Mary Murdoch

Mary Charlotte Murdoch (26 September 1864 – 20 March 1916) was a Scottish physician and suffragist. She had a lifelong association with Kingston upon Hull, where she was the first woman doctor, a suffragist, and car owner.

Early life and education Murdoch was born on 26 September 1864 in Elgin, Scotland, the youngest child of Jane (née Macdonald) and William Murdoch. Her father was a solicitor. She studied to be a doctor at the London School of Medicine for Women, funded by money that her mother had left her. While at the school she was curator of its museum. She studied a midwifery course at the Maternity Hospital, Brighton, completed her studies in Scotland and formally qualified in 1892. and she was also a member of the Association of Registered Medical Women.

Personal life She was the first woman in Hull to own a car, which she drove at speed.

Murdoch joined the Church of England in 1914. Murdoch died at her home in Hull in 1916 after returning through snow from seeing an emergency patient. Her funeral procession, which attracted thousands of mourners, was led by her car.

Legacy

Murdoch's career is also the subject of a 1919 biography: A woman doctor: Mary Murdoch of Hull by Hope Malleson. The appendix to this book quotes Murdoch from an address she gave to students of the London School of Medicine for Women in 1904 that she dreamt of a future in which it would be seen as 'one of the barbarisms of a past age that a medical man should ever have attended a woman'.

In March 2021, a new footbridge was opened connecting Hull city to Princes Quay waterfront, marina and fruit market over Castle Street, a dual carriageway road also designated A63. The name Murdoch's Connection was nominated by pupils from Newland School for Girls in Newland, Hull.