[1] Her parents were Harriet Lowes Thompson and John Forbes David Inglis (1820–1894), a magistrate who worked in the Indian civil service as Chief Commissioner of Oudh through the East India Company,[4] as did her maternal grandfather.

[1] Inglis's father was religious and used his position in India to "encourage native economic development, spoke out against infanticide and promoted female education.

Inglis's decision to study medicine was delayed by nursing her mother, during her last illness (scarlet fever)[1] and her death in 1885, when she felt obliged to stay in Edinburgh with her father.

In reaction to Jex-Blake's methods, and after two fellow students Grace and Georgina Cadell were expelled, Inglis and her father founded the Edinburgh College of Medicine for Women, under the auspices of the Scottish Association for the Medical Education of Women, whose sponsors included Sir William Muir, a friend of her father from India, now Principal of the University of Edinburgh.

[11] Inglis's surgical skills were recognised by colleagues as "she was quiet, calm, and collected, and never at a loss, skilful in her manipulations, and able to cope with any emergency.

[13] Inglis worked closely with Millicent Fawcett, the leader of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (the NUWSS), speaking at events all over the country.

[15] Inglis spoke in support of suffrage in 1907 with Chrystal MacMillan and Alice Low as fellow speakers, at a NUWSS meeting in Edinburgh's Café Oak Hall.

[8] Inglis's personal style was described by fellow suffragist Sarah Mair as 'courteous, sweet-voiced' with 'the eyes of a seer', a 'radiant smile' when her lips were not 'firmly closed with a fixity of purpose such as would warn off unwarrantable opposition or objections...'[1] Although she had already had turned 50 at the start of the conflict,[18] it was during the First World War that she made her mark.

Despite government resistance, Inglis established the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service Committee, an organisation funded by the women's suffrage movement to provide all female staffed relief hospitals for the Allied war effort, including doctors and technical staff (paid) and others including nurses and transport staff and others as volunteers.

[18] Four SWH units in Serbia were established but in 1915 Inglis was captured, when the Austro-Hungarian and German forces took over the region, as she had stayed behind with others to repatriate the wounded.

Inglis and others were repatriated via neutral Switzerland in February 1916,[18] but upon reaching Scotland, she at once began organising funds for a Scottish Women's Hospital team in Russia.

The two SWH units were overcome in the chaos of a retreat with Inglis travelling via Dobruja to Braila, on the Danube with the people in flight, including families, doctors, soldiers and a Romanian officer who had been in Glasgow and knew "British custims" (sic).

[18] The Scottish women's journeys and challenging experiences in Serbia were shared by her administrator, Henderson in national[30][31] and local press[32] and in fundraising talks once she returned home.

She questioned the eternal battle of good and evil referred to in wartime, when she wrote to her sister expressing her sorrow for her nephew, ending with "we are just here in it, and whatever we lose, it is for the right we are standing...it is all terrible and awful, and I don't believe we can disentangle it all in our minds just now.

"[18] Inglis, "an indomitable little figure" lasted another summer in Russia, before she too was forced to return in poor health to the United Kingdom, dying almost on arrival, suffering from bowel cancer.

[8][34][35][36] Inglis's body lay in state at St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, and her funeral there on 29 November was attended by both British and Serbian royalty.

Her parents, John Forbes David Inglis (1820–1894) and Harriet Lowes Thompson (1827–1885), as well as her cousin, Sir Henry Simson, lie nearby in the same cemetery.

[42] A portrait of her is included in the mural of heroic women by Walter P. Starmer unveiled in 1921 in the church of St Jude-on-the-Hill in Hampstead Garden Suburb, London.

[48] The ceremony was conducted by the President of Serbia Tomislav Nikolic and the UK Ambassador Denis Keefe said"Elsie Inglis was one of the first women in Scotland who had finished high education and was a pioneer of medicine.

[49] Inglis's name and picture (and those of 58 other women's suffrage supporters) are on the plinth of the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, London, unveiled in 2018.

[1] A journalist called unsuccessfully on the Scottish Ministers to name Edinburgh's Royal Hospital for Children and Young People after Elsie Inglis.

[45] Sir Winston Churchill wrote of the SWH: 'No body of women has won a higher reputation in the Great War.....their work, lit up by the fame of Dr. Inglis, will shine in history'.

[62] By May 2022, this crowd-funding drive by Thea Laurie and Fiona Garwood, raised £50,000, by engaging politicians and organisations and public figures like author, Sara Sheridan, tennis coach Judy Murray, scientist Linda Bauld and MSP Jenni Minto, as well as the Lord Provost.

[63] A competition for the design of the statue was launched, but on 17 October 2022 the charity's trustees announced that they had decided to cancel the contest and award the commission to Alexander Stoddart, the King's Sculptor in Ordinary.

[68][69] In April 1916, Inglis became the first woman to be awarded the Order of the White Eagle (First class) by the Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia at a ceremony in London.

[3] Her name appears on the screens commemorating the 1,513 women who lost their lives in the First World War as part of the Five Sisters window in York Minster.