1939: Recalling a key moment in Votes for Women campaign

RUSSELL LEADBETTER

TO quote from the University of Glasgow website: “Marion Gilchrist (1864-1952) was the first woman to gain a medical degree in Scotland and the first female graduate of the University. “She was Vice-president of the Queen Margaret College Student Union, Vice-president of the Literary and Debating Society, and Convener of the Queen Margaret College Committee of the Glasgow University Liberal Club. The Marion Gilchrist Prize is named for her.”

She became a GP, specialising in eye diseases, and later worked as Assistant Surgeon for Diseases of the Eye at the Victoria Infirmary then as an ophthalmic surgeon at Redlands Hospital for Women. In 1903, the biography continues, she joined the Glasgow and West of Scotland Association for Women’s Suffrage, but left in 1907 to join the more radical Women’s Social and Political Union and the Women’s Freedom League.

On February 6, 1939, Dr Gilchrist presided over a dinner at Glasgow’s Ca’doro restaurant in celebration of the 21st anniversary of the Representation of the People Act (1918), which granted the vote to women over the age of 30 who met a property qualification.

One of the speakers, Miss Vera Holme, recalling the active militant days, said that, with the aid of Edith Craig, Olive Terry and others, she had gummed a “Bill of Rights” placard to a portrait of Herbert Henry Asquith, the Prime Minister, on display in the Royal Academy – a feat she had pulled off under the eyes of a detective.