ABSTRACT
In January 1860 Elizabeth read in The Englishwoman’s Journal an open letter from Dr Blackwell to ‘Young Ladies Desirous of Studying Medicine,3 which described the four years of a medical course. When Elizabeth Garrett returned from Gateshead hugging her new resolution, she found a threatened financial crisis at home. The enterprises of the rival Garrett brothers had grown fast during the past ten years. Early in the 1850s Richard Garrett had built the Long Shop at Leiston, a model engineering workshop of its time; by 1855 he had one of the largest agricultural machinery factories in the kingdom, covering eight acres and employing six hundred men. In 1859 Newson Garrett doubled the size of the maltings, marking out the foundations with his walking stick, firing the bricks at his Aldeburgh yard and ferrying them upstream under sail to raise new buildings on the Wharf at Snape Bridge.
