Better known as an American doctor, Elizabeth Blackwell was in fact British-born and a life-long opponent of slavery. Blackwell was described as ‘a guiding star… to rebellious women everywhere’, but she was less motivated by ideas of rebellion than a desire to provide women’s health care without embarrassment to them. She was America’s first registered female doctor and the first woman on the British medical register. Her sister Emily and two nieces later became doctors; her sister in law was Lucy Stone, pioneer of women’s rights and Antoinette Brown Blackwell who was the first female ordained minister, so she was part of a family of determined women and men. Family friends included abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, Florence Nightingale, Mary Carpenter, Lady Byron, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Kingsley, and Julia Ward Howe who wrote ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’.