Walk the Royal Mile, and every statue you pass is of a man. Politicians, philosophers, monarchs–all set in stone to remind us of who history celebrates. Centuries have weathered their faces, but not the assumption that only men were worth memorialising. That is, until now.
Surgeon and suffragist Dr Elsie Inglis will become the first woman to be honoured on Edinburgh’s most famous street. Inglis dedicated her life to improving the health of the capital’s poorest families. She opened clinics for mothers who couldn’t afford medical help and trained female doctors who had been denied a place elsewhere. When World War I broke out, she famously defied orders to“go home and sit still” and instead founded the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, sending all-female medical teams to the front lines. Her units saved the lives of thousands of people, earning international praise but little recognition at home.
More than a century later, Edinburgh is trying to put that right. Yet even in her commemoration, the debate endures–not over whether Inglis deserves a statue, but over how the city chooses to see her.
The proposed design by sculptor Alexander Stoddart depicts Inglis in military dress. Critics argue this choice narrows her legacy, reducing a lifetime of rebellion to the safer story of service. Edinburgh Council has received over 200 complaints about the design. You could interpret the backlash not just as disagreement, but as proof that Inglis’ legacy still has the power to provoke.
Last Wednesday, members of the campaign group Elsie on the Mile gathered outside city chambers to protest, determined to show that the woman who refused to sit still won’t be remembered standing quietly. In a post on their Facebook page, campaigners wrote: “Such a waste of opportunity for Scotland and an absolute embarrassment that this is a monument to equality which essentially erases women’s history and gate-keeps women’s stories.”
Inglis’ family sees it differently. In a public statement, her descendants say the statue shows Inglis in the uniform she was most proud of and represents the greatest achievement of her lifetime. Her descendant Clea Thompson told BBC Scotland: “it was a great moment for women.” She also rejected claims that the design misrepresents Inglis’ legacy. “All she stood for was equality,” Thompson said. She went further, condemning the critics: “It’s quite an astonishing pivot from those who once championed her to suddenly seeking to denigrate her reputation.”
But the controversy didn’t start with the statue itself. It began with a promise quietly broken. The city had committed to an open competition to uplift female artists and rewrite a male-dominated narrative. Instead, the commission went to traditionalist sculptor Alexander Stoddart. For many, that hit a nerve.
A post in the Elsie on the Mile Facebook group said: “I’m amazed that Scotland — of all places, with so many strong and intelligent women — should commission a sculpture by a male artist with such an anachronistic and dogmatic approach to art. If I hadn’t known otherwise, I would have assumed from some of his statements that he was living a century ago.” They point to other memorials, such as the statue of Princess Diana at Kensington Palace, as proof that women can be portrayed as “warm human beings engaged with the world — not just as symbols of service or sacrifice.” How fitting and how very troubling that Elsie Inglis may be remembered by the very conventions she resisted, the group asserts.
The fight over Inglis’s likeness may seem local, but it’s part of a national reckoning over who stands in our plinths and why. From toppled slave traders to long-ignored women, the questions facing Britain’s statues are no longer about the past, but about how the present chooses to remember it. A singular statue is unable to fully reflect the extraordinary life of Elsie Inglis– the scale of her defiance, the quiet radicalism of her care. Maybe it doesn’t have to. Maybe the point isn’t to capture her entirely, but to signal her story still matters. Maybe its job now is just to make sure we keep paying attention.
Image by Teya Taylor for The Student.