-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(micro)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
This cache celebrates two things; the place where I was born and the amazing, yet under celebrated woman for which the building is named, Elsie Inglis.
Elsie Inglis was born in the hill station town of Naini Tal, India on the 16th of August 1864 to parents of Scottish decent.
She had the good fortune to have relatively enlightened parents for the time who considered the education of a daughter as important as that of the son. After a private education her decision to study medicine was delayed by her mother's death in 1885.
The next year the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women was opened by Dr Sophia Jex-Blake and Inglis started her studies there.
When Dr Jex-Blake dismissed two students for what Inglis considered to be a trivial offence, she obtained funds from her father and some of his wealthy friends, and established a rival medical school, the Scottish Association for the Medical Education for Women. She completed her training under Sir William Macewen at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary.
She qualified as a licentiate of both the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Edinburgh, and the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow in 1892.
She was appalled by the general standard of care and lack of specialisation in the needs of female patients and was able to obtain a post at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson's pioneering New Hospital for Women in London, and then at the Rotunda in Dublin, a leading maternity hospital.
She returned to Edinburgh in 1894 where she set up a medical practice with Jessie MacLaren MacGregor, who had been a fellow student, and also opened a maternity hospital (The Hospice) for poor women alongside a midwifery resource centre, which was a forerunner of the Elsie Inglis Memorial Hospital. The Hospice was within 219 High Street, on the Royal Mile, close to Cockburn Street.
A philanthropist, she often waived the fees owed to her and would pay for her patients to recuperate by the sea-side. She was a consultant at Bruntsfield Hospital for women and children, and despite a disagreement between Inglis and the hospital management, the Hospice joined forces with them in 1910.
Her dissatisfaction with the standard of medical care available to women led to her becoming politically active. She was the secretary of the Edinburgh National Society for Women's Suffrage in the 1890s and she played a role in the early years of the Scottish Federation of Women's Suffrage Societies, acting as honorary secretary from 1906 to 1914.
Despite her already notable achievements it was her efforts during the First World War that brought her fame. She was instrumental in setting up the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service Committee, an organisation funded by the women's suffrage movement with the express aim of providing all female staffed relief hospitals for the Allied war effort. The organisation was active in sending teams to France, Serbia and Russia. When Elsie Inglis approached the Royal Army Medical Corps to offer them a ready-made Medical Unit staffed by qualified women, the War Office told her "My good lady, go home and sit still". It was, instead, the French government that took up her offer and established her unit in Serbia. Elsie Inglis, herself, went with the teams sent to Serbia where her presence and work in improving hygiene reduced typhus and other epidemics that had been raging there. In 1915 she was captured and repatriated but upon reaching home she began organising funds for a Scottish Women's Hospital team in Russia. She headed the team when it left for Odessa, Russia in 1916 but lasted only a year before she was forced to return to the United Kingdom, suffering from cancer.
She died, aged 53, on 26 November 1917, the day after she arrived back in the UK, at the Station Hotel Newcastle upon Tyne.
Her funeral service at St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh on 29 November was "the occasion of an impressive public tribute", according to The Scotsman. Winston Churchill said of Inglis and her nurses "they will shine in history". A separate memorial service was held on 30 November at St Margaret’s Church in Westminster, London.
She is buried in the north section of Dean Cemetery, on a corner north of the central path.
When the Scottish Women's Hospitals were disbanded, it was decided that the funds should be used to provide a memorial to her work. In Edinburgh this resulted in the building of the Elsie Inglis Memorial Maternity Hospital which opened in July 1925 with 20 beds. The bed complement quickly increased and by the time of the hospital's closure it had reached 82. After a few years, a nursing home was built on the site, reusing some hospital buildings and retaining the name of Elsie Inglis. In the 1990s a major part of the hospital was demolished with a small part refurbished into a nursery. The nursery and nursing home are now joined by new housing developments on the site.
Children like me who were born at the Elsie Inglis Memorial Maternity Hospital proudly and affectionately refer to themselves as an Elsie’s baby.
There are only three statues of women in Edinburgh; the statue of Queen Victoria at the bottom of Leith Walk, the sculpture of Dr Helen Crummy in Craigmillar and the generic African woman at Festival Square. There has been movement for a statue of Elsie to be erected outside her former hospital on the Royal Mile, however, lack of funds and space has been the excuse for it not going ahead.
Please be discreet looking for this cache and replace as per the hint, thank you.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
ovfba ba gur snegurfg evtug cebat bs gur srapr uvqqra ol yrnirf.