Extract from The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women

GUNN, Isabel, n. Fubister, born Tankerness, Orkney, 1 August 1781, died Stromness 7 Nov. 1861.
Hudson's Bay Company labourer, cross-dresser. Daughter of Girzal Allan, and John Fubister.

Isabel Fubister entered the exclusively male employment of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) under the alias 'John Fubister'. She sailed for Hudson Bay on the Prince of Wales in 1806, her true identity known only to John Scarth of the Orkney parish of Firth, an experienced hand with the HBC. She was posted as a labourer to Fort Albany on the west coast of James Bay and worked with Scarth in the brigade of boats, making regular trips with trade goods up the Albany River and returning with furs. In the summer of 1807 she was sent with a brigade on the long and difficult route up the Albany to Lake Winnipeg and then south up the Red River to the HBC post at Pembina, a distance of more than 1,500 miles. John Scarth was not on the trip.

On 29 December 1807, at the fur-trading post of the North West Company trader Alexander Henry, 'John Fubister' was taken ill and requested permission to remain in the house. Henry was startled to find 'Fubister' in labour and shortly after delivered of a son, the first white child born in the North West. Isabel (now calling herself Gunn) returned to Fort Albany the following June, where she was employed as a washerwoman until she could be sent back to Stromness in October, 1809. John Scarth is registered as the child's father. She lived as a pauper in Stromness with her son James until her death in 1861. A version of her story is told in the novel Isobel Gunn by Audrey Thomas (1999).

Gwyneth Hoyle

• Skaill Papers, Kirkwall Library. Bolus, M. (1971) 'The son of I. Gunn', Beaver, 302 (Bibl.); Coues, E. (ed.) (1897) New Light on the Early History of the Greater Northwest... 1799–1814; Gough, B. (ed.) (1988)

TROUT, Jennie (or Jenny) Kidd, n. Gowanlock, born Kelso, 21 April 1841, died California, USA, 10 Nov. 1921. Canada's first licensed woman physician. Daughter of Elizabeth (probably Kidd), and Andrew Gowanlock.

Jennie Gowanlock's family emigrated to Stratford, Canada, in 1847. Accredited as a teacher in 1861, she taught until 1865 when she married Edward Trout, influential publisher of Toronto's Monetary Times. He encouraged her to pursue medical studies, her decision prompted by prolonged bouts with 'nervous ailments'. Jennie Trout pioneered Canadian women's long struggle to enter the medical profession. Despite huge barriers, she and a colleague gained admission to the Toronto School of Medicine in 1871, conditional on launching no complaints. The male students' and professors' indecencies and pranks rendered this unworkable and she finished her degree at Pennsylvania's Women's Medical College, 1872–5. When the Canadian profession refused to acknowledge her foreign degree, she passed all their examinations (1875).

Edward Trout's media connections prominently publicised her as Canada's first licensed woman physician. Inundated with requests from women seeking a female physician, she operated a private practice and free women's dispensary, and founded the Therapeutic and Electric Institute for women's health care. These demands strained her health and forced retirement in 1882. When women were expelled from studying medicine at Queen's University for challenging male students' discriminatory behaviour, Jennie Trout, continuing her activism for women's equality, personally encouraged them, contributing $10,000 and scholarships to establish the Women's Medical College of Kingston (1883–93), with women as trustees and professors. Little is known after her emigration to the USA, where she devoted her life to Bible study. A Canadian 40 cent stamp (1991 issue) commemorated her life.

Laurie Jacklin

• Dembski, P. E. P. (1985) 'Jenny Kidd Trout and the founding of the Women's Medical Colleges at Kingston and Toronto', Ontario History, 77, p. 3, September (Bibl.).

MARSHALL, Henrietta Elizabeth, [H. E. Marshall], born Bo'ness 9 August 1867, died Hampstead, London, 19 Sept. 1941. Author of popular history books, including Our Island Story. Daughter of Catherine Jane Pratt, and John Marshall, Northern Ware manufacturer.

If this identification is correct, H. E. Marshall was born into a wealthy Scottish family with eight children, and was well-educated: in 1881 (Census records), she was a 13-year-old pupil at Laurel Bank Boarding School, Melrose (not the Glasgow school, founded later). After the 1891 Census, both parents having died, the Marshall family apparently dispersed. The author is thought to have spent some time in Australia, possibly as a governess, was certainly by 1905–8 living in Oxford, and is known to have spent the years 1913–17 in Redlands, California, writing a book on US history (1919). The A. K. Smiley Library there, acknowledged in the preface to that book, holds some autographed copies of her works. Her histories, aimed mostly at a young audience, were hugely popular: some 34 are listed in the BL catalogue, and print runs went into thousands. Her best known work was a history of Britain, Our Island Story (1905). She also wrote Scotland's Story: a child's history of Scotland (1906). Her Scottish background, confirmed by personal knowledge (Skelton), is hinted at in the preface to this book, written as if to a little girl: 'you know we were defeated sometimes, Caledonia' (1906, p. vii, our italics). The books were all authored as 'H. E. Marshall', initials behind which the author deliberately hid her full name, which did however become known to library cataloguers; to friends she was 'Leeby', a form of Elizabeth. Records of royalties payable by her publishers to 'Miss Marshall' in 1912 are in the Jack/Nelson archives. Engagingly written, her books, Our Island Story in particular, shaped the view of history of many generations of children, including historian Antonia Fraser, and a reissue was planned in 2005 (McKie 2004; Clare 2005). Nevertheless, it appears that H. E. Marshall was not well-off in her later years.

Sian Reynolds

• BL catalogue; NAS: birth records; Census of Scotland 1881, 1891; Univ. of Edinburgh, Special Collections: Nelson archive, no. 619, T. E. Jack, Royalties. Marshall, H. E., Works as above, and (1907) Stories of Roland Told to the Children, (1908) Our Empire Story, (1908) Stories of Beowulf Told to the Children, (1909) The Child's English Literature, (1919) This Country of Ours, The Story of the United States, (1937) Kings and Things. McKie, D., 'History after lights out', The Guardian, 9 Dec. 2004; Clare, J., 'Wonderful response to history appeal', The Daily Telegraph, 22 June 2005. Additional research: Moyra Ashford, USA. Personal knowledge: Dr Martin Skelton.