A hospital has celebrated Brighton’s first female GP who is set to be commemorated in the opening of a new building.
Dr Louisa Martindale CBE became the first female GP in the city after becoming a Doctor of Medicine in 1905.
Now, on International Women’s Day, the Royal Sussex County Hospital has continued to honour her after previously announcing that a new building, opening in April 2023, would bare her name.
Jacqueline Poole, programme manager for facilities and estates at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust, said: “I am delighted that the Trust have chosen to name the building after Louisa!”
“Louisa led the way in proving that women were capable of having careers in medicine, she was the first woman to become a Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and she was dedicated to improving women’s welfare.
Jacqueline, a committee member of the Green Women’s Institute in Angmering, was one of many people who shared Dr Martindale’s name as a suggestion for the new building.
The Louisa Martindale Building, a state-of-the-art new facility housing a critical care unit and the hospitals neurosurgery department, will open in April, 2023.
Writing in her book The Woman Doctor and her Future, Dr Martindale said: “We cannot doubt that the Woman Doctor of the future will give to the scientific world gifts of value we cannot yet measure, a service to humanity illimitable in its fearlessness and devotion.”
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She became the city’s first female GP shortly before helping to set up the New Sussex Hospital for Women in Brighton.
During World War 1 she worked for some time as a surgeon in Royaumont Abbey, France with the Scottish Women’s Hospital.
Her career took her to London in 1922 as a consultant surgeon, but she maintained her connection with the New Sussex Hospital in Brighton, continuing to treat women and children there until 1937.
Dr Martindale was awarded a CBE in 1931 for services to equal medical education and opportunities for women after petitioning the House of Lords on the issue.
She is estimated to have carried out over 7,000 operations during her career before retiring in 1947.
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