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Mabel Lida Ramsay (1878-1954) was a British medical doctor and suffragist, based in Plymouth. She was the third woman to become a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and the first woman to be president of the Plymouth Medical Society. She was decorated for her work with the Women's Imperial Service as a doctor in Belgium and France during World War I.
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Early life and education
Mabel Ramsay was born in London, the daughter of suffragist Mrs A. C. Ramsay. Her mother was active in the suffrage movement into late life, as the eldest of the thirteen women to march from London to Land's End in 1913. Mabel Ramsay completed professional examinations for degrees in medicine and surgery at the University of Edinburgh in 1904 and 1905.
Career
In 1921, Ramsay was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, the third woman to achieve that distinction. In 1929, she became a member of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. She was, for a time, the house surgeon at Glasgow Maternity Hospital, senior house surgeon at Women and Children's Hospital in Leeds, and she worked for the public health service in Huddersfield. In Plymouth, she was consulting gynaecologist and obstetrician at several hospitals and clinics, until her retirement in 1945.
During World War I, Ramsay served with radiologist Florence Stoney as a doctor with the Women's Imperial Service Hospital Unit at Antwerp and near Cherbourg. Upon her return to Plymouth, she gave fundraising lectures on the war effort and women's role in war hospitals.
She was also active on several committees and projects of the British Medical Association. Ramsay was the first woman to serve as president of the Plymouth Medical Society when she took office in 1930. She was a founding member of the Women's Medical Association, and was president of that organisation from 1933 to 1934. She attended the Medical Women's International Association in Geneva in 1922, as part of the British delegation.
Ramsay was active with the Plymouth chapter of the National Union for Women's Suffrage Societies. In 1911, she and her mother hosted "a large party of census invaders", suffragists refusing to participate in the national census, at their home in Plymouth. In 1930, Ramsay was a founder of the Plymouth Soroptomist Club.
Personal life and legacy
Ramsay died suddenly during a meeting of the Medical Women's Federation at Sheffield; she was 75 years old. "She herself would be delighted to know she ended her days still in harness," her colleague Annie Bryce commented on the circumstances of Ramsay's death.
In 2014, Ramsay became the first woman honoured with a blue plaque in Plymouth.