Florence Barrett

Florence Barrett, Lady Barrett (1867 to 1945), born Florence Perry in Henbury near Bristol, was a British consultant surgeon, gynaecologist and obstetrician. She trained at the London School of Medicine for Women, qualified in 1906 and joined the staff of the Royal Free Hospital, later serving as obstetric surgeon at the Mothers Hospital in Clapton. She led a 1916 fund-raising campaign that added maternity, paediatric and infant welfare facilities to the hospital, and she became Dean and then President of the London School of Medicine for Women. She was president of the Medical Women's Federation in 1923 and of the Medical Women's International Association from 1924 to 1929, and a founder member of the Cancer Research Committee, set up to study radium treatment of cervical cancer. She also sat on the council of the Eugenics Society and advocated state involvement in birth control, a position now widely criticised. She was made CBE in 1917 and a Companion of Honour in 1929.