In 1915 Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson were the first women doctors to be formally sanctioned to run a military hospital for the British Army. They were life partners and active suffragettes who, before war broke out in 1914, were considered enemies of the state. But their pioneering medical work throughout the Great War at Endell Street, the army hospital they set up in a former workhouse in Covent Garden, earned them the respect of medical men and the wider public alike. They were featured in newspapers hungry for ‘good news’ stories during the time of national crisis. In 1917 the Tatler called them Murray and Anderson “men in the best sense of that word, and yet women in the best sense of that word also”, while the Daily Star described Endell Street as “no amateur hospital, though it may be run by mere women, and without masculine interference.” I’m delighted that today, another newspaper (The Guardian) has published my review of Wendy Moore’s book Endell Street: The suffragette surgeons of World War One: here’s a link to the online version.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/17/endell-street-by-wendy-moore-review-the-suffragette-surgeons