Q1: In your introduction you describe how thinking about your mother’s difficult experience at the Otago Medical School in the late 1940s, and in the workforce later, led you to wonder how other women students and graduates fared. You already had a very big day job as a Professor at the medical school in Auckland. Why did you feel you just had to take in this extra research commitment?
That was 10 years ago, and I am not sure I had a clear idea of what I was planning, but I thought that the 300 words about my mother in the New Zealand Medical Journal obituary did not really tell her full story. I was also aware of other women doctors — my aunt Jennifer, and the grandmother and mother of some of my friends — who I wanted to honour in some way. They had done the hard work so that we didn’t have it quite so bad. I applied for a grant, put this project into my sabbatical application for 2016, asked for help and just kept going.
Q2: Could you have imagined how big and wide-reaching it would become?
No. I didn’t even know the numbers at that stage, I just thought we would plug away at it and see where it took us.
Q3: You had a crack team of researchers and writers but even so how much of a challenge was it to track everyone down?
Thank you for that. We haven’t tracked down everyone by any means. And we won’t. A few women doctors didn’t want to have their biographies written, and there are more biographies yet to be done. And yes, it has been like detective work, going through Papers Past, the NZ Gazette, the papers in the Hocken Library, old exam and attendance registers from Otago. Sometimes we just can’t find anything following graduation. The challenge with women is the change in names. Thankfully the medical network is a tight one, and many of the women we were able to locate had stayed in touch with those they had studied with. A lot of our interviews actually came about due to word of mouth.
Q4: Most women of this modern era have an inkling of the prejudice that women of earlier generations faced. But did some of the stories that you were told shock you nonetheless?
Yes, right from the beginning — the behaviour in the anatomy room with Emily Siedeberg, with students chasing people with pieces of flesh and dropping flesh into pockets. Apart from the disrespect for the dead it was also so childish. I was shocked by the cat-calling as women students came into the lecture theatres on the first day; by the lecturers who openly told the class — for several decades — that they were wasting everyone’s time, that they probably wouldn’t work because of marriage or family; the woman student who saw the carved words on the desk ‘woman’s place is in the home’; the exclusion of women from the fifth-year dinner hosted by the Professors; punishing Dr Jean Sandel, our first plastic surgeon and later a Fellow of the College of Surgeons, for being a single mother by sacking her was probably the most vindictive episode; calling the only Pacific woman ‘hot chocolate’ (that is not in the book); the only woman doctor (with children) studying for her specialist exams having her study notes stolen by a male colleague when she went out of the room at afternoon tea . . . One woman doctor said there was a constant pressure to outperform her male classmates in order to justify her right to be there. I could go on. One of the most shocking things I guess was just how long it went on. While it isn’t nice, you expect to hear about these moments of hostility from the early years because these were the women bucking the system. But, though it lessened, it continued all the way through to the end of our time period. Actually, it went beyond. When I was an undergraduate at Auckland Medical School I was told by a fellow student that I was taking a man’s space. Our research really just confirmed how widespread it was.
Q5: It doesn’t reflect terribly well on the early university, does it? But you do say that many women had allies and supporters among the male staff.
They certainly did. I will say that the forefathers of both the university and the Otago Girls’ High School, the school so many of these women attended in the early years, were remarkable in their foresight and for being prepared to support women. It was slow, but Dunedin was a new city at the end of the world. The timing around women in New Zealand getting the vote was also important. Some of the staff employed women doctors as researchers — which was a good job in one sense, as it gave them the flexibility to work and bring up children. And Donald Malcolm supported Muriel Bell, Charles Hercus supported Eleanor McLaglan’s research and John Eccles both supported Marianne Fillenz and encouraged her to go to Oxford to do a Doctor of Philosophy. But at the same time women rarely got promotions and were often underpaid. After about two decades of graduates, one of the professors stated that women’s acceptance to the medical school actually hadn’t been such a bad thing, but that they were doomed to fail in a career — he still believed it wasn’t a woman’s place. And while this wasn’t true, it took a long time for women to really be accepted in the workplace.
Q6: There must be women whose stories especially strike you as heroic or impressive. Can you describe a couple of them?
Alice Woodward offering to be a doctor when she had just graduated and when there was a suspected bubonic plague outbreak in Auckland; Doris Gordon on her horse going to deliver babies; the Craig sisters working in Singapore before being bombed and killed during the Second World War 2; Patricia Hill working in Africa; Linnie Calvert in Papua New Guinea; and Margaret Neave in Vietnam, who brought children to a hospital across enemy lines during the American-Vietnamese war. Beryl Howie completely reforming the medical training system at Ludhiana Hospital in India so that the qualifications of local doctors were recognised internationally. But also all of the firsts. The first Chinese, Māori and Pacific women to complete the degree, for example, the first medical dame, all of the breakthroughs in research women made. They really were incredible women.
Q7: Some are so sad, especially those of brilliant lives cut short. Can you tell us about Margaret Cruickshank in that regard?
Margaret Cruickshank really was a remarkable woman. From a young age, she was thrust into a difficult situation when her mother died and her and her twin were tasked with raising all of their siblings. Her entire schooling years were spent alternating with her sister: one would go to school and take thorough notes while the other stayed home to look after the household. At night they would review the notes together and then they would switch roles. Despite all of this, they achieved joint dux! After university, she was offered a position at a GP clinic in Waimate and it would be where she stayed for the rest of her career, despite a short sojourn to the UK for further studies. During the influenza pandemic of 1918, she was left alone to run the clinic as her partner had been overseas when war broke out and was unable to come home. She urged the District Council to raise hygiene standards, attended to patients constantly, and when her driver fell ill she would cycle to her patients so she could continue doing house visits. It was overworking in this way that led her to falling ill herself in November and she tragically died 10 days after she was admitted to hospital. Her community were devastated and many articles were written about her at the time. She was so beloved that five years later, the town erected a marble statue in her name.
Q8: Many were brilliant researchers. What’s one research field that you found especially interesting? It is hard to single out any one person.
Muriel Bell’s research lead to changes in nutritional advice for New Zealand children in the 1930s. She was the first women medical grad to get an honorary degree from the university and first to be made a member of the Royal Society. Her legacy continues in an annual memorial lecture in her name. Helen Deems also researched nutrition and growth in early infancy and became Medical Director of Plunket. Patricia Buckfield’s early research lead to the development of the Dunedin Longitudinal Study. Barbara Heslop was in the field of transplantation surgery; Marianne Fillenz went to Oxford and worked in physiology, and an annual lecture was later named after her; and Tania Gunn led an important first study on using cooling caps to protect the new-born brain after birth injury, which lead to change in practice across the world.
Q9: The St Margaret’s hall of residence was so pivotal to so many of their early years at the school, would you agree?
Yes, it was an important part in making coming to Dunedin that little bit easier. In times where parents were worried about sending their daughters away, it was comforting to know that they would be well taking care of. Many of the women who boarded here made lifelong friends. But not everyone could afford to go there. Those in private accommodation or boarding often felt isolated from the students in the halls of residence and St Margaret’s.
Q10: This book is published as the medical school celebrates 150 years. One hopes that future women students will read it. What do you hope they will take from it?
I hope that they will read about and marvel at the differences (and still some similarities) in their experiences. I hope they will acknowledge the progress that was made by these remarkable women. ‘Ordinary women, extraordinary lives’. I hope they don’t take the progress for granted.
