Recognition at last for Ruth
A FEMALE surgeon from Tyneside who saved thousands of wounded soldiers in the First World War has been honoured.
Vicar’s daughter Ruth Nicholson, who was born in 1884 in Newcastle and grew up in Elswick, possessed a single-minded determination to be a doctor at a time when such an ambition was far from easy to achieve.
One of a family of seven children, she went on to have a pioneering medical career and life.
She worked in Gaza in Palestine, and then as a field surgeon in France in the Great War and was a founder member of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 1929.
Now a Newcastle City Council commemorative plaque was unveiled on Friday at her childhood home at 32 Kenilworth Road in Elswick. She was nominated for the honour by Newcastle Soroptimists.
Speakers at the event included Newcastle University’s Professor Alison Murdoch and Baroness Joyce Quin, co-author with Moira Kilkenny of the book Angels of the North: Notable Women of the North East.
Tyneside-born Ms Quin, former MP for Gateshead East and a government minister, featured Dr Ruth Nicholson in her book, writing: “There is no blue plaque nor any other permanent public recognition of Ruth Nicholson’s life.”
That has now changed. Ruth’s parents were the Rev Ralph Nicholson, vicar of St Stephen’s Church in Low Elswick and then St Luke’s Church in Wallsend, and his wife Margaret, who had been orphaned at 16.
Ruth attended Newcastle Church High School and studied at the Durham University College of Medicine, then based in Newcastle, where she graduated in 1909 as the only woman in her year.
To gain surgical experience, she worked at a mission hospital in Gaza.
At the outbreak of hostilities in 1914, her offer to serve as a field surgeon was accepted by the War Office.
But as she was about to board a train in London to France, the chief medical officer of the unit to which she was assigned declined to accept a female surgeon.
Ruth responded by contacting another female doctor, Elsie Inglis, who had founded the Scottish Women’s Hospitals organisation (SWH) and had also faced rejection when she volunteered her all-female staffed hospital units for war service.
But her offer was accepted by the French, and the SWH was given the use of the 13th-century Royaumont abbey, near Paris, as a military hospital under Dr Frances Ivens, with her all-female team of surgeons, orderlies, radiologists and ambulance drivers.
Ruth joined as one of Royaumont’s principal surgeons and Dr Ivens’s deputy, serving until 1919, while Ruth’s sister Alison also worked at the hospital as a nurse,
Royaumont, which had 600 beds by 1916, treated more than 10,000 patients and Ruth, Frances Ivens and colleagues were awarded the Croix de Guerre medal in 1918 in recognition of their efforts.
Ruth also received the Medal of Gratitude and the Medal of Honour from the Ministry of War for Epidemics.
After the war, Ruth embarked on a career in obstetrics and gynaecology.
She worked as a lecturer and gynaecological surgeon in Liverpool and was a founder of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, becoming a Fellow of the college in 1931.
She was also the first female president of the North of England Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
She died in 1963.
PLAQUE FOR FEMALE DOC WHO SAVED THOUSANDS OF SOLDIERS