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Title: SCOTTISH WOMEN'S HOSPITALS

Reference number: 0035

Date: 1917

Sponsor: National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies

Sound: silent

Original format: 35mm

Colour: bw

Fiction: non-fiction

Running time: 5.00 mins

Description: Daily life in one of fourteen field hospitals set up by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in European theatres of war, entirely staffed by women.

The organisation was founded by the prominent Edinburgh physician Elsie Inglis (though she does not feature in this film)

Filmed on the front line at Villers-Cotterets and in Salonika. It is likely the operation featured in the film was 'staged' for the camera.

Shotlist: Credits (.07); gvs hospital buildings at Hop. Benevole, France [front line hospital at Villers-Cotterets] with shots of patients, nurses and orderlies in the grounds (1.10); ambulance arrives and patients are transferred to wards (1.56); a patient is taken to the x-ray car. Scenes at meal times (3.17); views inside the operating theatre as doctor extracts shrapnel from the wounded man's leg, which is then coated with "German creosote" [used as an antiseptic] [Surgeon likely to be either Frances Ivens, the Médecin Chef at Royaumont and V-C, or Louise McIlroy, who was in charge in Salonika. It is also believed that this operation was 'staged' for the camera] (4.25); general scenes of the wards, the arrival of the mail, and shots of staff grouped outside buildings for a photograph (4.52)

[Film was shot at Villers-Cotterets and in Salonika]