| Biography | Josephine Letitia Denny Fairfield (1885-1978) was born in Melbourne Australia and moved to Britain aged 3. She graduated in medicine from the University of Edinburgh, with honours in all subjects. After a series of junior resident clinical jobs she took her MD in 1911 and worked in a small Jewish hospital in Manchester before coming to London to begin what was to be a lifelong career in public health. Until the First World War Fairfield worked for the London County Council (LCC), primarily involved with the welfare of school children. She was an active supporter of the women's suffrage movement, and a member of the Women's Social & Political Union (WSPU), but found the tensions between support of the militants and her own career difficult to resolve. She was a tireless speaker on women's issues. Like many of her colleagues, her offer to serve in the army medical services was refused point-blank in 1914, but as the war progressed the War Office found that they needed women doctors, and in 1917 Fairfield found herself taking an active part in the war effort, first in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, and then the following year as Chief Medical Officer to the newly formed Women's Royal Air Force. In 1919 she was created CBE in recognition of her wartime service. After the war she returned to her work at the LCC with her responsibilities widened, including maternity and obstetric care at the poor-law hospitals. In 1923 she was called to the Bar, and over the ensuing years developed a number of medicolegal interests. When war broke out again in 1939 she was appointed to a senior administrative post advising the War Office on matters affecting the health and welfare of women in the services, a post that she held with the rank of lieutenant-colonel until reaching army retirement age in 1942. After leaving the army she returned to her work at the LCC, where she stayed until the advent of the National Health Service in 1948. Fairfield's younger sister Cicily was a novelist, better known under her pseudonym of Rebecca West.
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