The Australian Women's Register

Helen Mayo was educated privately and at the Advanced School for Girls; she matriculated in 1895. Mayo began a medical degree at the University of Adelaide in 1898, and became the university’s second woman medical graduate. She gained her doctorate in medicine (MD) in 1926. She opened a private practice in Adelaide in 1906 specialising in midwifery and the health of women and children. She lectured at the University of Adelaide 1926-1934. Mayo also founded the Mothers and Babies’ Health Association (1927) which grew out of the School for Mothers she established with social worker Harriet Stirling in 1909. The organisation still exists today, as Child and Youth Health. Stirling and Mayo also set up an independent hospital in 1913 to address the special needs of infant patients. In 1917 it was taken over by the Government and became the Mareeba Babies’ Hospital, with Mayo as honorary responsible medical officer.

Mayo also worked for the Adelaide Children’s Hospital, lectured at the University of Adelaide, established a donor service for the Red Cross Transfusion Service and chaired a committee which aimed to establish a women’s university college. In 1935 Dr Helen Mayo was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (Civil) for her maternal and child welfare activities. She was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, a foundation Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and President of the Australian Federation of University Women.