Alice Stewart Ker

Alice Stewart Ker MRCPI ( Alice Jane Shannan Ker; 2 December 1853 – 20 March 1943) was a Scottish physician, health educator, and suffragette. She was the 13th woman on the registry of the British Medical Association.

Early life and education Alice Jane Shannan Ker was born on 2 December 1853 at Deskford in Banffshire, Scotland. She was the eldest of the nine children of Margaret Millar Stevenson (1826–1900), daughter of James Cochran Stevenson, Liberal MP for South Shields, and Reverend William Turnbull Ker (1824–1885), a Free Church minister.

At the age of 18 she moved to Edinburgh to study "University Classes for Ladies" including anatomy and physiology. While in Edinburgh, she met Sophia Jex-Blake, who was campaigning to have the University issue medical degrees to women. When Jex-Blake's petition was rejected by the University, Ker left Edinburgh to complete her medical training in Ireland where she was awarded her licentiateship from the King and Queen's College of Physicians of Ireland.

Career After completing her training, she returned to Edinburgh sharing a practice with Jex-Blake for a year. She was the 13th woman to be registered as a doctor in Britain. She then undertook further studies for a year in Bern, Switzerland, funded by her campaigning aunts Flora and Louisa Stevenson. When she returned to Britain she worked as a house surgeon at the Children's Hospital in Birmingham, and from there became a general practitioner in Leeds. Her practice was in Birkenhead, where she was the only woman doctor in the area. It was successful and she had many additional duties having become the medical officer to female staff working at the Post Office as well as the Honorary Medical Officer to the Wirral Hospital for Sick Children, the Wirral Lying-In Hospital, the Birkenhead Rescue Home and the Caledonian Free Schools in Liverpool. she joined the more progressive Women's Social and Political Union.

In March 1912, she was imprisoned after being among 200 women breaking windows at Harrods Department store, an action organised by the Women's Social and Political Union. She was force fed whilst in Holloway prison, and as result she was released with ill health before the end of her two-month sentence.

Personal life Ker was a vegetarian and anti-vivisectionist.

Selected works 1891, Motherhood: A Book for Every Woman