• Entry type: Person
  • Entry ID: IMP0208

Mackenzie, Helen Pearl

  • MBE
(1913 – 2009)
  • Born 6 October 1913, Fusanchin, , Korea
  • Died 18 September 2009, Kew, Victoria, Australia
  • Occupation Medical practitioner, Missionary

Summary

Helen MacKenzie, a child of Presbyterian missionaries, completed her medical degree at the University of Melbourne in 1938 with the intention of going to Korea to work as a missionary in 1941. With the interruption of World War II she instead remained at the Queen Victoria Hospital, Melbourne, from 1940-1944, where she went to ‘learn something of women’s problems’ as she described her time there in a biography of her father entitled MacKenzie, man of mission. She later worked as superintendent of the Australian Presbyterian Mission Hospital in Pusan Korea from 1952-1975, where her sister Catherine was matron, and was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1962 in recognition of her devoted services to medicine.

Published resources