Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
A portrait of Garrett Anderson circa 1900, by John Singer Sargent
Born	Elizabeth Garrett (1836-06-09)9 June 1836 Whitechapel, London, England
Died	17 December 1917(1917-12-17) (aged 81) Aldeburgh, Suffolk, England
Education	Studied privately with physicians in London hospitals Society of Apothecaries
Known for	First woman to gain a medical qualification in Britain Creating a medical school for women
Relatives	James Anderson (husband) Louisa Garrett Anderson (daughter) Alan Garrett Anderson (son) Millicent Garrett Fawcett (sister) Newson Garrett (father)
Medical career
Profession	Physician
Institutions	New Hospital for Women London School of Medicine for Women

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (9 June 1836 – 17 December 1917) was an English physician and suffragist, the first woman to qualify in Britain as a physician and surgeon. She was the co-founder of the first hospital staffed by women, the first dean of a British medical school, the first female doctor of medicine in France, the first woman in Britain to be elected to a school board and, as Mayor of Aldeburgh, the first female mayor and magistrate in Britain.

Elizabeth Garrett was born on 9 June 1836 in Whitechapel, London, the second of eleven children of Newson Garrett (1812–1893), from Leiston, Suffolk, and his wife, Louisa née Dunnell (1813–1903), from London.

The Garrett ancestors had been ironworkers in East Suffolk since the early seventeenth century. Newson was the youngest of three sons and not academically inclined, although he possessed the family’s entrepreneurial spirit. When he finished school, the town of Leiston offered little to Newson, so he left for London to make his fortune. There, he fell in love with his brother's sister-in-law, Louisa Dunnell, the daughter of an innkeeper of Suffolk origin. After their wedding, the couple went to live in a pawnbroker's shop at 1 Commercial Road, Whitechapel. The Garretts had their first three children in quick succession: Louie, Elizabeth and their brother (Dunnell Newson) who died at the age of six months. While Louisa grieved the loss of her third child, it was not easy to raise their two daughters in the city of London at that time. When Garrett was 3 years old, the family moved to 142 Long Acre, where they were to live for 2 years, whilst one more child was born and her father moved up in the world, becoming not only the manager of a larger pawnbroker's shop, but also a silversmith. Garrett's grandfather, owner of the family engineering works, Richard Garrett & Sons, had died in 1837, leaving the business to his eldest son, Garrett's uncle. Despite his lack of capital, Newson was determined to be successful and in 1841, at the age of 29, he moved his family to Suffolk, where he bought a barley and coal merchants business in Snape, constructing Snape Maltings, a fine range of buildings for malting barley.