When the First World War broke out an Edinburgh doctor named Elsie Inglis volunteered to treat Britain’s soldiers in France.
The suffragist, eager to show that women were worthy of the vote, was dismissed. “My good lady,” a senior officer told her, “go home and sit still.”
Inglis did nothing of the kind. She formed and led the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, helping the wounded and sick of allies including France, Belgium and Serbia.
More than a century after her death — she returned from the Balkans in 1917, exhausted — a row has erupted over a statue proposed for Edinburgh’s Royal Mile commemorating Inglis in her military-style uniform.
Critics, with celebrity backing, want to focus on her work in maternity care, not war. And they
