Helen Louisa Kerr LL.D

Born 1859. Died 1940.
Research by Liz Beevers

Who is Helen Kerr?

Helen Louisa Howden married George Kerr MA Oxon MBcM Edin., in 1888 and became a force to be reckoned with in Edinburgh social and philanthropic affairs. She seems to have had no children, lived at 6 St Colme Street and was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Laws from Edinburgh in 1920. She is buried in Dean Cemetery and it was those letters LL.D on her gravestone which caught my eye during the “Dead Interesting Women” course.

Mrs George Kerr (as she was almost always referred to) was the eldest daughter of a well-to-do Edinburgh Free Kirk family living, at the time of her marriage, in Gogar House in Midlothian. She was both a researcher and a social worker and grew into a formidable committee woman who made things happen! She was famous enough to have an obituary on February 9th 1940 in both the Edinburgh Evening News and the Evening Dispatch.

She gave lectures on poverty and then collected them into a book: „The Path of Social Progress: a Discussion of Old and New Ideas in Social Reform‟ 1912 Edinburgh and wrote the preface to Dr Chalmers and the Poor Laws 1911. She also contributed a social survey of Edinburgh to an influential book of "Social Conditions in Provincial Towns" edited by Bosanquet in 1911.

This interest in both social reform and social surveys meant it was no surprise to find that Kerr had been, for a period, Director of Housing for the Edinburgh Social Union and Honorary Secretary of its Executive Committee. Meetings were held at her home for years. The Social Union was the brainchild of Patrick Geddes in 1885 for the regeneration of housing for the poor in Edinburgh. Geddes advocated surveys as vital prerequisites to any efforts at reform. It may well be that he was an early influence on Kerr. The work of the Social Union was handsomely praised by well known housing campaigner Octavia Hill at its AGM in 1902.

Her housing knowledge and committee experience made Helen Kerr a good choice for membership of the Royal Commission to enquire into Housing of the Industrial Population of Scotland in 1912 where she sat as the only woman member among many titled men. She had already submitted evidence to the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress in 1907 drawn from the results of a survey of 1400 Edinburgh schoolchildren and their homes in 1904.

Mrs Kerr's ability and local knowledge were recognized in her appointment from 1906 as a Manager of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Alongside such famous names as Dr Littlejohn and Sir Thomas Clouston she was to sit on the House Committee overseeing the victuals and maintenance of the institution but also to convene the Nursing Committee. It was in this capacity that she worked for the establishment of the Scottish Board of the College of Nursing in 1916 and arranged for nurses to be awarded a badge on the completion of their training: two steps towards the professionalisation of the nursing community. That same year she insisted that, with the increase of women students, a women's lavatory be re-opened and made habitable on Ward 25. A practical woman indeed!

Helen Kerr resigned from the Royal Infirmary in 1923 but not before she had made her mark in two further ways. She was appointed in 1921 to the Astley Ainslie Trust which was setting up new provision for convalescents in Edinburgh. She had also established the beginnings of collaboration between the Infirmary and the University Settlement's School of Social Service. Members of that School were “to visit out-patients at home to provide medicine or special nourishment, secure admission to convalescent or rest homes …….etc”. By 1925 this experiment was reckoned a success and a Principal Lady Almoner and Assistant were appointed at the cost of £500 per annum. Another step forward into the professions for women.

References:
Edinburgh Room, Edinburgh Central Library :
-Obituaries in Edinburgh Evening News and Evening Dispatch,
-The minutes and annual reports of the Social Union.
-Mrs George Kerr's submission to the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress in 1907.
-The Path of Social Progress

Scotland's people (online) Censuses 1881, 1891, 1901 and marriage records
Google on Helen Louisa Kerr, Mrs George Kerr, Edinburgh Social Union,
Special Collections in the University of Edinburgh Library
Lothian Health Services Archive, Edinburgh University Library, Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh Annual Reports and Minute Books.