Elizabeth Garrett was born in 1836. She left school aged 15 and initially followed the path expected of girls in early Victorian England.She remained in the family home helping to care for her younger siblings, doing needlework and waiting for an eligible suitor to come along and marry her. But when she was 22, she was invited by her friend Emily Davies to attend a lecture by Dr Elizabeth Blackwell. Blackwell had emigrated from Britain to the USA, where she studied medicine and qualified as the first woman doctor in the USA. Attending that lecture proved to be a life-changing event for Elizabeth Garrett.
Elizabeth Garrett in a letter to Emily Davies, written in 1860:
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