Strong buildings are built on strong foundations, strong communities likewise. For our school community foundations are not of stone, brick or mortar but of people; those who came first and created the patterns of behaviour, purpose and expectation it is our legacy to continue. At Norwich High School we are fortunate to have many alumnae who provide a legacy to emulate, but none are more remarkable than Dr Ethel Williams.

Dr Williams was born in 1863 and attended Norwich High from 1879 to 1882. Graduating from the London School of Medicine for Women in 1891 she gained hospital experience in Paris and Vienna, women being barred from training in British Hospitals. By 1896 she was working as a GP in the North East, but such was the resistance to her work that she had to use her private savings to subsidise her work. Writing in 1901 Dr Williams revealed that, ‘women will still find much prejudice to overcome and ridicule to live down.’ Yet, overcome it she did. By 1906 she had established a General Medical Practice specialising in improving the health of the poorest women and children in Newcastle. In 1917 she co-founded the Northern Women’s Hospital.

Her professional achievements are impressive. But more incredibly she achieved all this without ever backing away from her other core beliefs. First, she was a radical feminist and Suffragist who signed the Declaration in Favour of Women’s Suffrage in 1889, took part in the ‘Mud March’ of 1907 and in 1912 had her property confiscated and auctioned after she refused to pay taxes until women were given the vote. Second, she was a pacifist and member of the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom, a position which she did not alter even during the patriotic frenzy of the Great War; rather she spoke out against British policy of a naval blockade of Germany, highlighting the malnutrition, disease and death it was causing amongst German children. Third, she was left wing at a time when that could be dangerous; in 1917 she was the Secretary of the Newcastle Soldiers and Workers’ Council, a group with strong communist links and at one meeting she had to escape after members of the Anti-German League turned up and a brawl ensued. Fourth, she was a supporter of education not just medical, but for whole sections of society who had little access to learning; she did considerable work for the Workers’ Educational Associations (WEA) and was a member of the Senate at the University of Durham. Her citizenship did not end there, she was a Justice of the Peace and member of the Literary and Philosophical Society. An accomplished gardener she opened her gardens to the public. She was also the first woman in Newcastle to drive a car!

Recently scholars of LGBTQ+ history have begun to pay attention to Dr Williams private life. Dr Williams lived with the mathematician Frances Hardcastle, whom she met whilst they were both campaigning for female suffrage. They were an extraordinary couple for their time who lived together, campaigned together and built a beautiful house and gardens named ‘Stocksfield’, in which they lived from 1924 until Frances’s death in 1941. Whether their relationship was romantic or not we do not know, but they clearly loved one another on their own terms until separated by death. Together they shared their unconventional and entirely purposeful lives.

At a ceremony honouring Dr Williams in 1946 it was said that, ‘…she has the admiration of her old colleagues, with the respect of those who at one time opposed her, and the love of those who were honoured with her friendship. She is a great citizen, a great public servant, and a loyal friend.’ By the end of her life society was coming to embrace those things she had fought so effectively for. Women had the vote; the National Health Service had been established and the prospects for the progress of social justice seemed strong.

In 1935 Dr Williams paid a visit to Norwich High, the School Magazine recorded the visit of, ‘…one of her most distinguished daughters’. Dr Williams had established her life in the North East and this was to be her last visit to NHS. In the North East she is still an important figure, with University accommodation named in her honour and numerous features on her in local history societies, academic journals, archives and local news. In 2018 a plaque was erected in Newcastle at the location of her first surgery and does some justice to her remarkable life: ETHEL WILLIAMS 1863 – 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.

Dr Ethel Williams should be someone we remember better at Norwich High School. It is unlikely that many of us will achieve as much as she did, but if we can all be as true to ourselves as she was, as good a servant to those less fortunate and as determined to live fearlessly then her legacy will be secure.