Mary Rand – 1940 –

Mary Rand

‘Just an ordinary working mum who took part in the games as a hobby.’

Mary Rand, (née Bignal) MBE, was the first Female British Athlete to win an Olympic Gold Medal.

            Whilst still at school, the young Mary excelled at sports but was especially outstanding at High Jump, Long Jump and Hurdles.  In 1956, she was a guest of the Olympic squad at a training camp in Brighton, later setting a national British record of points in a pentathlon at the age of just 17.

            Mary’s first Olympic outing was Rome 1960, where she finished 4^th in the 80m hurdles.  She also finished 9^th in the Long Jump, despite setting a British record in the qualifying round.

            Then came the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, where Mary Rand set an Olympic record in the Long Jump, (which would be broken exactly four years later) earning her a Gold Medal, the first ever won by a female British athlete.  She also took home a silver for the pentathlon, as well as a bronze as part of the 4x100 metres relay.  This also made her the only British female athlete to win three medals at one Olympic Games.

            Mary Rand also trained as an athlete during the sixties, when there was none of the big sponsorship deals that are given to athletes now.  As well as training to become the best in her field, she also had to hold down a job in a Guinness factory, in-between raising her family.  She usually worked an eight-hour shift before completing a two-hour round trip to her training ground. The fact that she did all of that, and still managed to win medals and break records, should be an inspiration to all hopeful athletes of the future.

            In 1964, Mary Rand was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year.  Then in 1965, she was awarded an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) in the New Year’s Honours List.  She was finally inducted into the England Athletics Hall of Fame in 2009. 

Frances Hoggan MD 1843 – 1927

Frances Hoggan

Frances Elizabeth Hoggan (née Morgan) was the first British woman to receive a doctorate in medicine.  She was also one of the speakers at the first Universal Race Congress in London in 1911.

            Frances Hoggan was born in Brecon, Wales and studied in Paris and Dusseldorf before receiving her medical degree from the University of Zurich in 1870, after completing a six year course in just three.  In mid-victorian Britain, women were not permitted to become university trained doctors, but an undeterred Frances passed the entrance exam to Zurich, which was the only university in Europe at the time to accept female medical students.  This led to her becoming not just the first Welsh woman, but also the first British woman to become a fully qualified doctor.

            Frances returned to London, where she specialised in women’s and children’s diseases.  Later she set up a general medical practice with her husband, Dr George Hoggan, whom she married in 1874.  Theirs was the first husband-wife medical practice in the UK.

            An active campaigner and social reformer, Frances also toured the United States giving lectures on racial issues, as well as campaigning against the lynching of Negroes in the south of the United States.  During this time, she also wrote several articles about the situations faced by the Afro-American people.  The most significant article she wrote was entitled, ‘American Negro women during the first fifty years of freedom.’  When the first Universal Race Congress was held in London, 1911, Frances Hoggan was one of the key speakers.

            Frances Hoggan was a determined woman who went after what she wanted, despite the odds being stacked against her, and was not afraid to speak out for the rights of others.  She died in 1927 and her cremated remains are buried in Woking besides those of her husband.

Elsie Widdowson 1906 – 2000

Elsie Widdowson

‘If your results don’t make physiological sense, think and think again!  You may have made a mistake (in which case own up to it) or you may have made a discovery.  Above all, treasure your exceptions.  You will learn more from them than all the rest of your data.’

Elsie Widdowson was a pioneer of the scientific study of nutrition.  She was also part responsible to the addition of vitamins to food, as well as over-seeing the rationing of food in Britain during World War II.

            In 1928, she became one of the first women graduates of Imperial College, London, achieving a BSc in Chemistry.  She achieved her PhD in Chemistry in 1931 after writing her thesis on the carbohydrate content of apples.  Widdowson also obtained a doctorate from the Courtauld Institute of Biochemistry at Middlesex Hospital, where she did further research into the metabolism of the kidneys.

            In 1933, she met Robert McCance in the kitchen of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, where she was studying industrial cooking techniques as part of her diploma on dietetics.  They both realised that there were significant errors in the standard nutritional tables.  It was the start of a professional relationship that was to last sixty years.

            During the early 1940’s, their work on improving the nutritional value of our food began with the introduction of calcium into bread.  They would later introduce the addition of vitamins and minerals.  Widdowson and McCance would also be made responsible for the rationing of food during World War II, formulating it so that people received the best nutritional diet as was possible during the food shortages.

            Elsie Widdowson was also well known for testing out her nutritional experiments on herself, which were not always safe.  Elsie and Robert once injected themselves with Strontium Lactate (similar to calcium), to see how much of it would end up being excreted.  They both became ill with pains, fever and headaches due to the sample being contaminated with bacteria.

            Widdowson and McCance spent most of the working life in Cambridge, after being employed by the Medical Research Council in 1946.  That same year they visited Holland, Germany and Denmark to study the impact of the poor diet suffered by those in the Nazi-occupied territories.  Their consultation was also sought in the rehabilitation of the victims of the Nazi Concentration Camps, who were suffering from severe starvation.  Widdowson would later follow up this work in the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s, by studying malnourishment in Africa.  Her research showed a link between infant malnourishment and lifelong effects on growth and health.

            It was Widdowsons’ studies into the nutritional value and content of the infant diet, that led to the standards of breast milk substitutes in the UK being revised during the 1980’s, after her studies in the difference between natural and artificial human milk in terms of trace vitamins and minerals.

            Elsie Widdowson became the head of the Infant Nutrition Research Division at the Dunn Research Laboratory, Cambridge, in 1966.  Although she formally retired in 1972, she continued her research at Addenbrooke’s Hospital.  Widdowson was also president of several societies and foundations between 1977 and 1996.  She was also awarded a CBE for her work in 1979.

            Although she spent her life studying nutrition, she herself only ate a simple diet which consisted of butter and eggs.  Her long-life she attributed to her good genes, her mother lived to be 107.  Elsie Widdowson herself died in Addenbrooke’s Hospital following a stroke at the age of 94.