Eleanor Schill

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Eleanor Beatrice Schill MBE (19 March 1904 – 26 December 2005) was one of England’s first female doctors. She was born in Manchester to a philanthropic family and trained at Bedales School and the Victoria University of Manchester, earning an MBChB in 1927 and a Diploma in Psychological Medicine in 1937. She worked as a general practitioner, a school doctor, and a psychiatrist. During World War II she cared for patients in Cheshire and Derbyshire and served as the school doctor for a girls’ boarding school that moved to Derbyshire during the war. After the war, she was the school doctor for Manchester High School for Girls and, in 1950, the Medical Officer for Women Students at the University of Manchester. In 1957 she became a part-time assistant psychiatrist at Withington Hospital.

Schill helped many community projects and was a founding member of the Marriage Guidance Council, serving as its vice-chairman until 1970. She also worked with various local boards and served on the parole board of Styal Prison. She was awarded the MBE in 1995. She married Charles Ernest (Bill) Sykes and had five children, but she continued to practice medicine under her maiden name, Schill. Eleanor Schill died in 2005 at the age of 101.