quite experienced. They'd had 10 years experience each. But as most women doctors at the time, they had been restricted to treating only women and children. So women doctors had earned the right to qualify as doctors about 50 years earlier, but they were still confined to treating only women and children. They were barred from most mainstream hospitals. So just like any male doctors, they wanted to do their bit during the war. Many women doctors actually volunteered at the start of the war to the army, but their services were rejected. So Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett-Anderson, they approached the French Red Cross and offered their services to go to France.

Why did the British army reject female doctors? It was the culture at the time that women doctors were not as capable as men. In particular, they thought that men would not be able to deal with the idea of being treated by women doctors. They thought women doctors would not be able to cope with military surgery, that they wouldn't have the strength or the strength of mind. These are really Victorian attitudes. Even when it was very clear from the earliest days of the war this was going to be a very high casualty conflict, a very high mortality conflict, at what stage did the British government, if and when, did they change their

minds and see sense? Well really it was Endell Street that led the way. It was Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson who managed to change minds because they were the first women medical unit to go to France so they recruited three more doctors and then eventually another two so they took a unit of 40 more women and four men to Paris, ran a hospital in Paris and army officials came to look around their hospital and initially it was really curiosity as much as anything else. They wanted to see this novelty of a hospital run by women treating soldiers. But the army officials who came to look around the hospital in Paris were so impressed that they came away

thinking that they became advocates for the women and allies for the women. And they were convinced that women could run a military hospital from that point on. So initially the army then allowed Flora and Louisa to run a hospital near Boulogne that was under the auspices of the army and then in May 1915 they invited them to set up a major military hospital in the heart of London and that was the first military hospital and the only military hospital to be run by women and staffed by women. And so that was what changed attitudes. From that point on, the army then, partly through necessity, but partly through having been convinced, they then did accept women doctors into the army for the first time. When you look at the writing of these women, how close are you able to get to their thoughts?

I mean, it's just astonishing that they were so persistent in trying to gain access to an entire system of patriarchy that just rejecting them and calling them lesser beings. I mean, why? What was their motivation? I'm just incredibly humbled when I read what they have to write. They were just amazingly resilient and determined and resourceful. Many of them had actually been suffragettes, so they had joined the suffragette movement because of the discrimination they had faced as doctors. There were a large number of women doctors who refused to pay income tax because women were not allowed the vote. They were utterly determined.

In fact, Louisa Garrett Anderson's mother had been the first woman in this country to train to become a doctor in 1865. So I think she had been brought up in that atmosphere of women determined to do their bit but they were angry really. Flora Murray in particular she wrote articles about how angry she was that women were barred from most medical schools, barred from almost all mainstream general hospitals. So they were just determined to prove that women doctors were every bit as capable as their male counterparts. How do the two groups of men, one is the patients and the other is the

sort of supervisors, if you like, the people giving them permission, they've won over the authorities. Was that necessity? Were they reluctant? Was it a sign of the devastating numbers of people being killed and wounded in France in early 15? Yeah, well, when Sir Alfred Keogh, who was the head of the Royal Army Medical Corps, invited them to run a hospital in London, his army colleagues warned him against it. It was seen as a big gamble. He was told by his colleagues that it wouldn't last six months, that they didn't believe that women could run a military hospital or that women doctors could provide the right treatment or that men would accept it. But he took that gamble, he believed in them, supported them and Endell Street Hospital

not only lasted six months but it thrived and it became hailed and lauded by the press as the most successful hospital and the most efficient and the most popular so that in fact the fears too that the men wouldn't accept women doctors were completely unfounded because male patients initially it was a huge shock and a big surprise to find that they were being surrounded by women doctors not just women doctors but women orderlies women stretcher bearers women pharmacists all the staff industry apart from a tiny handful of orderlies were women and some of them initially thought they'd been sent there to die because that was the only explanation they could think of for arriving at a hospital run by women but very

quickly they completely accepted being treated by women and then many of them were so enthusiastic they would say this was the best hospital in London, theirs was the best doctors, they were really proud of the hospital. And many of them talked about it in later life, told their families about it. Tell me a bit more about these two remarkable women at the heart of it. Well, they were both women doctors, they were both suffragettes, and they were also life partners. They had met each other, they lived together as a married couple, they had identical diamond rings, and they were absolutely devoted to each other. So really proving that they could run this hospital together was also an act of

love. It was a demonstration of their commitment to each other. The fact that everyone in this hospital was female, did it lead to new thinking or was it just they were doing conventional medicine and doing it as well as or better than the men? I think both things were true because I think Laura Murray, who was the chief physician, so she was really the medical director of the hospital, Lisa Garrett-Anderson was the chief surgeon. They were both determined to prove they could run a military hospital every bit as professionally as the men could. So they prided themselves on professional care, efficient care, and they did actually pioneer certain treatments, including a new antiseptic

ointment. But at the same time, they really wanted it both ways in a sense, because they also did think they ran a hospital that was different to the hospitals run by men, with a woman's touch. Lisa Garrett Anderson, she described the men as being more wounded in their minds than in their bodies. And so they went out of their way to make it a homely atmosphere. So all the wards were brightly coloured, they had fresh plants, fresh flowers, they had lovely colourful bed quilts. The courtyard, it was an old workhouse that had been converted into the hospital. So this grim grey courtyard was turned into a tranquil green haven. And they put on loads of entertainments for the men.

There were about a thousand entertainers who visited every year. And they had the men making embroideries, you know, lovely needlework. So, you know, they really did want it to be a very homely place. And a lot of the men commented on that, in fact, as well. And it became famously the place that everyone wanted to go. Well, apparently some men who abounded at the Somme in particular said they wanted to go to Endell Street. So it had a word of Endell Street had obviously got back to the front. So they treated British men, obviously, but also Australians and New Zealand soldiers and from Canada as well.

And so news of Endell Street also went back, went round the world. So there were reports from newspapers in Australia where soldiers were relating being treated at this hospital. They sort of would nickname it the Suffragettes Hospital or the Flappers Hospital and talk about the hospital manned by women. So it was known throughout the world. Were they seen as a one-off or did their example allow other women to join the other army hospitals elsewhere? It remained the only hospital that was run completely by women and staffed by women but their example did encourage the army to then recruit women doctors and so in 1916 they recruited more than 80 women doctors who went out to work

in Egypt and Malta and Africa. They had a hellish time in fact and although they went out there as doctors they were not allowed the same privileges as their male counterparts so there are really sad letters about how poorly they were treated but at least they were welcomed into the army. By the end of the war of course women doctors were not wanted again and so they were no longer allowed to be recruited into the army at all. So yes let's talk about the end of the war. You'd have thought this had been a rather remarkable experiment. They'd more than proved their ability to serve alongside or even in command of men. What happened to these women and the other women who joined? Endell Street closed at the end of 1919. In fact, it had stayed open for another year

after the war ended to treat victims of the Spanish flu pandemic. And then it closed. And Winston Churchill, in fact, was the war minister by then. And he made it very clear to women doctors that they were no longer wanted. So women doctors' temporary contracts were ended in the army. They weren't allowed to join the army again until the Second World War when they were in demand again and women doctors everywhere who'd kept hospitals running, kept GP practices running during the First World War, their contracts were ended. Medical schools which had stayed open only because they recruited women medical students, they now closed their doors to women so there was a complete backlash against women all the women

who'd worked at Endell Street were now expected to go back to doing their previous jobs to just treating women and children so many of them did that they had no option many more of them retired or they went abroad which was to do missionary work which was the only way they could carry on doing the kind of jobs they'd learnt to do. So all that experience of women learning, you know, surgery and proving they could do the same jobs as male doctors was completely lost. What was that experience like? The freedom, the ability to work? How did they respond to that as individuals? I mean, it's interesting because there were obviously other women at the hospital as well. So the nurses, but all of the orderlies were also women. They had a really hard, gruelling, tiring time, very long hours. They were under attack from the air. They'd been through the, not only the war, but the Spanish flu as well. And yet they often, many of them later,

described working at Endless Street as the happiest time of their life because they'd had this independence, financial independence and freedom of movement for the first time in their lives. Many of them had not worked before. They'd had relative lives of leisure, really. And so this had been the first opportunity they'd had to do something that they were good at and that was fulfilling. Many of them talk, you know, the great sadness about having to leave this work and go back to their fairly humdrum lives again. What life did they go back to? I mean, you mentioned some of them went, did missionary work, found ways to keep practising.

Many of them didn't, I guess. Well, yes, indeed. Very few of the doctors at Endless Street went on to do significant medical work. One of them, the pathologist, she did work in cancer treatment and did pioneer treatments. But most of them went back to treating women and children. Some went abroad. There had, in fact, been five surgeons from Australia who'd worked at Endless Street. They went back to Australia and they had exactly the same experience. They were then barred from working in mainstream hospitals and were also barred from top jobs in even women's or children's hospitals. So they had to go back to the lowest paid ranks of medicine

again. And that was the same for many of the other women who'd worked at Endell Street in different jobs. They went back to their families. They come from quite middle class backgrounds. So they went back to basically doing charity work and the social round and some of them married. But they always look back on working at Endell Street as being the highlight of their lives. What's the legacy? Did they feel that they had contributed and some women in society being given the vote for that first post-war election. That must have been some satisfaction, I suppose. Some of the suffragist aims had been met.

Yeah, I mean, certainly they did regard the victory in women getting the vote as being a demonstration of the work they've been doing in medicine and in other areas. So Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson had a big celebration when the vote came through Parliament at Endell Street. So that was a big victory. But of course, that was only the vote for women over 30 with the right property qualifications. So most of the women who worked at Endell Street actually were not entitled to the vote. So that didn't affect them at all.

So Flora Murray actually wrote a book about the experience of running Endelstreet after the war. She definitely felt that they had proved that women doctors were equal to male doctors. So no more could that argument be used that women doctors were not up to the same standard as men. They'd made that point. But they were then pushed back into the sidelines again. It was a long battle before that changed really not until the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 were medical schools and hospitals made to treat women applicants the same as men. That's pretty astonishing. And it's only in the last 10 years or so that women have been entering medical schools in equal numbers to men and now

48% of the medical workforce in Britain is female so it's almost finally 100 years after industry closed almost now equal yeah. And young women outperforming young men in every single pre-med high school leaving certificate I did say elsewhere in the world. So things have changed. They were on the right side of history. Yes, it took a long time and they didn't live to see it, unfortunately. But they were the trailblazers. They proved that women could do the same as men. And they would have said not just the same as men, but better than men. That was their creed, really. That's what they said. We're going to do this better than the men. They told their staff that they had to be not only as good as men, but better than men.

They knew they had to really prove their point. The motto of the hospital, they were very upfront about being feminists and suffragettes. The hospital's motto was deeds, not words. And that's the creed that they lived by. There are so many books being written at the moment about these pioneering women whose stories were overlooked, were forgotten. It's taking scholars like you to put these people back in the positions of prominence they deserve. It must be exciting being part of this wave of historiography now that's finding and encouraging us all to remember these pioneering women,

and not just pioneering within the feminist movement, but actually in medical and political history as well. Yes, I mean, I don't really necessarily look at it in that way. I'm interested in social history, and particularly in women's history. My key interest is writing stories. I love these amazing stories that haven't been told before. So that's what drew me to writing about industry in particular. You know, it was a great, amazing story that's almost been forgotten, really. And I wanted to bring it to light because it was just a remarkable incident but also because it is a very important story and I think it has lots to tell us today not only about women proving they're as good as men but also about getting through

really hard times and I think there's lots of parallels with how people got through the war and how they've got through the current situation. Also how dealing with a pandemic as well. Well, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. The book is called? It's called Endless Street. This is the UK edition. Endless Street in Britain.

It's actually called No Man's Land in America. OK, well, if you're listening in America, it's No Man's Land. And if we're listening in Britain, it's Endless Street. As often,'re listening in britain it's endell street as often i think that american title's a bit it's a bit more exciting that's often the way i think opinions are divided about okay okay i don't i don't want to bring you into that i don't get in trouble with your publisher thank you so much for coming on the podcast thank you very much, Dan. I've always had the history of my own children. Hi, everyone. It's me, Dan Snow.

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