The Australian Women's Register

Summary

Described as ‘a tall, angular, brusque, energetic woman, prone to bad language’. Lilian Cooper completed her medical training, despite opposition from her parents, at the London School of Medicine for Women in 1890. She travelled to Australia in 1891, settling in Brisbane, Queensland, where she became the first female doctor registered in Queensland. Some years later, she travelled back to Europe, via the United States. She received a doctorate of medicine from the University of Durham in June 1912.

Cooper settled again in Brisbane after the end of the Great War and established a large and successful practice. In 1926 she bought a house called Old St Mary’s in Main Street, Kangaroo Point, Brisbane and settled there in semi-retirement, becoming a foundation fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1928. She retired in 1941 and died in her home on 18 August 1947.