Margaret_Neill_Fraser

Margaret Neill Fraser

Margaret Neill Fraser

First World War heroine, amateur golfer

Margaret (Madge) Neill Fraser (4 June 1880 – 8 March 1915) usually known as Madge, was a Scottish First World War nurse and notable amateur golfer. She represented Scotland at international level every year from 1905 to 1914.

Quick Facts Personal information, Nationality ...
The grave of the Neill Frasers, Dean Cemetery, memorialises Margaret

Life

Margaret Neill Fraser was born on 4 June 1880 the daughter of Margaret (d.1927) and Patrick Neill Fraser FRSE[1] (d.1905), a botanist. She had an elder sister Rachael A. Neill Fraser (b. 1871) and three brothers: James Watson Neill Fraser (b. 1873), William Neill Fraser (b. 1876)[2] and Patrick (1879 - 1916).[2][3] The family lived at Rockville on Murrayfield Road in western Edinburgh and ran the company Neill & Co, who ran a printers and HMO Stationery Office, both at Bellevue and at 13 George Street.[4] The company had been established by her father's great uncle, Patrick Neill.[5]

Fraser's home golf club was Murrayfield Golf Club. She was runner-up in the 1912 Scottish Ladies Golf Championship, beaten by Dorothea Jenkins and semi-finalist in the 1910 British Championship. She played often at internationals in Ranelagh and Barnehurst.[6] Fraser was a member of the Golfing Gentlewomen and the Ladies' Golf Union.[7]

Fraser was a member of the St Andrews Ambulance Association and a trained nurse. At the outbreak of the First World War she volunteered alongside others such as suffragette doctor Elsie Inglis,[8] with Grace Symonds and Dr Elizabeth Ross (1877-1915) to create the Scottish Women's Hospital in Serbia under the overall umbrella of the French Red Cross. It was locally run by Lady Leila Paget who was married to the ambassador. The majority of the group of women were also suffragettes,[9] for example women doctors surveyed in 1908 had been 538 for the vote and only 15 against.[10] At the time high profile women golfers, like Fraser were a rarity even being allowed to play on men's courses and wanted to demonstrate responsibility and fair play, thus 'most good women golfers of that time tolerated the Suffragists and abhorred the Suffragettes'[11]  

Fraser arrived at the hospital in Kragujevac in Serbia in December 1914[12] in the midst of a typhus epidemic.[13]

Fraser contracted typhus[9] and died[6] on 8 March 1915. Twenty-one other Scottish medical workers died in the same epidemic. Fraser is buried in the Niš Commonwealth Military Cemetery, eastern Serbia.[7] She is memorialised on her parents’ grave stone in Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh.[3]

Fraser's brother, also Patrick Neill Fraser, was a Lieutenant in the Border Regiment and was killed on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme.[3]

Following Fraser's death, she was described as 'perhaps the most popular woman's golfer in Great Britain'[14] the Ladies Golf Union collected funds from international donors sufficient to provide 200 additional beds in Serbian hospitals in her memory.[7] And it was reported that a transport lorry for Elsie Inglis' latest field hospital, was funded by her golfing friends, and seen leading out a column of vehicles by the Serbian Crown Prince George.[15] Fraser's funeral was described as a 'terribly sad affair with the funeral party having to struggle through thick snow and mud.'[8] She was commemorated on the Scottish Women's Hospitals' Roll of Honour:

"There  is  no  Sea

Nor  Time  nor  Space  nor  Division

In

God's  dear  Home

There  is  only  God  and  His strong

Love  and  Peace

and

A    GREAT    REMEMBERING."

"  Let us  remember  before  God  these  women

Who  gave  their  lives  in  the  service  of  others."[12]

Madge Neill Fraser is the only woman listed on Murrayfield Golf Club's Roll of Honour.[16] The British Journal of Nursing expressed regret at her death, and noted she was a nurse and a chauffeur.[17]

Her name is listed on the globe-shaped memorial to VAD and nurses who died in two world wars, in the National Memorial Arboretum, Alrewas, Staffordshire dedicated by HRH Countess of Wessex, GCVO on 14 June 2018 'As the stars in a dark sky they lit up our world.'[18]

Fraser's name[19] is also on the Women's Roll of Honour as part of the Five Sisters window in York Minster.[20]

References

  1. [1]
    Waterston, C.D.; Shearer, A Macmillan (July 2006). Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002 (PDF). Edinburgh: The Royal Society of Edinburgh. ISBN 0-902-198-84-X.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  2. [2]
    General Register Office (1881). "1881 England, Wales & Scotland Census Transcription". General Register Office. GBC/1881/0028901406.
  3. [3]
    Sale, Charles. "Gravestone Photographs Resource Countries index page - Patrick Neill Fraser Grave". Gravestone Photos. GPR grave numbered 74869. Retrieved 14 June 2016.
  4. [4]
    Edinburgh and Leith Post Office Directory 1904-5. Edinburgh: Post Office. 1904.
  5. [5]
    Jackson, Benjamin Daydon (1894). "Neill, Patrick (1776-1851)" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 40. pp. 178–179.
  6. [6]
    "Lady Golfer Dies in Serbia". The Yorkshire Post. 13 March 1915. p. 8.
  7. [7]
    London, Lucy (12 July 2014). "Inspirational Women Of World War One: Women Golfers in WW1 - Margaret (Madge) Neill-Fraser". Inspirational Women of World War One. Retrieved 14 June 2016.
  8. [8]
    Leneman, Leah. (1994). In the service of life : the story of Elsie Inglis and the Scottish Women's Hospitals. Edinburgh: Mercat Press. ISBN 1-873644-26-4. OCLC 30974154.
  9. [9]
    Balabanvić, Avram (30 May 2015). "British Nurses in Serbia 1915". Scottish Women's Hospitals. Archived from the original on 25 June 2018. Retrieved 14 June 2016.
  10. [10]
    Geddes, Jennian F (1 January 2007). "Deeds and Words in the Suffrage Military Hospital in Endell Street". Medical History. 51 (1): 79–98. doi:10.1017/S0025727300000909. ISSN 0025-7273. PMC 1712367. PMID 17200698.
  11. [11]
    informal communication from secretary, Murrayfield Golf Course
  12. [12]
    McLaren, Eva Shaw (1919). A History of the Scottish women's hospitals [microform]. Canadiana.org. London ; Toronto : Hodder & Stoughton. p. 271. ISBN 978-0-665-65037-6.
  13. [13]
    The Newsroom (28 January 2016). "Scottish heroines of the First World War in Serbia". The Scotsman.
  14. [14]
    Bryden, Martin A. Murrayfield Golf Club: a picturesque Edinburgh Golf Links (extract). Edinburgh: Murrayfield Golf Club.
  15. [15]
    "Care of the Wounded". The British Journal of Nursing. Vol. 60–1918. 20 April 1918. p. 276. Retrieved 12 November 2021.
  16. [16]
    McEwen, Alistair. Murrayfield Golf Club Roll of Honour (PDF). Edinburgh: Murrayfield Golf Club. p. 2.
  17. [17]
    "The Passing Bell". The British Journal of Nursing. Vol. 054–1915. 20 March 1915. p. 237. Retrieved 12 November 2021.
  18. [18]
    "Wartime Nurses Memorial". MilitaryImages.Net. 22 August 2018. Retrieved 27 September 2021.
  19. [19]
    Madge Neill-Fraser on Lives of the First World War
  20. [20]
    "York Minster - Five Sisters Window and the Women's Roll of Honour". Lives of the First World War. Retrieved 28 October 2021.
Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Margaret_Neill_Fraser, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.