Margaret Neill Fraser

Margaret (Madge) Neill Fraser (4 June 1880 – 8 March 1915) usually known as Madge, was a Scottish First World War nurse and notable amateur golfer. She represented Scotland at international level every year from 1905 to 1914.

Life

Margaret Neill Fraser was born on 4 June 1880 the daughter of Margaret (d. 1927) and Patrick Neill Fraser FRSE (d. 1905), a botanist. She had an elder sister Rachael A. Neill Fraser (b. 1871) and three brothers: James Watson Neill Fraser (b. 1873), William Neill Fraser (b. 1876) The company had been established by her father's great uncle, Patrick Neill.

Fraser's home golf club was Murrayfield Golf Club. She was runner-up in the 1912 Scottish Ladies Golf Championship, beaten by Dorothea Jenkins and semi-finalist in the 1910 British Championship. She played often at internationals in Ranelagh and Barnehurst. Fraser was a member of the Golfing Gentlewomen and the Ladies' Golf Union.

Fraser was a member of the St Andrews Ambulance Association and a trained nurse. At the outbreak of the First World War she volunteered alongside others such as suffragette doctor Elsie Inglis, with Grace Symonds and Dr Elizabeth Ross (1877–1915) to create the Scottish Women's Hospitals in Serbia under the overall umbrella of the French Red Cross. It was locally run by Lady Leila Paget who was married to the ambassador. The majority of the group of women were also suffragettes, for example women doctors surveyed in 1908 had been 538 for the vote and only 15 against. At the time high-profile women golfers, like Fraser were a rarity even being allowed to play on men's courses and wanted to demonstrate responsibility and fair play, thus "most good women golfers of that time tolerated the Suffragists and abhorred the Suffragettes".

Fraser arrived at the hospital in Kragujevac in Serbia in December 1914

Fraser contracted typhus

Following Fraser's death, she was described as "perhaps the most popular woman's golfer in Great Britain" the Ladies Golf Union collected funds from international donors sufficient to provide 200 additional beds in Serbian hospitals in her memory. Fraser's funeral was described as a "terribly sad affair with the funeral party having to struggle through thick snow and mud". There is no Sea nor Time nor Space nor Division in God's dear Home There is only God and His strong Love and Peace and A GREAT REMEMBERING. Let us remember before God these women Who gave their lives in the service of others. Madge Neill Fraser is the only woman listed on Murrayfield Golf Club's Roll of Honour. The British Journal of Nursing expressed regret at her death, and noted she was a nurse and a chauffeur.

Her name is listed on the globe-shaped memorial to VAD and nurses who died in two world wars, in the National Memorial Arboretum, Alrewas, Staffordshire dedicated by HRH Countess of Wessex, GCVO on 14 June 2018 As the stars in a dark sky they lit up our world.

Fraser's name is also on the Women's Roll of Honour as part of the Five Sisters window in York Minster.