LEGACY OF THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN

I enjoyed Stephanie Abbott's piece about 'The Magnificent Seven' [May 2020] especially as their story dovetails in nicely with my grandmother's life. Alexandra 'Mona' Chalmers Watson was born in India in 1872 and studied medicine from 1891 in the Medical College for Women in Edinburgh. In the afternoon of her graduation day in 1879 she was married to Dr Douglas Chalmers Watson which fulfilled her wish not to marry until she could write MD after her name. She was running a private practice with her husband, raising two sons and developing their farm at Fenton Barns when in December 1916 the War Office formed a women’s corps to undertake non-combatant duties in France. The War Office's director of recruiting was Mona’s brother, Brigadier-General Sir Ackland Geddes, so when the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) was formally instituted on 7 July 1917 Mona was appointed its chief controller. Her swift recruitment of 40,000 women was impressive; in February 1918 it was reported that she ‘had organised and set going the most useful corps with conspicuous success’. In August 1917 she was among the first recipients of the newly-instituted CBE. Mona's brothers were hugely successful – Ackland became Ambassador to the USA, Eric was First Lord of the Admiralty and Irvine was chairman of P&O – but Mona was able to emulate their feats because of the pioneering work of Edinburgh's Magnificent Seven. Keith Chalmers Watson, Fenton Barns, East Lothian