Elizabeth Macfarlane Chesser (née Sloan)

Sitter in 5 portraits
Chesser received an MB and ChB from the Queen Margaret College in Glasgow, which had been established to provide higher education for women. Before the outbreak of the First World War, Chesser became a journalist, reporting on medical issues. She supported state sponsored welfare and believed in the importance of women’s access to education and in the responsibility of the individual for their own health and fitness. As part of the war effort, Chesser practiced as a physician at the Carshalton Maternity and Child Welfare Centre as well as at her own practice in Harley Street. In 1919 she obtained her MD from Glasgow for her paper ‘Breast-feeding: faradisation of the mammary glands’ and became increasingly preoccupied with the politics of motherhood.