Margaret Neill Fraser

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

Margaret (Madge) Neill Fraser
Margaret Neill Fraser in the Scottish Ladies Golfing Championship 1910
Personal information
NationalityScottish
Born(1880-06-04)4 June 1880
Edinburgh, Scotland
Died8 March 1915(1915-03-08) (aged 34)
Serbia
Resting placeChela Kula Military Cemetery, Niš, Serbia
Occupationnurse
Sport
CountryScotland
Sportgolf
The grave of the Neill Frasers, Dean Cemetery, memorialises Margaret

Life

Margaret Neill Fraser was born on 4 June 1880 the daughter of Margaret (d.1927) and Patrick Neill Fraser FRSE[1] (d.1905), a botanist. The family lived at Rockville on Murrayfield Road in western Edinburgh and ran the company Neill & Co, who ran a printers and HMO Stationery Office, both at Bellevue and at 13 George Street.[2] 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 1910 Scottish Ladies Golf Championship and semi-finalist in the 1912 British Championship. Fraser was a member of the Golfing Gentlewomen and the Ladies' Golf Union.[3]

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,[4] with Grace Symonds and Dr Elizabeth Ross (1877-1915) to create the Scottish Women's Hospital 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,[5] for example women doctors surveyed in 1908 had been 538 for the vote and only 15 against.[6] 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'[7]  

Fraser arrived at the hospital in Kragujevac in Serbia early in 1915 in the midst of a typhus epidemic.[8]

Fraser contracted typhus[5] and along with 21 other Scottish medical workers, died in Serbia on 8 March 1915. Fraser is buried in Chela Kula Military Cemetery in Niš, northern Serbia. She is memorialised on her parents’ grave stone in Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh.

Fraser's brother, also Patrick Neill Fraser, was a Lieutenant in the Border Regiment and was killed on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme.[9]

Following Fraser's death, she was described as 'perhaps the most popular woman's golfer in Great Britain'[10] the Ladies Golf Union collected funds sufficient to provide 200 additional beds in Serbian hospitals in her memory.[3] Fraser's funeral was described as a 'terribly sad affair with the funeral party having to struggle through thick snow and mud.'[4]

Madge Neill Fraser is the only woman listed on Murrayfield Golf Club's Roll of Honour.[11]

References
  1. Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002 (PDF). The Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 2006. ISBN 0 902 198 84 X.
  2. Edinburgh and Leith Post Office Directory 1904-5
  3. "Inspirational Women Of World War One: Women Golfers in WW1 - Margaret (Madge) Neill-Fraser". Retrieved 14 June 2016.
  4. Leneman, Leah. (1994). In the service of life : the story of Elsie Inglis and the Scottish Women's Hospitals. Edinburgh: Mercat Press. ISBN 1-873644-26-4. OCLC 30974154.
  5. "British Nurses in Serbia 1915". 30 May 2015. Archived from the original on 25 June 2018. Retrieved 14 June 2016.
  6. Geddes, Jennian F (1 January 2007). "Deeds and Words in the Suffrage Military Hospital in Endell Street". Medical History. 51 (1): 79–98. doi:10.1017/S0025727300000909. ISSN 0025-7273. PMC 1712367. PMID 17200698.
  7. informal communication from secretary, Murrayfield Golf Course
  8. "Scottish heroines of the First World War in Serbia". Retrieved 14 June 2016.
  9. Sale, Charles. "Gravestone Photographs Resource Countries index page". Retrieved 14 June 2016.
  10. "Scotland's War: Murrayfield" (PDF). Scotland's War.
  11. http://www.edinburghs-war.ed.ac.uk/sites/default/files/pdf_Murrayfield_Golf_Club_Roll.pdf
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