The Lady of Claremont House: Isabella Elder - Pioneer and Philanthropist by McAlpine, C.Joan - 1997

UK: Argyll Publishing, 1997. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 15.3 x 1.6 x 23.4 cm. h/b 206 pages, condition is very good, an owners name to the flyleaf, the DJ has been price clipped. This remarkable book was almost never written. It concerns the philanthropic work of Isabella Elder who pioneered women's education in Glasgow. She was left a widow heading up Elder shipping which eventually became Fairfield and is now Kaeverner. At a time when women's brains were considered too weak to withstand the strain of serious study, she set up a school at Northpark House which is now the headquarters of BBC Scotland. She donated it to the then, newly-formed Queen Margaret College for the higher education of women. As a direct result, women graduated in medicine for the first time in the city. All of this taking place in the mid 1800s. But the good woman's pioneering work - women's liberation of a serious kind - would have been left hidden in the vaults of history had it not been for the pioneering work of a present day woman Dr C. Joan McAlpine. Invited to be a trustee on a charity looking after widows, she agreed and asked about the charity founders. In her search for information on the forgotten originators, she discovered the amazing story of Isabella Elder whose only present day memorial is the Elderpark which she had created in memory of her husband, the widow's charity and a stained glass window in Bute Hall at Glasgow University...and now there is a book.