Helen Lowe

Helen Millar Lowe (10 December 1897 – 6 November 1997) was a Scottish accountant, charity worker and activist. She was one of the first women to become chartered accountants in Scotland, and conducted a successful campaign to ensure that the Bruntsfield Hospital for Women and the Elsie Inglis Memorial Maternity Hospital in Edinburgh remained staffed exclusively by qualified female medical professionals.

Early life The daughter of James Lowe and Margaret Trotter, Lowe attended Berwickshire High School in Duns until the age of 16, when she decided to abandon her studies and begin, instead, a career at the Post Office Savings Bank in London.

To her father's dismay, Lowe lived and worked as a clerk in London throughout WWI, only returning to Scotland years later to take up a post as an apprentice with the firm Chiene & Tate in Edinburgh.

In 1926, after nine years of training at Cheine & Tate, Lowe became one of the first women in Scotland to officially qualify as a Chartered Accountant. Two years later, Lowe set up her private accountancy business in Queen Street, Edinburgh, which she personally ran for most of her life.