Dr Mabel Ramsay MD, FRCS, MRCOG, DPH (1879-1954)
The daughter of a naval officer and his wife, Annie Ramsay – in her own right a noted suffragist – the family moved to Plymouth thanks to her father’s naval career. Mabel was as ardent a suffragist as her mother – helping to form and acting as Secretary of the NUWSS, and joining the 1913 March to Hyde Park – so far as her medical duties would allow. Once qualified as a doctor (encouraged in her ambitions by Rosa Bale), and with suitable hospital experience behind her, she returned to Plymouth and set up in practice in 1908, only finally retiring in 1945. Throughout her life, Mabel Ramsay was committed to improving the lives of girls and women – setting up the Plymouth branch of the Soroptomists