After her education at North London Collegiate School, in 1907 Gladys and her sister went to Lausanne to live with a Swiss family and improve their French. Gladys went on to study at University College London, where she obtained a First Class Degree in Science.
In
1912 Gladys enrolled to study medicine at the London School of Medicine for
Women. As part of her medical experience, she spent 3 months at a Dressing Station
in France in 1914. She qualified in 1916
and worked as House Surgeon at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London and
studied Obstetrics at the Royal Free Hospital.
On 26th June 1918, Gladys went to work at the Scottish Women’s Hospital in Royaumont Abbey, France, looking after French soldiers who were wounded on the Western Front. She remained there until January 1919 working with Miss (Dr.) Frances Ivens, the Hospital’s Chief Medical Officer. Gladys was in charge of the fracture ward and assisted in operations and gave anaesthetics. Gladys wrote in her family autobiography that all the staff were female except the male cook who had been chef to the King of Spain.
After
the war, Gladys became House Physician at the Royal Free Hospital and worked as
Medical Officer of Health for St. Pancras Borough Council in charge of
maternity and child welfare. She met Dr.
Hubert John Burgess Fry, a Pathologist who worked on cancer research at the
Royal Marsden Hospital. Dr. Fry, known
as John, had been a Captain with the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) during the
First World War. They were married in
July 1921. At that time, married women
were not permitted to work and Dr. Miall Smith was dismissed from her post.
Several women's emancipation groups took up her case but to no avail.
In
1922, Richard Reiss invited Dr. Fry and his wife to Welwyn Garden City which
was being built at that time. They
became the City’s first doctors. John
Fry died in 1930 from an infection contracted from his research work. This was
before antibiotics and he could not be saved. Gladys was left with three small
children. By then she was in charge of
maternity and child welfare at Welwyn Garden City but had to resume her
practice as a G.P. After her
retirement, Gladys travelled extensively as a locum doctor and spent nearly two
years in Ghana working in a maternity hospital.
She also worked at a hospital in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, where her job
involved driving a jeep to outlying places.
Dr.
Gladys Miall Smith died in 1991 at the age of 102.
Photographs supplied by Dr. Maill Smith's daughter: Dr. Miall Smith in her WW1 uniform and at Royaument Abbey Hospital in France.
Photographs supplied by Dr. Maill Smith's daughter: Dr. Miall Smith in her WW1 uniform and at Royaument Abbey Hospital in France.
Sources:
Information
kindly supplied by Gladys’s daughter Ann Fox with additional information from “Angels
of Mercy: A Women’s Hospital on the
Western Front 1914-1918” by Eileen Crofton (Birlinn, 2013) – by kind permission
of Birlinn Limited.
and http://www.ourwelwyngardencity.org.uk/page_id__48.aspx 