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Elizabeth Garrett Anderson LSA, MD born 9 June 1836, Whitechapel was an English physician in 1865 and feminist, the first Englishwoman to qualify as a physician and surgeon in Britain. S
he was also Mayor of Aldeburgh in Suffolk in 1908. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson once remarked that “a doctor leads two lives, the professional and the private, and the boundaries between the two are never traversed”. In 1871, she married James George Skelton Anderson (d. 1907) of the Orient Steamship Company co-owned by his uncle Arthur Anderson, but she did not give up her medical practice. She had three children, Louisa (1873–1943), Margaret (1874–1875), who died of meningitis, and Alan (1877–1952). Louisa also became a pioneering doctor of medicine and feminist activist.
They retired to Aldeburgh in 1902, moving to Alde House in 1903, after the death of Elizabeth’s mother. Skelton died of a stroke in 1907. She enjoyed a happy marriage and in later life, devoted time to Alde House, gardening, and travelling with younger members of the extended family
She died 17 December 1917 and is buried in Aldeburgh.
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