UK Women Doctors in the Thirties

A New Doctor at the Orchard Cottage Hospital is set in the thirties. Back then and despite victory in securing the right to vote women were still second class citizens. They didn’t have the same rights either in education or the professions. In the thirties there were roughly only 2000 female doctors. For the most part the male establishment had an uphill path to climb.
However these were clever women and some fought their way through. One of these was Josephine Barnes, (1912-1999) the first president of the British Medical Association, an obstetrician and at the pinnacle of her profession.
Another was Emily Blackwell (1826-1910 and born in Bristol) who earned her qualification in the United States. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836 – 1917) co founder of the London School of Medicine for Women.
They were the vanguard of equality in the medical profession, clever women that fought their way to the top and eventually earned the respect of their male colleagues and the profession in general.
In the first novel of The Orchard Hospital series, the female doctor, Frances Brakespeare, is forced to leave London for a small country town where old prejudices die hard and pre-NHS the local hospital is ran by landed gentry and philanthropists.