Changing Faces of St Marylebone

Garrett fought both prejudice and the medical establishment to become the first woman in Britain to qualify as a doctor. Born in Suffolk, she was educated, as was customary for girls, in the arts, humanities and languages and skills such as deportment. Garrett however yearned to learn maths and sciences and studied these in her own time. Through family friends she met Emily Davies, the early feminist and later co-founder of Girton College, Cambridge, who became a lifelong friend.

In 1849 Garrett met Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in America to qualify as a medical doctor and became determined to follow her lead.

Harley Street in Marylebone had become a thriving community of medical practitioners who had moved into the area to tend to its wealthy residents. However none of them would agree to train Garrett or even employ her as a nurse. She managed to get a job as a surgery nurse at Middlesex Hospital. She tried to enrol in the hospital’s medical school but was refused, and this pattern was repeated with others including Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and the Royal College of Surgeons.

Garrett was forced to continue her studies privately, gaining certificates in anatomy and physiology. She was admitted to the Society of Apothecaries but as a woman couldn’t take up a medical post in a hospital. So in 1865 she opened her own practice at 20 Upper Berkeley Street which included an outpatients dispensary, where poor women could get medical help from a qualified female medical practitioner. This grew into the New Hospital for Women and Children in Marylebone Road, the first hospital staffed entirely by women.

Garrett finally got her medical degree in 1870, in France. She learned French in order to study at the Sorbonne, where the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine allowed women to qualify as doctors. In 1874 she co-founded the only teaching hospital in Britain to offer courses for women, the London School of Medicine for Women.
Garrett was also the first female mayor in Britain, of her hometown of Aldeburgh.