Jessie Murray

Jessie Margaret Murray (9 February 1867 – 25 September 1920) was a British psychoanalyst and suffragette. Born in India, she moved to the UK when she was 13. She undertook studies in medicine with the College of Preceptors and Worshipful Society of Apothecaries and at the University of Durham and University College London. She also attended lectures by the French psychologist Pierre Janet at the Collège de France, Paris.

Murray was a member of the Women's Freedom League and Women's Tax Resistance League, two organisations that took direct action in their campaigns for women's suffrage. In 1910 she and the journalist Henry Brailsford took statements from the suffragettes who had been mistreated during the Black Friday demonstrations in November that year. Their published memorandum was presented to the Home Office, along with a formal request for a public inquiry. The Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, refused to establish one.

After practising medicine from 1909, Murray and her close friend Julia Turner opened the Medico-Psychological Clinic in 1913, a pioneering entity that provided psychological evaluation and treatment, affordable for middle-class families. Several of the staff who worked and trained at the clinic became leading psychoanalysts. Murray was awarded an MD by the University of Durham in 1919. Shortly afterwards she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer; she died in September 1920, aged 53.

The clinic Murray founded closed down in 1922 as a result of political in-fighting and financial problems. During its nine years of existence, through its training programme, it laid the foundation of psychological evaluation in the UK. Its practice of having students undergo their own therapy was later adopted by the International Psychoanalytical Association.