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

She 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. She 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 Elsie Inglis, 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.[4] She arrived at Kragujevac in Serbia early in 1915 in the midst of a typhus epidemic.[5]

She contracted typhus[4] and along with 21 other Scottish medical workers, died in Serbia on 8 March 1915. She is buried in Chela Kula Military Cemetery in Niš, northern Serbia. She is memorialised on her parents’ grave stone in Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh.

Her 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.[6]

Following Fraser's death the Ladies Golf Union collected funds sufficient to provide 200 additional beds in Serbian hospitals in her memory.[3] She is the only woman listed on Murrayfield Golf Club's Roll of Honour.[7]

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. "British Nurses in Serbia 1915". 30 May 2015. Archived from the original on 25 June 2018. Retrieved 14 June 2016.
  5. "Scottish heroines of the First World War in Serbia". Retrieved 14 June 2016.
  6. Sale, Charles. "Gravestone Photographs Resource Countries index page". Retrieved 14 June 2016.
  7. http://www.edinburghs-war.ed.ac.uk/sites/default/files/pdf_Murrayfield_Golf_Club_Roll.pdf
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