Elizabeth Haldane

Elizabeth Sanderson Haldane LLD
Taken from the frontispiece of her autobiography 'From One Century to Another'.
Born(1862-05-27)27 May 1862
Edinburgh, Scotland
Died24 December 1937(1937-12-24) (aged 75)
St Margaret's Hospital, Auchterarder, Perthshire, Scotland, UK
Occupations
  • Writer
  • biographer
  • historian
  • philosopher
Writing career
Pen nameE. S. Haldane
Genresnon-fiction, biography, philosophy

Elizabeth Sanderson Haldane LLD CH JP (/ˈhɔːldeɪn/; 27 May 1862 – 24 December 1937) was a Scottish author, biographer, philosopher, suffragist, and social welfare and nursing administrator. She managed the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh from 1901 and established the Voluntary Aid Detachment from 1908. She became the first female Justice of the Peace in Scotland in 1920. She was awarded an LLD from St Andrews University in 1906 and was made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1918.

Early life

Elizabeth Haldane was born on 27 May 1862 at 17 Charlotte Square, Edinburgh. Her father was Robert Haldane of Cloan House near Auchterarder, Perthshire and her mother was Mary Elizabeth Sanderson. Her brothers were Richard Burdon Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane and John Scott Haldane. She was educated by a succession of tutors and visiting schoolmasters. She wanted to go to college but it was too expensive and she was an only daughter tied to her widowed mother. Instead she educated herself by correspondence courses.

Career

Haldane was persuaded by Octavia Hill to apply to the system of property administration which Hill had developed in London to the situation in Edinburgh and in 1884, at the age of 21, she became convener of the Housing Committee of the Edinburgh Social Union. She took nursing courses in the 1880s and subsequently became involved in establishing the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) from 1908 onwards. She became a manager of Edinburgh Royal Infirmary around 1901 onwards.

Her autobiography, From One Century to Another covers the period from 1862 to 1914. It provides a picture of what it was like to be a well-to-do lady in the Victorian and Edwardian periods. She was intimate with royalty such as Queen Alexandra and was a personal friend of literary figures such as Matthew Arnold and George Meredith. She was taken out to dinner by Matthew Arnold who astonished her "by his knowledge of the neighbouring fishing streams, since he did not personally know the neighbourhood." George Meredith visited Cloan House in September 1890.

Haldane was an accomplished translator and put her considerable talents to use translating works of philosophy, including treatises by Descartes and Hegel. Along with G. R. T. Ross, she translated Descartes in a two-volume set, entitled The Philosophical Works, for Cambridge University Press in 1911.

In 1919 she sat on the College of Nursing Salaries Committee where she was instrumental in securing a grant from the Carnegie Trust to support the creation of their Nursing Library. In 1920, she became the first female Justice of the Peace in Scotland.

Later life and death

In later life, she corresponded with her niece, Naomi Mitchison (née Haldane) who regarded her suffragist views as being out of date. Haldane accepted "the restriction of women's activities to the inside, the personal, the domestic" whereas Mitchison considered women to be equally free to pursue their lives outside the home.

Haldane died on 24 December 1937 at St Margaret's Hospital, Auchterarder.

Official appointments

Publications

References

  1. ↑ "Trailblazing Women at the University of St Andrews: A Celebration for International Women's Day – University Collections blog". university-collections.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk. Retrieved 24 February 2026.
  2. ↑ "Elizabeth Sanderson Haldane:Historical Figures and Perthshire". Strathearn.com. Archived from the original on 7 October 2007. Retrieved 28 September 2007.
  3. ↑ Births and deaths information available at the General Register Office for Scotland, Scotlands People Centre in Edinburgh, and also at Scotland's People.gov.uk. She was christened 'Elizabeth Saunderson' but the additional 'u' seems to be a clerical error.
  4. ↑ Haldane, Elizabeth S. (1937). From one century to another: the reminiscences of Elizabeth S. Haldane. London: Alexander Maclehose & Co. p. 73. OCLC 2174488.
  5. ↑ Macdonald, Murdo (2020), Patrick Geddes's Intellectual Origins, Edinburgh University Press, p. 24
  6. ↑ The Territorial Force Nursing Service 1908–1921: available here.
  7. ↑ From One Century to Another, p.196.
  8. ↑ From One Century to Another, pp. 223, 257.
  9. ↑ From One Century to Another, pp.101–102.
  10. ↑ From One Century to Another, p.164.
  11. ↑ The Christmas Courier (1912). A Distinguished Gentlewoman. Pictorial Summary of the Year. Perthshire, December 1912, p58.
  12. ↑ Royal College of Nursing Annual Report and Accounts. Royal College of Nursing. 1938.
  13. ↑ According to Johanna Alberti, in her paper, Alberti, Johanna (1990). "Inside out: Elizabeth Haldane as a women's suffrage survivor in the 1920s and 1930s". Women's Studies International Forum. 13 (1–2): 117–125. doi:10.1016/0277-5395(90)90078-C.
  14. ↑ Brown, Stuart; Bredin, Hugh Terence (2005). Dictionary of Twentieth-Century British Philosophers. Thoemmes Continuum. p. 354. ISBN 978-1843710967.
  15. ↑ This list of her appointments appears in her 'Who was Who' entry.

Sources

Further reading