Pioneering Dumfriesshire-born doctor and suffragette Flora Murray was remembered with a special candlelight celebration on Wednesday night.
Held in Dalton Parish Church where her family worshipped, it was the icing on the cake of a series of celebrations marking the centenary of her death this year, which has also included a service at The Crichton Memorial Church, an exhibition at Dumfries Museum and her featuring on a Scottish banknote.
Wednesday’s Gloriously Happy service was organised by the local Dr Flora Murray Appreciation Society and the congregation of Dalton Parish Church for Remembrance Week.
Dr Murray was born in Murraythwaite House near Dalton, east of Dumfries, in 1869. After studying medicine at the London School of Medicine for Women she returned to Dumfries in 1903 to work as a medical assistant at the Crichton Royal Institution, which was then a hospital for people with mental illness.
Together with her partner, Dr Louisa Garrett Anderson, she joined the women’s suffrage movement, founded the Women’s Hospital for Children in London in 1912, and provided medical support to the suffrage movement, testifying to Parliament on the effects of force-feeding in prison and caring for campaigners injured during protests.
In 1914, they founded the Women’s Hospital Corps, and a hospital in Paris operating out of a hotel building.
A year later they moved to London to run the Endell Street Military Hospital.
It is estimated that during WWI, 50,000 seriously wounded British, Commonwealth and Imperial soldiers were treated at Endell Street and at the Corps hospitals in Paris and Wimereux.
(Image: Dumfries and Galloway Standard)
Both women were awarded the CBE in 1917 for their work and Dr Murray was by this time a lieutenant-colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps, the highest-ranked woman in the British armed forces.
Dr Murray died aged 54 in 1923 and is buried near her home in Buckinghamshire.
She shares her gravestone with Dr Anderson, who died in 1943 and has the inscription, Gloriously Happy.
One of the organisers, DJ McDowall said: “This joyful remembrance event commemorated and paid tribute to the life and legacy of Dr Flora Murray through Gloriously Happy live performances and special guest speakers reflecting her life – the way she lived it: with pride, activism, creativity and by utilising the arts.”
After the service, there was tea and cake at an informal gathering at Dalton Parish Church Hall.
