Jessie Ann Scott

Early life Jessie Scott was born in Brookside, North Canterbury, New Zealand, in 1883 and attended Christchurch Girls' High School. She studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, graduating MB ChB in 1909 and MD in 1912. During this time, she was a guest speaker, along with Dr Elsie Inglis, Chrystal MacMillan and Alice Low, at an NUWSS meeting in Edinburgh's Café Oak Hall.

She then became assistant medical officer to the London County Council for three years from 1910 to 1913. She returned to New Zealand in 1913 and practiced in Auckland, including leading an isolation hospital during the smallpox epidemic in 1913.

Following the outbreak of World War I, Scott's friend Ettie Rout approached her on behalf of the New Zealand Volunteer Sisterhood. Rout requested that Scott lead the first band of volunteers to nurse the sick and wounded of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in Egypt. She served in Serbia, where she was captured by the Austrians and kept a prisoner of war for four months, and later became a medical officer with the Serbian Army. Scott was released and allowed to return to England in February 1916.

In 1920, after the war, Scott returned to London where she completed postgraduate work in gynaecology and paediatrics at Chelsea Hospital for Women and Victoria Hospital for Children, and worked for the London County Council as a medical officer.

Jessie Scott died in August 1959 in Christchurch.