LEAGUE OF NEW ZEALAND PENWOMEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 124, 28 May 1928, Page 12

LEAGUE OF NEW ZEALAND PENWOMEN.

FAREWELL TO DR. MILDRED STALE V. On Friday afternoon the members of the League of Penvvotaen turned out in force to bid farewell to Dr. Mildred Stalev, who is leaving New Zealand shortly as a delegate to tlie Women's Pan Pacific Conference at Honolulu. After the conference Dr. Staley intends visiting the United States and Canada. Mrs. Mary Stuart Boyd, president, told of the great love and esteem that the individual members had always felt for Dr. Staley, and as a token of their affection presented her with a leather toilet case, the work of one of the art section members.

Dr. Staley's life has been one of high adventure and wonderful achievement, so at the request of those present, she consented to give a short account of her early experiences. The daughter of an Anglican clergyman, who was himself a finished scholar of Latin, Hebrew and Greek, with advanced views concerning education and a strong sympathy with the feminist movement, she had unusual opportunities of acquiring knowledge denied to most women of her time. Her father, for some years the head of the

first Teachers' Training College established in England (1850), numbered amongst his personal friends such famous men as Darwin, John Stuart Mill, Gladstone and Professor -Max Muller, professor of Oriental languages at Oxford and translator of the Sanscrit Scriptures into English.

It was through this friendship with the Mullers that India became an absorbing interest to the Staley family. One brother qualified for the Civil Service and at 23 was made a magistrate in a wild, densely populated portion of East Bengal. Letters written by this brother, describing the sad conditions of the native women inspired the young Mildred Staley to take up medicine as a profession so that she could enlist "for service in India. With the highest degrees that London could give, specially trained in midwifery and dentistry, at the age of 22 Dr. Staley went out to join her brother in Bengal.

Her work amongst the natives in her brother's district called for great courage and skill. There being no other doctor within hundreds of miles, Dr. Staley had to undertake on her own responsibility serious major operations, sometimes of the most revolting character. There was no hospital available so she was compelled to operate often in the open with the whole village looking on. Dr. Staley told something of the women of the Harem, their sufferings and unhappy conditions of life that only a doctor would ever see.

In spite of all the tragic things that happened in India, Dr. Staley said the British Government deserved great praise for the magnificent administrative work it had done and was still doing. It was truly difficult to deal with such vast hordes of uneducated natives of conflicting races, castes, languages, religious prejudices and traditional practices. There are only about 10,000 civil servants to govern over three hundred million of people and a paltry army of t>o,ooo to uphold law and order. This army is chiefly stationed on the worthwestern frontier.

I'or 17 years Dr. Staley laboured in India, rich in the friendship of such noted women as Dr. Lilias Hamilton, who was tiie only white woman in the capital of Afghanistan, and Dr. Alice Marvel of Cawnpore, whose portrait in stained glass is now in a window of the new Liverpool Cathedral.

Of her experience as psychiatrist in English mental institutions and prisons, of her war service in France and Serbia, Dr. Staley has promised to give an account on her return to New Zealand. Decorated by France with the Croix de Guerre, and by Serbia with the Order of St. Suba, Gold Crown, her services have been widely recognised. In this Dominion where she has made her home of late years, she has been an untiring worker in the cause of progress. She is "the moving spirit of the Howard Reform League, a leader in the League of Nations Union, an officer of the Play Association and a valuable supporter of the prohibition cause. During the afternoon tea was served to over 50 members, and Miss Dorothy Griffiths gave a delightful monologue entitled, "The Civil Service."