the first british woman to qualify as a doctor was also the first female to become what in england
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (9 June 1836 -- 17 December 1917) was an English physician and suffragist, and the first woman to openly qualify in Britain as a physician and surgeon, and the first woman to do so since James Barry. She was the co-founder of the first hospital staffed by women, the first dean of a British medical school, the first female doctor of medicine in France, the first woman in Britain to be elected to a school board and, as Mayor of Aldeburgh, the first female mayor and magistrate in Britain.