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Eleanor Davies-Colley was born in 1874. Her father was John Neville Colley Davies-Colley, a surgeon at Guy's Hospital. On graduating in 1907, she became a house surgeon under Maud Chadburn at the New Hospital for Women, founded by Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (renamed the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in 1917, it is now part of the University College London Hospitals). She then became demonstrator in anatomy at the London School of Medicine, and surgical registrar at the Royal Free Hospital. In addition to her work at the South London Hospital, she was also later a surgeon at the Marie Curie Cancer Hospital and senior obstetrician at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital.
Davies-Colley and her colleague Maud Chadburn began raising funds in 1911 for a new South London Hospital for Women and Children. Enough money was raised to open an outpatients' department in Newington Causeway in 1912. A purpose-built eighty-bed hospital on Clapham Common, staffed entirely by women, was opened by Queen Mary in 1916. Davies-Colley worked at the South London Hospital for Women and Children from its foundation until her death, holding various positions including senior surgeon. The hospital remained open until 1984. It was unusual in retaining the women-only staffing policy initiated by Davies-Colley and Chadburn right up until closure.
She became the first female fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1911.She was one of the founding members of the Medical Women's Federation, in 1917. She died in 1934. One of the lecture theatres at the Royal College of Surgeons of England was refurbished and dedicated in Eleanor Davies-Colley in 2004, with the aim of celebrating the role of women in surgery and encouraging more women to enter the profession.