French tribute to wartime doctor

Elsie Inglis and her nurses saved the lives of thousands of Allied soldiers

A doctor who has been described as Scotland's Florence Nightingale is to have a tribute in her honour unveiled in France.

Dr Elsie Inglis, who was born in India in 1864, founded the Scottish Women's Hospital for Foreign Service in 1915.

The service helped hundreds of thousands of soldiers injured across Europe in World War I.

The new memorial is to be unveiled in Abbaye de Royaumont to mark the 90th anniversary of the end of the war.

Elsie's father worked in the civil service before her family moved to Scotland and settled in Edinburgh.

She gained her MD at Edinburgh University in 1899 before establishing the first female-run maternity hospital in Scotland.

She became a staunch advocate of women's rights, and helped found the Scottish Women's Suffrage Federation.

After war broke out in 1914, she had the idea of sending teams of women medics to the front line.

Taken prisoner

Elsie was undeterred by opposition from the War Office, who told her to stay home and knit, and despatched two units of the Scottish Women's Hospitals to France. Within months of the war breaking out, her Abbaye de Royaumont hospital, containing some 200 beds, was in place.

A year later, she went with the SWH to Serbia where she was taken prisoner before her release was negotiated.

Archive footage from World War I

She arranged for a total of 14 units - about 1,000 women - to be sent as far afield as Corsica, Russia, Salonika, Romania and Malta.

Two years later, on the the day after her return to the UK, she died from illness and exhaustion.

She was buried with full military honours in Edinburgh. Winston Churchill said of Elsie and her nurses: "They will shine in history."

A plaque has already been placed on the city's St Giles' Cathedral, and monuments and statues to her service have been built in many other European countries.

The French ceremony, at Abbaye de Royaumont, will be attended by relatives, politicians and serving soldiers.