The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Margaret Fairlie: Pioneering university professor who gave patient the ‘will to live’
As job titles go, Scotland ’s first woman university professor is a lofty claim to career fame - and one that brought its own challenges.
Margaret Fairlie was a pioneer in her field but she a l so fa c ed hug e discrimination before and after she attained the role – following a four- year battle – when she was given the Chair of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the Dundee medical college of the University of St Andrews in 1940.
Born in 1891, she grew up on a farm at We s t Ba l m i r m e r, between Carnoustie and Arbroath, and went to Arbirlot School before attending Harris Academy in Dundee.
From 1910 she studied at the Medical School in Dundee, which was then part of St Andrews University.
She graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery degree in 1915, a time when it was “positively indecent to lecture to a woman in physiology and anatomy”, in the words of one professor.
She then w o r ke d in Dundee as professor of midwifery and gynaecology, where she was known by her awed colleagues as “Madam”.
During the First World Wa r , Fa ir l ie drove ambulances for the Scottish Wo m e n’s Ho s p i t a l at Royaumont and undertook specialist training in obstetrics and gynaecology in Manchester.
She returned to Dundee in 1919 and set up a consultant gynaecological practice, while also acting as honorary physician to Dundee Infant Hospital in Broughty Ferry.
In 1925 she became an assistant at Dundee Royal Infirmary’s department of obstetrics and gynaecology and began teaching clinical gynaecology in the Medical School in 1931, when she
was a lso appointed assistant to the professor of midwifery.
Five years later she became head of the department at DRI on the retirement of Professor John McGibbon.
That would normally have led automatically to her being appointed professor in the Medical School in his place, but although staff at DRI and University College Dundee were willing, senior staff at St Andrews were reluctant to appoint a woman and it took four years to get them to agree.
On June 12 1940, Courier carried
The the
headline: “Scotland’s First Woman Professor” and the story was widely reported across the UK. The move was not universally popular, however, and at the time of her retirement in 1956, she was still in a field of her own.
Matthew Jarron, Dundee University ’s curator of museum services, said: “One of Fairlie’s main colleagues in the obstetrics and g yn a e co lo g y department, Alexander E Chisholm, wrote privately that the DRI directors, ‘ h av e done a deed of perfidy’ by recommending her appointment as professor.
“At her induction, the principal of St Andrews, Sir James Irvine, boasted that this was a pioneering move for the university, though it has been suggested that he was one of the main opponen ts o f he r appointment.”
It was 1958 before Edinburgh Un i v e r s i t y appointed its first woman to a chair and a further 22 years before Glasgow followed suit.
Fairlie also acted as honorary gynaecologist to hospitals throughout Angus, ran an antenatal clinic in Nelson Street in Dundee and was actively involved in Dundee
Women’s Hospital. A visit to the Ma r i e Curie Foundation in Paris in the mid-1920s introduced her to the clinical applications of radium and she went out of her way to pioneer its use in Scotland to treat malignant gynaecological diseases.
“Its considerable cost was often beyond DRI’s budget so she purchased radium from her own savings and is said to have stored it in a me t a l container in the meat store in her home on Windsor Street,” said Matthew.
“When the Second World War broke out, all radium in the local area was collected up in case of invasion and buried in the Sidlaw Hills – it may still be there somewhere today.”
Fairlie also developed the forerunner of today’s smear tests for cancer diagnosis and was partly responsible for the beginnings of Dundee’s world-renowned teaching hospital.
She was engaged to her colleague at DRI, Dr Lloyd Turton Price, professor of s u r g e r y, but he died following a surgical operation in 1933, shortly before they were due to be married.
A keen gardener and painter, she loved animals and owned a pet parrot.
“She was known universally to colleagues and students as ‘Madam’,” said Matthew.
“One matron asked her: ‘ Do you think if all the babies you delivered were laid top to tail they would reach from Dundee to Perth?’ Her reply was ‘Yes – and heading for Scone.”
Today, Fairlie, who died in 1963, is commemorated by two plaques – one in Discovery Walk at Slessor Gardens, and one as part of the Dundee Women’s Trail opposite the entrance to the former Dundee Royal Infirmary.
Dundee University also holds a regular Margaret Fairlie L ec ture in her honour.
But perhaps the greatest tribute was from one of her patients, who wrote: “She gave me the will to live.”
Professor Sally Mapstone is principal and vicechancellor of St Andrews University, the second woman in succession to hold the role.
She said Margaret Fairlie was a t ra i l b l a z e r and added: “We must never forget what it took for women like Margaret to achieve such success against the grain.
“S h e r em a i n s inspirational in a world and a sector where there is still much more to be done for equality and diversity.”