Frances Hoggan

Frances Elizabeth Hoggan, M.D. (née Morgan) (20 December 1843 – 5 February 1927) was a Welsh woman, and the first woman to receive a doctorate in medicine from any university in Europe. She was also a pioneering medical practitioner, researcher and social reformer – and the first female doctor to be registered in Wales. She and her husband opened the first husband and wife medical practice in Britain.

Frances Hoggan was born in Brecon, Wales, where her father, Richard Morgan, was a curate. She was brought up and educated at Cowbridge in Glamorgan and later at Windsor. During her teens, she gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, who was brought up with her mother and passed off as Frances' sister. She went on to study at Paris and Düsseldorf. She obtained her medical qualification from the University of Zurich in 1870, completing the six-year course in three years. In 1874 she married Dr George Hoggan. She later practised in London as a specialist in women's and children's diseases, including a period at North London Collegiate School. Together with her husband, she opened the first husband-and-wife general medical practice in the UK. She became a campaigner and social reformer, and toured the United States lecturing. She had a particular interest in racial issues, and was a speaker at the Universal Race Congress in London in 1911.

Her cremated remains are buried, with her husband's, in Woking cemetery.

Upon the exclusion of women by the Council of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries from its professional exams in 1867, Frances Elizabeth Morgan sought her medical education at the University of Zurich, whence Russia's first woman physician had received her degree in the same year. There, Morgan successfully wrote and defended a thesis on muscular dystrophy. Afterwards, at a clinic in Vienna she undertook study on operative midwifery and became a pupil of surgeon Gustav Braun.

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