A Woman Doctor’s Long Life Of Service

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29384, 10 December 1960, Page 3

A Woman Doctor’s Long Life Of Service

[Reviewed by R.C.L.] Doctor Agnes Bennett. By Cecil and Cecilia Manson. Foreword by J. C. Beaglehole. Michael Joseph. Whitcombe and Tombs. 189 pp. Dr. Agnes Bennett, who died at Lowry Bay last week in her eighty-ninth year, was born in 1872, at North Shore, Sydney. One of a family of seven children, at the age of five and a half—in company with her brothers and sisters—she was taken by her mother to England, there to be educated. Her school days in England ended with tragic suddenness when she was only eight years old, for it was then that her mother died of smallpox. Agnes, with her brothers and sisters, had to return to her homeland, and continued her education at Sydney Girls’ High School, where she won a State scholarship that enabled her to study for a science degree at Sydney University. She attained her B.Sc. degree with honours in 1894. She found then that few jobs were open to her, because of the pfejudice against accepting women in the professions. Her father having died. meanwhile, she was left to plan her own career, and decided to study medicine at the Medical College for Women, Edinburgh. It was an unusual and a bold decision for a young woman to make in those days; for it meant that after years of arduous study in order to gain the coveted professional qualifications, one was handicapped from the start because of one’s sex. Thus, Dr. Bennett was to discover—as her biographers point out—“how nearly negligible were the prospects in Britain for a newly qualified woman doctor. No hospital would accept one as house surgeon, and the general public was still suspicious.” In 1905—six years after she had qualified—Dr. Bennett came to New Zealand to take over the Wellington practice of an old friend and fellow-student, Dr. Ella Watson. She then helped to pioneer the cause of maternity welfare in this country, and three years later, was appointed Superintendent of St. Helens Hospital, Wellington. Under the able direction of Dr. MacGregor and Grace Neill, bold steps were then being taken to raise the standard of midwifery in New Zealand, and Dr. Bennett played a leading part in the reforms being introduced. She returned to Edinburgh in 1911 to take her M.D., the thesis she presented for her doctorate being on the breast feeding of infants in New Zealand. Back in Wellington, the following year, she had not long resumed her work at St. Helens before distant horizons once more beckoned her, with the outbreak of war in August, 1914. It was only a matter of months before she found herself in Cairo, faced with the task of organising and establishing a hospital for the reception of New Zealand casualties that “now poured in from the Dardanelles.” At the same time, assisted by another New Zealand woman doctor—Dr. Grace Russell —she had to help set up an infectious diseases hospital at Shoubra (near Cairo), of which she was made superintendent. When her work at this hospital was completed. and she had been granted her discharge from the army, she travelled to England and met, in London, Dr. Elsie Inglis, founder of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals which were attached to the Serbian Army. Dr. Inglis had been in e crbia from May, 1915, to February, 1916, and had witnessed the Serbian Army’s complete collapse under the great, combined German, Austrian and Bulgarian offensive in the autumn of 1916. While the army retreated over the Albanian mountains, she and the members of her medical unit elected to remain with the wounded. They were held prisoners for three months until repatriation could be arranged for them through Switzerland. It was shortly after her repatriation—as this book narrates—that Dr. Inglis met Dr. Bennett and persuaded her to join that grand organisation, the Scottish Women’s Hospitals. Thus it came about that Dr. Bennett was attached to the 3rd Royal Serbian Army. The diary she kept at that time has been put to good use in this biography Needless to add, the story it tells is one of heroic service; and for her work in the Balkans she was awarded the 3rd Order of St Sava and the Royal Red Cross of Serbia.

The work of St. Helens was to engross her again, when the war was over; and besides attending to her professional duties, she- gave

valuable support to a number of women's organisations in Wellington, notably the International Federation of University Women, being elected president of the Wellington branch. In 1930 she had built a nice home at Lowry Bay, Wellington. Although she had then reached the age of 58, it was hardly to be expected that one of her active disposition would sit back in undisturbed retirement. If the broad pattern of her life hitherto had been that of a woman born to travel, the years ahead of her were to be marked, no less, by a surfeit of journeying abroad, as—from time to time—in the long stretch of those years, she was to find herself far removed from the comfortable domicile of her Lowry Bay retreat. As evidence of this, one has only to traverse briefly the prinpical activities that were to engage her irom this time forward. In 1931 she spent 10 months in England, after attending a British Medical Association conference at Eastbourne. In 1936, al the age of 64, she journeyed to Cracow, there to represent the New Zealand branch of the International Federation of University Women at a world conference. In 1938 she took lessons in flying, and at the invitation of a» medical colleague of her Serbian days —now settled in Australia—she joined the Flying Doctor Service in North Queensland. In 1.>40, having launched the Women’s War Service Auxiliary in New Zealand, she sailed, as Medical Officer on the Port Alma, to England, where she worked for the Women’s Voluntary Service in the East End of London, and later accepted positions, first as Resident Medical Officer at Banbury Hospital, and then as Resident Obstetrician at Woolwich Hospital. In 1947, at the age of 75, Dr.

radio appeal, to relieve the resident doctor there, who was ill with pneumonia. The mere rehearsal of her achievements, as noted thus far. is enough to set one thinking on the tremendous vitality of this woman. The fuller story surrounding those achievements will be found in the biography under review. And a truly arresting story it is. To her biographers Dr. Bennett “epitomises an era, the era, of the emancipation of women.”

Her biography is noteworthy for the number of women of like calibre with herself who figure in its pages: women, that is, who gave unstinted devotion to tasks of considerable magnitude. Mention has been made of Dr. Elsie Inglis, founder of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, and of Grace Neill, who did so much for the New Zealand Department of Health in its pioneering days. Then there was that remarkable 'woman, Mother Mary Aubert, 'whose saintly life still awaits i‘s biographer. In Dr. Bennett sh-? found at all times a counsellor and friend.

Dr. Bennett’s services to the Dominion received recognition when, in May, 1948, she had conferred upon her the Order of the British Empire. This book, then, is her memorial. From her own reminiscences, from diaries, letters and newspaper cuttings it has been compiled. And although they are too modest to say so. it owes much—one surmises—to the countless conversations which its authors held with Dr. Bennett, as they came under the spell of her rich personality. One can almost sense her very presence in this biography. so living is the portrait it presents.

The foreword, by Dr. J. C. Beaglehole—an old friend of Dr. Bennett’s —is written with spontaneity and charm.