This list will be greatly added to in the next few months and the biographies will change from time to time.
For details on how to nominate your own heroine (she might be a friend or family member, please email: johnnicollendeavour@yahoo.co.uk Thank you!
SOPHIA JEX BLAKE
Along with her friend, Edith Pechy, Sophia Jex Blake,was the first woman to be enrolled for medical training
She was born in 1840 and, after much campaigning on her part, was accepted for Edinburgh University Medical School. However, in those days there were regulations that prevented women from working on hospital wards and so graduation was out of the question.
Sophia had passed all her exams with the proverbial flying colours, though,and was not about to give up easily. She went to Ireland where she obtained a licence to practise from the Dublin College of Physicians.
Sophia spent the rest of her life improving the treatment of women, as patients, and also creating new opportunities for them to study medicine and have a career practising it.
MAIRI CHISHOLM
At the outbreak of war, Edinburgh born Mairi was, like many Scots women, keen to help wounded soldiers. Unlike others, though, she was so keen that she travelled from Edinburgh to London on her own motorcycle.
Once in the Capital, she went to work, as did many another suffragette, for the Women's Emergency Corps.
She was a dispatch rider for this organisation and her skill at negotiating London traffic brought her to the attention of a Dr. Hector Brown who invited her to join his Flying Ambulance Corps which was shortly to be sent to Belgium.
In Belgium it was found that many soldiers died on the way back from the front in France before they could get adequate medical attention.
This led Mairi and a lady colleague called Elsie Knocker to set up a medical post right on the front line in a village called Pervyse.
Links with the Flying Ambulance Corps were soon cut and the two women treated the injured on the spot until almost the end of the war, greatly increasing their chances of survival.
Mairi's story is made even more extraordinary by the fact that she herself was gassed by the enemy and also she and Elsie's efforts were not even affiliated to the Red Cross. The two women had to raise all their own funds as well as carrying out their medical duties.
Furthermore, Mairi did not even have any nursing training. She had taught herself by watching everything that Elsie did.
JANE HAINING
Jane was born in 1897 at Dunscore near Dumfries. Her mother died when she was a
little girl but, despite this, by the time she started working for a firm of thread makers in Dumfries, she was a confident and able young woman.
In 1932, having previously confided to a friend that she had found her life's work, she went to work for the Church of Scotland Mission to The Jews in Budapest.
The pupils at the school run by the Mission were from varied backgrounds. Some, of course, were Jews, but there were also Christians,orphans and children from broken homes. The Mission made sure that they all got a good education, whatever their personal history might be, and it was not long before the children children had taken the young Scots woman with the broad accent to their hearts.
Though she was on holiday in Scotland when the Second World War broke out, Jane elected to return to Hungary for the sake of the children - her children.
Even when the country was invaded Jane refused to desert them, saying, "If these children need me in the days of sunshine, how much more do they need me in the days of darkness?"
When the Nazis arrived at the Mission she was given minutes to pack her belongings before being hustled away to be charged with being a British spy and helping Jews. She was subsequently deported along with some of her children.
Jane Haining (no. 79467) was murdered along with a number of Hungarian women on the 16th of August 1944. She was 47.
On the death certificate, sent to the Church of Scotland by the Nazis, it was claimed that she had died in hospital on July the seventeenth of "cachexia brought on by intestinal catarrh".
In 1997 the Holocaust Martyr's and Heroes Memorial in Jerusalem deeed her worthy of a place Among the Righteous of the Nations.
She is also remembered by stained glass windows in Queen's Park Church, Glasgow and the Church of Scotland Church in Dunscore.
JANET KEILLOR
Janet Keillor, who lived in Dundee in the seventeenth century and was what we would
now call a grocer, must be one of the most frugal and resourceful women ever to grace the streets of that city.
On taking delivery of a cargo of oranges from Seville which had arrived late and were rather bitter, she devised a recipe for the breakfast treat which we now call Marmalade. In truth, something like it was probably already being eaten in Spain and Portugal, but it was unknown in Scotland and must have cheered up the wealthier citizens of the city at "the most important meal of the day".
Her son, James, refined the recipe and it was one of Dundee's most famous products for well over a century. The firm of Keillor's of Dundee was still independently owned until the 1980's when it was bought over.
MARGARET (MAGGIE) KESWICK)
Born in 1941, Margaret packed much into a short life. She worked briefly in the fashion business before studying architecture and then going on to take up garden design. She was also a talented writer who produced several books on Gardens and Garden Design.
She survived breast cancer in 1988 but was diagnosed with inoperable cancer in 1993.During a brief period of remission in 1994 she worked on plans for the new Cancer Care Centre which opened in 1996.
She also published two books whioh were highly influential and which inspired the Maggie's Centres for Cancer Care.
CHRISTINA ROBERTSON
Born in Kinghorn, Fife, Christina seems to have been encouraged in her love of
painting portraits and miniatures by her uncle who was a coach painter by trade. She quickly made a name for herself by painting portraits of the London nobility.
In 1837 she gained several fashionable clients while working in Paris and this led to commissions from the Russian Tsar.
She travelled to Russia in 1839-40 and stayed in the Peterhof Palace in Saint Petersburg and in 1841 she was made an honorary member of the Imperial Academy.
Christina Robertson, one of Scotland's great, but little known, artistic talents, died in 1854 and was buried in Volkov Cemetery.
The work shown is a portrait of Alexandra Fyodorovna. It is clear that Robertson's work can be fairly judged alongside that of Gainsborough's or Reynold's
ISHBEL ROSS
The authoress of Little Grey Partridge was born on the Isle of Skye on the 18th of February 1890 to the inventor of Drambuie.
She studied at Edinburgh Ladies College and then taught at Atholl Crescent School. In 1914, after hearing Elsie Inglis give a talk on the Scottish Women's Hospital Unit,she responded to Inglis' call for volunteers and went out to nurse in Serbia.
She arrived in Salonika on 22nd August 1916 and remained on the Balkan Front until July 1917.
"Little Grey Partridge", published by Aberdeen University Press in 1988, is a fascinating diary of her war experiences.
Ishbel Ross died in 1965.
MOLLY WEIR
Molly Weir was born in Springburn in 1910. Throughout her long ,life and career she turned her hand to most aspects of the acting profession, carving out a name for herself on Radio and in Theatre and Film and television.
Molly made her radio debut in 1939 and featured largely throughout the golden age of That Man Again) a programme that dis so much to put a smile on people's faces through the grim days of the Second World War.Later, she contributed regularly to Woman's Hour and Children's Hour
In 1950 Molly secured the part that shot her to international fame when she played Aggie in the long running radio sitcom, Life With The Lyons. Molly also played in two film versions and 5 T.V. series of the same show.
Although she had no children of her own, she loved performing for them and was especially good as Hazel the Mc Witch in the T.V. comedy Rentaghost.
She was also very effective in small parts in films such as Scrooge and the Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie.
Molly was also a prolific and best selling author. The highlight of her writing career was probably her trilogy about life in a Glasgow Tenement: Shoes Were For Sunday, Best Foot Forward and a Toe On The Ladder.
Molly was only 4foot 10inches but her fantastic energy fuelled a life of achievement which brought pleasure to many. She died in 2004.
In the photo Molly is dressed in black for her part as Hazel in Rentaghost.
