Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Anderson, Elizabeth
ANDERSON, ELIZABETH (1836–1917), better known as Mrs. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, 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. Elizabeth Blackwell [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. Sophia Louisa Jex-Blake [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 completely won at least the outposts had been carried; but for many years Mrs. Garrett Anderson remained the only woman admitted to membership of the British Medical Association, to which she was elected in 1873. Her activities in her chosen sphere were unceasing; for twenty-three years (1875–1897) she was lecturer on medicine at the London School of Medicine for Women, and for twenty years (1883–1903) its dean, while she acted as senior physician to the New Hospital for Women for over a quarter of a century (1866–1892); in 1896–1897 she was president of the East Anglian branch of the British Medical Association.
Possessed of sound judgement as well as natural wit, Mrs. Garrett Anderson aimed at the maintenance of health rather than the cure of disease. Like her friend Miss Sarah Emily Davies [q. v.], the first mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, she desired to improve the whole social and political status of women, believing that the real opposition lay, not, as was sometimes said, between serious study and domestic habits, but between serious study and frivolity. Her own interests were many and varied: gardening, outdoor life generally, music, foreign travel, art needlework. She spoke and wrote frequently on the subjects which she had at heart. Her interest in housing and sanitation found scope during her term of office as mayor of Aldeburgh (1908–1909), where she always had her country home. She was ever an ardent champion of women's suffrage, and a warm supporter of the work of her sister, Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett.
Mrs. Garrett Anderson possessed in a high degree the qualities necessary for pioneers. During the early struggles an opponent wrote of her: ‘She has great calmness of demeanour, a large amount of firmness, usually a good deal of fairness and coolness in argument, a pleasant countenance, a decided but perfectly feminine manner, and attire at once apart from prevalent extravagance and affected eccentricity.’ By her wise statesmanship, steady pressure, and high ideals she was instrumental in securing the admission of women to various qualifying bodies and to important medical societies, and in ensuring the equality of their status with that enjoyed by men. She died at Aldeburgh 17 December 1917, and is buried in the churchyard there, beside her father and mother. She left one son, Sir Alan Garrett Anderson, K.B.E., and one daughter, Dr. Louisa Garrett Anderson, C.B.E., who organized the first hospital managed by women at the front in the European War, and was subsequently head of the military hospital in Endell Street, London.
[The Times, 18 December 1917; Elizabeth Blackwell, Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women, 1895 and 1914; Millicent Garrett Fawcett, What I Remember, 1924; Barbara Stephen, Emily Davies and Girton College, 1927; private information and letters; personal knowledge.]