Orkney Women Doctors Project (1894 to 1948)

‘Finding Dr Garvie’ is a new exhibition at the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness, that tells the story of Beatrice Garvie’s life as an early woman doctor, and of how she came to live and work on North Ronaldsay during the 1930s and ‘40s.  D/156/430 Putting up the roof for the new bakery at Trebb Beatrice Garvie spent 16 years on the island, and took hundreds of photographs of island life. She was systematic in recording as many aspects of life on the island as she could, and she made sure to give copies of the photographs to the people who were in them. Her own albums of photographs are now held at the Orkney Library and Archive. D156/0336 John & Bertie Thomson of South Ness,  with Dr Garvie's bicycle in the background. Since 2020, Fiona Sanderson has worked to research the story of Beatrice Garvie’s life. Garvie was one of the earliest women doctors to train in Scotland, and she qualified even before she could be awarded a degree - before 1900, well before women w...

  Dr Prudence Gaffikin was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1874.[1] She began working on Papa Westray (Papay) in 1901 at the age of 27, just a few months after qualifying from the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1900.[2] The Papa Westray Parish Minutes of 10 April 1901 note an application from Dr Gaffikin for the post of Medical Officer and Public Vaccinator. The Council agreed to appoint her from 5 May 1901. Dr Gaffikin subsequently resigned (letter of 2 July 1901) with effect from October 1901. No reason for her resignation is noted in the minutes.[3] In 1902 she appears to have moved to Westray to work as an assistant to the Medical Officer there (thought to be a Dr Skea). She is mentioned in the Papa Westray minutes at a joint meeting of the Parish Council and the Medical Committee of 18 August 1902.  The Parish Council ask her if she would return as Medical Officer to Papa Westray – but she declines.[3] Dr Gaffikin was preceded on Papa Westray by Dr Jane Cr...

 The island of Flotta is now known as a farming community, the site of the Flotta oil terminal and is popular with tourists. Until the mid 20 th Century, like most of the islands in Orkney, it was primarily a farming and fishing community. So far in our search we have discovered 8 women doctors on the island between 1897 and 1943. Their practice also included the even smaller island of Fara.  The doctor’s surgery from that time, Springbank, is still in use today. Here is a snapshot of the remarkable women who practised on Flotta during that period. According to Peace’s Almanac of 1897, Dr Margaret Morice , then aged 50, was the Medical Officer on the island.[1] We know little about her time there, but we know she signed death certificates between January and June that year. The population of the island was about 372, with 59 on “South Fara”. Prior to arriving on Flotta, in 1888, Dr Morice was working as a medical missionary in India.[2]  A little later, about 1900,...

One of the ways we hope to tell the story of our Orkney women doctors is through small exhibitions within Orkney and possibly beyond.  Fiona suggested embroidering a quilt, as a ‘thinking piece’, to bring the names of all the women doctors together with a map to pinpoint where they worked across Orkney. It will show links and similarities between them as well as differences.  It provides us, as a group, with a connection to them, through the creation of the quilt, as we speak about their lives on the islands while we plan and sew. Some of the women doctors were skilled sewers, most would have had to make or mend their own clothes. We hope the quilt will provide a tactile artefact that will raise questions and spark discussions among those viewing. Christine was fortunate to find our quilt at a local vintage sale. It was originally from a box bed in the parish of Birsay, from around the 1930s. To begin with Fiona embroidered an outline of the Orkney Mainland and surrounding isl...

This was a request made by Dr Jeannie Newton to the Medical Committee and Parish Council on the Orkney island of Papa Westray in October 1902, as a condition for staying longer in her post as Resident Medical Officer and Public Vaccinator. It indicates one of the challenges facing the doctors working on the island at the time and the problems which faced the island committees in appointing and retaining a resident doctor on the island. CO6/11/1: Public Assistance Papa Westray Parochial Board/Parish Council Minute Book, 1895-1903, Orkney Library and Archive In December 1896, it was recorded that the Parish Council had received a “numerously signed petition” from rate payers and others asking for a Resident Medical Officer to be appointed for the island (population at the time 337). Until this time, Papa Westray   (or Papay as it is known locally) was served by the Resident Medical Officer from the nearest island of Westray. However, the distance between the two islands is 4 miles an...

As Fiona mentioned in her first post, in the Winter of 2023 we began our research into early women doctors in Orkney. [Read her post here] This project followed on from Fiona’s Beatrice Garvie research. We began our searches in 1894, when the first women doctors were allowed to graduate in Scotland. Our end date was 1948, when the NHS came into being and many things in healthcare changed. We had no expectation of what we might find. To date we have discovered fifty-one women who were born or worked in Orkney between 1894 and 1948.   Yes FIFTY-ONE!   As you can imagine we are astonished, thrilled, and feeling a little overwhelmed. Here is one of the earlier Orkney women doctors, Mary Baird Hannay who was a Doctor on the island of Flotta from 1897 to 1901.  This is a photo of Mary Hannay taken in 1897, before she arrived on the island.  She is the only woman taking part in a Post Graduate Class at the new Pathology Institute at the University of Glasgow.  Photo ...