The Fellowship of Women

This book tells the story of the long and determined struggle for women doctors to be accepted into the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

It begins with Eleanor Davies-Colley who stood before the examiners in 1911 and so joined her two younger brothers and her late father as a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, FRCS, the first woman surgical Fellow.  The narrative proceeds through the lives of the Fellows who followed, celebrating some extraordinary achievements, dealing with the commonplace incidents of everyday life, and inevitably the disappointment of ambitions that had to be surrendered.

There is a back-story of course of our Royal college, inheriting as it does the tradition of centuries of conflict, displaying intransigence to change, but in the end inevitably welcoming the determined lady doctors with a fairly good grace.