Balkan Studies | Info

Nurses of World War I include the Scottish Women’s Hospitals organization. Even though this fact is generally less known, during World War I they supplemented the nurse corps of the Allied Powers on the Eastern front, helping the Russian, Romanian and Serbian troops.

Suffragist Movement to War

The nurses were members of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals (SWH), an organization founded at the beginning of World War I as an expression of patriotism and feminism. The main supporter of the SWH was the National Union of the Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), and members of it formed the London sub-committee of the SWH.

In Edinburgh, the headquarters of the SWH was provided by the Scottish Federation of the Women’s Suffrage Societies, of which Dr. Elsie Inglis (credited as founder of the SWH nurse corps) was also a member.

The founder chose this name for their organization with the aim of attracting personnel as well as sponsorships from woman suffragists, but not only them. Even women who did not personally agree with female suffrage were admitted in the SWH as long as they wished to contribute to the war effort as women.

Women suffragists joined the SWH for different reasons, but above all to prove their loyalty to the British Empire (Dr. Inglis herself was born in India in 1864, where her father was working for the East India Company).

Other reasons were the adventurous and brave spirit of some of them, while the feminists among them were determined to prove that women were useful in a war and deserved the right to vote.

Women at War in the Balkans

In April 1915 Dr. Elsie Inglis arrived in Serbia with her nurse corps, but they were captured near Vrnjatchka Banja by Austrian troops in November 1915. Most of her unit was detained until February 1916, although they were still allowed to practice their medical profession.

• Transbalkan Train

  The original Transbalkan departs from Budapest via Bucarest-Sofia to Thessaloniki and retour The model is with a BDZ-loco, the passenger vehicle from ...

• Balkan Torrent

• Balkan Tours Belfast

• The Balkan War Of 1912 13

• List Of Balkan Countries