Margaret Neill Fraser

Margaret Neill Fraser in the Scottish Ladies Golfing Championship 1910
The grave of the Neill Frasers, Dean Cemetery, memorialises Margaret

Margaret (Madge) Neill Fraser (1880-1915) was a Scottish heroine of the First World War and notable amateur golfer. She represented Scotland at international level every year from 1905 to 1914 in the world of female golf.

Life

She was born on 4 June 1880 the daughter of the botanist Patrick Neill Fraser FRSE[1] (d.1905) and his wife Margaret (d.1927). The family lived at Rockville on Murrayfield Road in western Edinburgh and ran the company, Neill & Co, who ran a printers and HMO Stationary Office, both at Bellevue and at 13 George Street.[2] The company had been established by her father’s great uncle, Patrick Neill.

Madge’s home golf club was Murrayfield. 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]

Over and above her illustrious sporting career Madge 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 Maud 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, wife of the ambassador Sir Ralph Paget. It is noteworthy that 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]

Sadly she contracted typhus[4] and along with twenty one other Scottish females, 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 the 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme.[6]

Following Madge’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 female 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. 1 2 "Inspirational Women Of World War One: Women Golfers in WW1 - Margaret (Madge) Neill-Fraser". Retrieved 14 June 2016.
  4. 1 2 "British Nurses in Serbia 1915". 30 May 2015. 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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