Elgood, Bonté, 1874-1960

The collection relates to the life and medical career of Bonté Elgood (née Amos). It contains her personal diary/scrapbook along with personal memoirs as well as a vast collection of correspondence with both family and friends. Much of the correspondence is with her niece Margaret Legg (née Amos) with whom she was particularly close.

The collections also contains a number of her awards and distinctions, including her CBE and OBE. There is also a small collection of family photographs as well as those contained within the diary/scrapbook.

1874-1996

6 boxes

The original arrangement has been maintained.

Bonté Elgood (née Amos) was the daughter of Sheldon Amos (1835–1886), an academic lawyer and British judge in the Egyptian High Court and Sarah Maclardie Amos (1840/41–1908) a political activist.

Bonté and her brother Maurice, who went on to become Sir Maurice Amos (1872–1940) Judicial Advisor to the Egyptian Government were born in London but had an unusual childhood and education. In 1880 she and Maurice went with their parents to Australia for their father's health. Finding the country uncongenial, they set out to return to England. However, when they reached Egypt, Sheldon Amos was invited by Lord Dufferin, British adviser to the Porte, to be his legal adviser, and they remained in the country. After Sheldon Amos's death in 1886, his widow and children travelled on the continent.

Bonté returned to England and did her clinical studies at the London School for Medicine for Women at the Royal Free Hospital, at that time in Grays Inn Road, and was taught by Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (whose daughter Louisa was a friend and fellow-student). She qualified in 1900 and went immediately to work in Egypt and fluent in Arabic she worked in Suez on quarantine work with travellers in the Suez canal, seeing to pilgrims and refugees as well as crew of commercial shipping. She moved to Alexandria and then to Cairo, and in both places she campaigned successfully for the introduction of hospital beds for women and children. At that time she was the only qualified women doctor in Egypt. From 1906-1924 she was the Medical Officer for the Ministry of Education.

Returning to Cairo in 1901 she set up in private practice and also worked at Port Said as medical officer to the Quarantine Board of Egypt responsible for the health of pilgrims from Mecca. She was the first woman to be appointed for service by the Egyptian Government She worked here for two years in the Quarantine hospitals at El-Tor where she observed many infectious diseases, including dysentry on which she wrote several papers.

In 1911 Bonté founded a training school for Egyptian midwives and went on to develop a scheme to send Egyptian women for medical training in London. What began as administration of three school with 600 female pupils grew to 106 schools with 20,000 students by 1923. The training school later developed into a hospital with a school for nurses as well as midwives attached to it and she was an active member of the board until she left the country in 1956. Her departure from Egypt was prompted by the Suez crisis. In November 1956 General Nassar nationalised the Suez canal and Britain and Israel declared war on Egypt. All British people were made to leave Egypt and following ten days in detention Bonté she escaped and spent some time with friends in Cyprus before returning to London where she died in Chelsea aged 86 in 1960.

She married a soldier, Percival Elgood, in 1907 then director of the Police School in Cairo and later Controller at the Ministry of Finance.They lived in Heliopolis until his death in 1941. She never remarried. Bonté was awarded the OBE and the CBE, the Order of the Nile Third Class of which she was first woman ever to earn an honour for public service by an official Egyptian agency. She received the Médaille de la Reconnaissance Francaise 3me Class for her services to Allied troops in Cairo and throughout Europe. She also received a silver medal from the Union des Femmes de France and a Red Cross Medal for distinguished war service in 1946.

A collection of related interest is the archive of Lilias Hamilton (Collection Reference PP/HAM), a pioneering woman physician who worked in Afganistan.