A statue of trailblazing doctor and suffragist Dr Elsie Inglis will be the first statue of a woman placed on the Royal Mile.
Dr Inglis was known for her contributions to women’s healthcare and for her medical service during the First World War.
Approved on 1 October 2025, the statue will be situated opposite the commemorative plaque at 219 High Street — the site where Dr Inglis opened The Hospice maternity hospital in 1904.
City of Edinburgh Council received over 237 messages of objection to the statue since its proposal.
The uniform chosen for Dr Inglis has been under scrutiny as she will be depicted wearing her military uniform for the Scottish Women’s Hospitals for Foreign Service, with no relation to her work in Edinburgh.
Campaigners have also claimed that the statue should have been designed by a woman.
Backlash over the statue’s design began in 2022, when the open public commission process was closed early by the appointment of royal sculptor Alexander Stoddart.
A peaceful protest on 1 October 2025 took place outside of the City Chambers. Organised on the ‘Elsie on The Mile’ Facebook page, the protest aimed:
“To get this sculpture sent back to the commissioning process where experts can commission fairly and transparently and the public can be involved with the entire process.”
Natasha Ingram-Phoenix, who runs the Facebook page, spoke to The Student at the protest. She said:
“Even though a man may tell a woman’s history accurately, he does not understand a woman’s lived experience.”
She expressed concern that the general public were “actively blocked” from the design process, adding: “Women’s history should not be erased.”
One protestor’s sign read: “Public art for all the public.”
Another protester told The Student that the depiction of Dr Inglis standing on a high plinth whilst looking down was “offensive” and that “Elsie would want to be among the people.”
An Edinburgh alumna, Dr Inglis studied at the School of Medicine for Women at the University of Edinburgh, and later studied in Glasgow and Dublin.
Her passion for women’s health led her to open The Hospice maternity hospital — a free maternity hospice with a milk bank specifically for poor women.
She was a politically active figure, deeply involved in the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), and was instrumental in the early years of the Scottish Federation of Women’s Suffrage Societies.
During World War One, Dr Inglis set up women’s medical units on the Western Front under the French Government.
She later sent teams to Russia and Serbia, with the aim of improving hygiene and combating the typhus epidemic.
Dr Inglis’s pioneering work for women’s healthcare still touches people in Edinburgh today.
One protestor recounted her experience at the Dr Elsie Inglis Memorial Hospital, which operated from 1925 until 1988.
Referring to herself as an “Elsie mum”, she recounted a fond memory of “seeing Arthur’s Seat and the sunrise” during her experience at the hospital, having chosen it specifically as the place to have her three “Elsie babies.”
Cover Photograph by Mark Chan for The Student.