pletely won at least the outposts had been carried; but for many years Mrs. Garrett Anderson remained the only woman admitted to membership of the British Medical Association, to which she was elected in 1873. Her activities in her chosen sphere were unceasing; for twenty-three years (1875–1897) she was lecturer on medicine at the London School of Medicine for Women, and for twenty years (1883–1903) its dean, while she acted as senior physician to the New Hospital for Women for over a quarter of a century (1866–1892); in 1896–1897 she was president of the East Anglian branch of the British Medical Association.
Possessed of sound judgement as well as natural wit, Mrs. Garrett Anderson aimed at the maintenance of health rather than the cure of disease. Like her friend Miss Sarah Emily Davies [q. v.], the first mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, she desired to improve the whole social and political status of women, believing that the real opposition lay, not, as was sometimes said, between serious study and domestic habits, but between serious study and frivolity. Her own interests were many and varied: gardening, outdoor life generally, music, foreign travel, art needlework. She spoke and wrote frequently on the subjects which she had at heart. Her interest in housing and sanitation found scope during her term of office as mayor of Aldeburgh (1908–1909), where she always had her country home. She was ever an ardent champion of women's suffrage, and a warm supporter of the work of her sister, Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett.
Mrs. Garrett Anderson possessed in a high degree the qualities necessary for pioneers. During the early struggles an opponent wrote of her: ‘She has great calmness of demeanour, a large amount of firmness, usually a good deal of fairness and coolness in argument, a pleasant countenance, a decided but perfectly feminine manner, and attire at once apart from prevalent extravagance and affected eccentricity.’ By her wise statesmanship, steady pressure, and high ideals she was instrumental in securing the admission of women to various qualifying bodies and to important medical societies, and in ensuring the equality of their status with that enjoyed by men. She died at Aldeburgh 17 December 1917, and is buried in the churchyard there, beside her father and mother. She left one son, Sir Alan Garrett Anderson, K.B.E., and one daughter, Dr. Louisa Garrett Anderson, C.B.E., who organized the first hospital managed by women at the front in the European War, and was subsequently head of the military hospital in Endell Street, London.
[The Times, 18 December 1917; Elizabeth Blackwell, Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women, 1895 and 1914; Millicent Garrett Fawcett, What I Remember, 1924; Barbara Stephen, Emily Davies and Girton College, 1927; private information and letters; personal knowledge.]
ANDERSON, MARY REID (1880–1921), women's labour organizer, was born at Glasgow 13 August 1880, the eldest daughter of John Duncan Macarthur, proprietor of a drapery establishment, by his wife, Anne Elizabeth Martin. She was educated at a school in Glasgow, and afterwards studied for a time in Germany at Diez a. d. Lahn. On her return she entered her father's business and became interested in the conditions of shop employees. Moved by their grievances she joined in 1901 the shop assistants' union, and through her interest in this organization was led to work for the improvement of women's labour conditions in general. Becoming known to Sir Charles Dilke [q. v.] and to Miss Gertrude Tuckwell, the honorary secretary to the Women's Trade Union League, Miss Macarthur was appointed, through their influence, general secretary to the League (1903), a position in which she at once came into prominence. She now began to organize women workers everywhere and, managing always to lend dramatic quality to her struggles, obtained wide publicity and sympathy for her cause. Much of her work was connected with the extension of the trade union movement. She created a very large number of local unions, and later stabilized these small organizations by amalgamating them to form the National Federation of Women Workers (1906), of which she became secretary. Another side of her activities was concerned with the question of sweated labour and the establishment of a minimum wage for sweated women workers. In 1906 she assisted in forming the National Anti-Sweating League, of which she became a prominent member, impressing the select parliamentary committee on work in the home (1907) by her evidence in favour of a legal minimum wage. Her work for the women chain-makers of Cradley Heath was especially notable. She was elected by them as a workers' representative on the chain-making trade board (1909), and after this board had
7
