Helen Evans Russel

Helen de Lacey Evans ( Carter; 1833/1834 – 4 October 1903) was the fifth member of the Edinburgh Seven, a group of women who enrolled at the University of Edinburgh in 1869, and who sought to qualify as physicians. She married the editor of The Scotsman, Alexander Russel and was mother to the suffragist and feminist campaigner Helen Archdale. Early life Helen Carter was born in Athy, Ireland in either 1833 or 1834, one of seven children. Her parents were Helen Gray and Major Henry Carter, 73rd Regiment Bengal Native Infantry. In 1854, in Shimla, India, she married cavalry officer Henry John Delacy Evans of the Bengal Horse Artillery Regiment. Together they had a daughter, Helen, who died in infancy in 1857. She was widowed prior to her enrolment at Edinburgh in 1869. Later life In 1869 Evans joined a group of women, led by Sophia Jex-Blake, who became known as the Edinburgh Seven (Mary Anderson, Emily Bovell, Matilda Chaplin, Helen Evans, Sophia Jex-Blake, Edith Pechey and Isabel Thorne) who sought to earn a degree in medicine at the University of Edinburgh. They were the first women undergraduates in any British university.