Edinburgh medical pioneer Elsie Inglis witnessed plight of refugees in Odessa 100 years ago

A poignant letter written by Edinburgh medical pioneer Elsie Inglis describing First World War refugees near Odessa was quoted in the Scottish Parliament as MSPs spoke in support of a statue to commemorate her.

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SNP MP Jenny Minto read out part of the letter, written in January 1917 on an ambulance train near the Ukrainian port now a target of the Russian invasion: "We saw the crowds of refugees on their carts, with the things they had been able to save, and all the little children packed in among the furniture and pots and pans and pigs.”

Ms Minto added: "On Sunday night, Channel 4 news showed a maternity ward in Kyiv. I was struck by the similarity of that scene to those that Elsie must have experienced."

A series of fund-raising events has begun to celebrate the life and legacy of the woman who founded the Scottish Women’s Hospitals for Foreign Service, sending qualified teams of female nurses to Belgium, France, Serbia and Russia, but also fought for votes for women, helping to establish the Scottish suffrage movement, and set up a hospital in the High Street for the women and children from the poorest parts of Edinburgh.

It is hoped that £50,000 will be raised to pay for a statue of her to be designed and erected on the Royal Mile.

Lothian Labour MSP Foysol Choudhury said one of Dr Inglis’s final journeys had been to Odessa, then part of the Russian empire, to aid suffering soldiers there.

"It is a sobering thought that we are once again sending aid to allies fighting in the same region."

Medical pioneer Elsie Inglis died in 1917.

"Dr Inglis died a day after she returned to Britain, and she never got to see the legacy that she had created for women in Britain and for medicine abroad. It is therefore fitting that we are finally discussing how best to celebrate Elsie Inglis’s legacy."

Lothian Tory MSP Sue Webber said: "Considering all the pioneering successes that medical trailblazer Elsie Inglis had, it seems only fitting that a statue be erected in her honour in Edinburgh. There are, in fact, more animal statues than ones for women in our capital city."

Edinburgh Western Lib Dem MSP Alex Cole-Hamilton praised the campaign for a statue.of Dr Inglis. "Arguably, the fight goes back to 1988 and the closure of the memorial hospital that was dedicated to her name, at which point there ceased to be any form of physical commemoration of that most important woman in the history of our city. We need to recognise those monumental contributions not just to medicine, science and the suffrage movement, but to Scottish history. It is difficult to do justice to the profound power of her life and legacy."

Maree Todd, minister for women's health said she supported the efforts to commemorate Dr Inglis with a statue. “Elsie Inglis, along with what she stood for and the work that she did, should continue to be remembered and celebrated, and I commend the campaign and everyone who is involved in it.”

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