In 1860, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson enrolled as a nurse at the Middlesex Hospital in London . Determined to become a doctor, she attended lectures, studied and got permission to observe the male medical students on their rounds. With no university prepared to let her take the exams, she found that the Society of Apothecaries couldn't legally refuse her and in 1865 she qualified as a doctor. The following year, she opened her own hospital, the St Mary's Dispensary for Women and Children and in 1874, she co-founded the London School of Medicine for Women.
Passionate about women's rights, she joined her sister Millicent Garrett Fawcett in the suffrage movement. In 1908, by now returned to her hometown of Aldeburgh in Suffolk, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson made history again by being elected mayor, the first woman in Britain to hold the post.
