General, Politics, Source, Women's History

WALKING WITH WOMEN – Aberdeen’s Women’s Trail …

As more than one woman is connected to some stops, twenty one women are included. These women’s lives span over four hundred years, although the majority died in the twentieth century. Within the Trail it became apparent that there were themes, such as health and civic life. At the site of the former Children’s Hospital (stop Four) four women are commemorated: Clementina Esslemont who founded the Aberdeen Mother and Child Welfare Association in 1909, Fenella Paton who founded the first birth control clinic in Aberdeen in 1926, Dr Agnes Thompson who pioneered services to children and Dr Mary Esslemont (Clementina’s daughter) who worked, inter alia, as a gynaecologist at the hospital. Pioneering speech therapist Catherine Hollingsworth’s story is told at stop Six. At the site of the former General Dispensary (stop Eleven), Maggie Myles, author of a Textbook for Midwives, which has been in print continuously since 1953, is commemorated.