Ethel Williams

Ethel Mary Nucella Williams (8 July 1863 – 29 January 1948) in Cromer, Norfolk. She was educated at Norwich High School for Girls and then Newnham College, Cambridge.

Williams attended the London School of Medicine for Women and graduated in 1891. She had to gain her hospital experience abroad in Paris and Vienna, because at that time women were not permitted to train in British hospitals, and qualified in 1895. She also took the Cambridge Diploma in Public Health in 1899.

Medical career Williams began her medical career in London as the resident medical officer at the Clapham Maternity Hospital and the Blackfriars Dispensary for Women and Children.

Williams became the first female doctor practicing in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne.

In 1917, Williams co-founded the Northern Women's Hospital, which is now the Nuffield Health Clinic on Osborne Road.

During the Second World War she returned to Newcastle, volunteering at air raid shelters to provide medical aid to civilian casualties. Williams was one of the initial members of the Medical Women's Federation, and was president in 1934 and 1935. It was renamed the North-Eastern Society for Women's Suffrage (NESWS) in 1905. She used her car as transport and means of spreading information about her political campaigns. She became friendly with suffragette and later social worker and Tynemouth councillor Norah Balls through their interest in women's rights.

Williams died in 1948,

Commemoration In 1950, Newcastle University opened new student accommodation named the Ethel Williams Halls of Residence in her memory.

In 2018, a plaque was placed at a house where she lived in Newcastle's Osborne Terrace, which reads, "ETHEL WILLIAMS / 1862–1948 / Lived and worked here 1910–1924. / Newcastle's first female general medical practitioner / A radical suffragist, pacifist, educationalist and / social welfare campaigner / Co-founded both / the Northern Women's Hospital and / the Medical Women's Federation / in 1917."