In 1924, the Labour MP Frank Rose was opposed by the Unionist Laura Sandeman. When Rose died in 1928, she fought the by-election against the winning Labour candidate, William Wedgwood Benn.
In 1903, Sandeman had joined a pioneering women’s medical practice in Aberdeen founded by Elizabeth Ewan; she had also been a medical officer for Dundee’s East Poorhouse. In the First World War, she served in France with the Scottish Women’s Hospital and the Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps. In 1924, she unveiled the war memorial in Blairgowrie. Her brother Nairne Stewart Sandeman was Tory MP for Middleton and Prestwich (1923-40).
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