Women who qualified as doctors in the United Kingdom, 1877-1914: Birthplaces, parentage and training.

Abstract

This paper uses a newly created database of all women who gained a qualification registrable with the General Medical Council between 1877 and 1914 to answer the following questions. Where and when were they born, where were their parents born and where did they train? The paper shows that women doctors born in Scotland or of Scotland-born parentage formed a much higher proportion of the population of that country than those born in England and Wales, or in Ireland. In addition, Scotland trained a disproportionately higher share of those trained in the United Kingdom. Odds ratios are used to establish the significance of this picture. Some provisional ideas are advanced towards an explanation of these findings.