The Australian Women's Register

Summary

Kate Ardill (nee Brice) was the first woman in New South Wales to serve as chair of the St John’s Ambulance Brigade. A graduate in medicine from the University of Sydney in 1913, she lectured for the association in 1913 and joined the St John Ambulance Brigade in 1920. She was later on the association’s executive committee from 1938, was deputy chair in 1947-48 before serving as chair in 1950-55.

After graduating in 1913, Kate did a year’s residency at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital before being appointed honorary anaesthetist and out-patients’ medical officer at South Sydney Women’s Hospital. On the outbreak of World War I she sought in vain to enlist, proceeded to England and, under direction of the British Red Cross Society, went to a Belgian hospital, and afterwards with the British Army to Napbury, the Dover military hospital, and the Citadel hospital, Cairo.

In 1920 she resumed her hospital appointment, which continued until 1950, and set up a practice in gynaecology in Macquarie Street, providing a regular free clinic for servicemen’s wives and children.

Awarded an OBE in 1941, she was admitted to the Order of St John of Jerusalem as a serving sister in 1938, and then created dame of grace of the order in 1952. In Britain in 1952 she studied methods of treatment for atomic blast.