The Australian Women's Register

Summary

Patricia Smithurst Schlosshan was the daughter of Cyril Smithurst, a respected pharmacist in Gunnedah, north-eastern New South Wales, and his wife, Eileen. She attended St Mary’s College, Gunnedah and the University of Sydney, receiving a Sporting Blue in athletics for 1955 and graduating with a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1956. Although admitted to the New South Wales Bar, she did not practise as a barrister. Smithurst married American lawyer Dr Bodo Schlosshan whom she had met in London in 1956 and together they lived in Paris and New York before settling in Frankfurt am Main and raising a family of six. In 1967, Smithurst received a Master of Arts from Cornell University for her dissertation entitled ‘Heinrich Boll’s Concept of Reality, 1949-1960’.