Edinburgh Street Historians – Unique Historical Walking Tours

11 Amazing Women from Scottish History

Scotland has been host to a mighty range of women, and this month we’ve celebrated quite a few over on our Instagram.

But not everybody in the world follows our Instagram, though they should because it’s amazing, and just in case the tech brains decide to do something silly like deleting the site because AI told them to, I’m also uploading it here.

There is more that can be said on all of these women but this is a good introduction to the topic of women in Scottish history.

Let’s explore together.

The Amazing Scottish Women from history

This list of amazing Scottish women but are selected by the Street Historians women expert, Roisin Kenny Caird. She came up with our Forgotten Women’s tour.

Women from Scottish History #1 Mary Somerville

Picture of woman with caption "Mary Somerville, Scientist, Polymath, Genius. 19th-century Queen of Science. Published books on biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, geology, molecular science. Hugely respected and well reviewed. The first scientist. First woman to have work presented to the Royal Society (by her husband as women were banned). Mathematically predicted the discovery of Neptune.

Mary Somerville is amazing. After reading Roisin’s picture, I got inspired to look her up and found some other cool facts.

Her parents didn’t like her reading so took her candles away. She rebelled by memorising the books and repeating them from memory later in bed.

She’s on the Royal Bank of Scotland £10 note.

Williamina Fleming

a picture of a woman captioned "Williamina Fleming, Astronomer and Human Computer. Grew up in Dundee, married and emigrated with her husband to America aged 21 Husband abandoned her after her son was born. Got a job as a maid at the Harvard Observatory, showed talent for analysing stars and was trained to do so. Became an astronomer. Became a founding member of the harvard human computers. Ctalogued 1000+ astronomical phenomena and discovered the horsehead nebula

Williamina Fleming feautres in a popular, but unproven story, where the director of the Harvard Observatory said “my Scottish maid could do a better job!” to some graduate students, and then she proved it. Still, she has quite the CV and was highly respected amongst astronomers.

Agnes Yewande Savage

a picture of a woman with the caption, "Agnes Yewande Savage. Born in Edinburgh, first woman of West African descent to obtain a university degree in medicine (1st class) and first female Nigerian doctor. Battled gender and racial discrimination throughout her life but persevered and inspired other West African women to become doctors. Helped established a training school for nurses in Accra, modern day Ghana"

Agnes Yewande Savage was a highly successful Scottish woman who was nearly as talented at music as she was at medicine. We’ve written about her before as part of this article.

Elizabeth Wiskemann

`a picture of a woman with the caption "Elizabeth Wiskemann, translator, writer, and journalist in 1930s Berlin - spoke out against the Nazis. Became an anti-NAzi spy. Made the first reports of concentration camps in Nazi Germany. Used her resources and cunning to save hundreds of Hungarian Jewish people from Auschwitz. First female professor at University of Edinburgh."

Elizabeth Wiskemann has an incredible biography. It’s amazing that the least amazing thing about her is that she was the first female professor at the University of Edinburgh. For anyone else, that’d be the height of achievement.

One thing that’s truly interesting about her is that her reports into the concentration camps were discouraged. She was told in a letter the intelligence agencies were “not interested at this stage in the war in German atrocities in the occupied territories or in the shootings of Jews in Poland and Hungary.” Her continual reporting helped the evidence gathering later.

Isabella Fyvie Mayo

picture of woman with cat captioned: "Isabella Fyvie Mayo. Writer, anti-racism campaigner. Wrote and published articles and novels under the pseudonym Edward Garrett. Co-founded the society of the recognition of the brotherhood of man, which campaigned against racial discrimination in the UK and US. Ethical anarchist, pacifist, anti-imperialist, and anti-racist campaigner. Popularised the works of Tolstoy in Britain. Home in Aberdeen was an asylum for Asian Indians"

Women from Scottish History #6 Agnes Randolph, “Black Agnes”

a painting of a woman with the caption "Agnes Randolph, Countess of Dunbar, defended her castle from a huge English army during the 2nd war of independence. Held the castle for 5 months until reinforcements arrived with only a few guards and maid-servants. Dusted the battlements in between bombardments, Smashed the invading siege towers with their own boulders. Captured a soldier who had bribed his way through the gate. Still remembered today through ballads and folk songs."

Black Agnes is one of the great women from Scottish history. She helps to show that women not fighting in war is a myth. Women have often taken the call to defend their homes.

One of the best, possibly apocryphal, stories about Agnes is that the English invaders threatened to kill her brother in front of her to get her to surrender. She replied that would only strengthen her own claim on the castle.

Saroj Lal

picture of women in sari captioned "Saroj Lal, first BAME teacher in Edinburgh. First Asian Woman in Scotland to be appointed a Justice for Peace. Set up Edinburgh's first interpreting and translating service. Founder of the Edinburgh Hindu temple"

Saroj Lal is particularly respected for her work in combatting racism.

Grace Cadell

picture of woman in graduation gown captuioned "Grace Cadell, surgeon and suffragist. One of the first women to study medicine in the UK, dedicated her work to the care of women and children. Cared for the suffragettes who had been tortured and subjected to force feeding. Community organiser whose home was a sanctuary for suffragettes."

Grace Cadell was one of the first students at the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women. She was a contemporary of Elsie Inglis, an Edinburgh legend who is going to get a statue at some stage but it is taking a while.

Chrystal MacMillan

a picture of a woman captioned "Chrystal MacMillan. First female science graduate at Edinburgh University (first class hons). First woman to present a case to the House of Lords (women's suffrange). Co-founder of the women's international league for peace and freedom. One of the first female lawyers in Britain."

Chrystal MacMillan is one of these interesting figures who has had a major impact on the world as her ideas helped inspire the League of Nations and the work of the United Nations. Nonetheless she is underappreciated.

Mary Barbour

a picture of a woman captioned, "Mary Barbour, Activist and politician. Leader of the Glasgow Rent strikes which successfully implemented a rent cap in WW!. Founder of the women's peace crusade. One of Glasgow's first female councillors. Advocated for women and children's health and welfare services."

Mary Barbour has a mural in Glasgow as a way of memorialising her work. It doesn’t look much like her.

Christine Maclagan

a picture of a scottish woman captioned "Christine Maclagan, antiquarian and archaeologist. One of Britain's first female achaeologists. Pioneer of archaeological stratigraphy - using the layers of rock to identify dates and context of findings. Developed new methods for recording sculptured stones. One of her discoveries, the livilands broach, went unexcavated for decades because it was discovered by a woman. In 2016 a project was announced to uncover the broach that sexism lost"

So there we have it. All about how many Scottish women have had important impacts on the world. We hope you had a good time and if you want more on this, forgotten women tour here, and our Instagram is on page.

The writer of this piece had a lot of help on this one.

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