The Australian Women's Register

Heather Gell was a pioneer of eurhythmics and a dance teacher. After obtaining the Diploma of the Kindergarten Training College, Adelaide, in 1918, she studied at the London School of Dalcroze Eurythmics for two years. Gell returned to Adelaide to set up her own studio in 1923. She became a specialist in Eurhythmics and taught at the Kindergarten Training College. In 1930 Gell returned to London to study for the Licentiate degree at the Royal Academy of Music. On her return she was appointed to the Elder Conservatorium.

In 1934 Gell directed the Girl Guides’ farewell to Lady Zara Hore-Ruthven and in 1936 the ‘Heritage’ pageant for the State’s Centenary celebrations. She returned to London in 1937 before settling in Sydney where she established the School of Music and Movement. From 1938 she began presenting “Music Through Movement”, a weekly radio broadcast for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which lasted 27 years. Gell stayed in Sydney until her retirement, establishing the Dalcroze Society of Australia and the Dalcroze Teachers’ Union.

Heather Gell was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire services to music on 31 December 1977. She returned to Adelaide in 1982 and died in 1988. In her Will, she left a bequest to be used to establish, assist, and promote Dalcroze Eurhythmics in Australia. The Heather Gell Dalcroze Foundation is the result.

Jean Rooney, whose father was a teacher, lived in Mt Gambier, Adelaide and Port Lincoln. Rooney attended Adelaide teachers’ Training College and worked in Unley and Nailsworth for four years. She married Cliff Rooney, a high school teacher, in 1935 and had two daughters.

Margaret Hodge was born in Adelaide in 1918. She subsequently moved to a Western Australian jarrah timber camp where her father was a teacher in a two roomed school. After his death, when she was nine, Hodge and her mother returned to Adelaide to live with relatives. She attended Presbyterian Girls’ School (now Seymour College) on a scholarship. Here she was particularly influenced by two of her teachers – in English and current affairs. On leaving school she taught at the Wilderness School.

Margaret married Scott Hodge in 1940 and had five children, including one who was born with spina bifida. She joined the Lyceum Club in 1971 and served in a number of official capacities over the years.

Mary Miller was born in Yorketown, South Australia and spent her childhood on Yorke Peninsula. Her work in munitions factories during World War II led to her involvement as an organiser in the iron workers’ union and a life-long commitment to the labour movement. In the mid-1950s she qualified as a primary school teacher and became active in child welfare and Aboriginal education.

Margaret Edith Atkins grew up at Kensington Park where she attended kindergarten and small private schools despite the cerebral palsy and received regular physiotherapy and speech pathology. After leaving school she enrolled in a playgroup course at the Kindergarten Training College and commenced voluntary work in kindergartens. She later worked as an equipment maker for the Kindergarten Union and designed and made toys. Atkins decided to return to study social work at university but was initially refused entry to the course at Adelaide University. She completed a Bachelor of Arts with Honours majoring in psychology. Atkins gained a full-time teaching position with the Education Department as a teacher of intellectually handicapped children and was also supervised by the Department’s psychologist to allow her to gain membership of the Australian Psychological Society. She was employed at the Woodville Special School where she developed innovative teaching methods and designed equipment. During her career Atkins held positions as Deputy Head at Strathmont Centre for Intellectually Retarded Children, Head of Barton Terrace and Kings Park special schools, and then in 1975 the Ashford Special School. She retired on the grounds of invalidity in 1977 and become a resident at the Julia Farr Centre. Here she was funded by the Centre to undertake research into leisure activities for the residents and was able to travel overseas. After her health improved Atkins felt that she needed to return to a more home-like environment and was able to move to an aged care facility. She then became very active in community activities and events, WEA and University of the Third Age. Margaret Atkins was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for her service to education in special education on 26 January 1982.

Peg Gooden was born in 1900. Her father died when she was young so she and her mother lived with her grandparents in North Adelaide. She went to St Peter’s Girls’ School. In 1923 she married Harvey Lawton and they lived at Lower Mitcham and joined St Columba’s Church in Hawthorn. Harvey Lawton died in 1930 and she married Lance Gooden in 1935. During World War II Peg joined the Comforts Fund committee and worked on the sock table. Music played a large part in Gooden’s life and she played at Lyceum Club lunches. She was also an active member of the Bowden Kindergarten Committee which helped underprivileged children.

Thelma Johnston was born in 1908 at Norton Summit and attended Norton Summit School until she was 12 years old. The family then moved to Adelaide and she went to the Methodist’s Ladies College. Johnston was interested in craft work such as china painting, jewellery, enamelling and spinning and weaving and during World War II did work for the Red Cross shop and afterwards the “Acorn” craft shop. She and her husband were members of the Royal Yacht Squadron and Legacy. During the war she set up a kindergarten for children sent down from the islands because of the fear of a Japanese invasion. She was also involved with Flower Day and coordinated the Lyceum Club flower roster for 4 years and worked for many years for Meals on Wheels.

Lois Mander-Jones grew up in Victoria and attended Presbyterian Girls College in Geelong. In 1940 she joined the Union Bank in Melbourne and then joined the Army. She was on General Blamey’s staff in Queensland. She became the personal assistant to the Director of Intelligence Brigadier John Rogers and also worked for Brigadier Kenneth Wills. On 9 June 1943 she married Evan Mander-Jones. Her husband went to New Guinea and returned to be the head of the Intelligence School. As couples could not work in the same unit she was transferred to Army Education. She became pregnant and was discharged from the army. She lost this baby and another child. Her husband was appointed Director of Education in South Australia. She had three sons and continued to work for the University. They spent a year overseas in 1959. She did a marriage guidance course and counselled for five years. Family commitments were dominant in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1965 she enrolled in a Diploma of Social Work and in 1968 she took a part time job as a research worker with the Institute of Technology. From 1970 to 1978 she worked as a part time supervisor and trainer of counsellors. Her husband died in 1975. In 1978 she started working at Flinders University as a part time social work demonstrator and she retired in 1982. She became involved with the Lyceum Club being Vice President and President and in 1993 Australian President of the Association of Lyceum Clubs. Mander-Jones was awarded honorary life membership in 1993.

Francie Kay completed her nursing training at Balaklava, South Australia. She ran a private hospital before entering the social work field. Kay went to Melbourne to study and returned to work in the TB Service where she travelled around South Australia visiting sanatoria. She worked in the service for 25 years and helped to rehabilitate many patients. She attended various conferences worldwide. She then moved to the Walkerville Nursing home and helped develop an assessment system and a day and craft centre. Following an overseas holiday Kay and returned to work for Burnside to look at their community services. It was discovered there were many problems with elderly people and Pine View was established and community activities were organised to provide companionship.

Helen Brookes was born in Melbourne and moved several times before settling in Adelaide in 1929. She started her working career at the Waite Institute with Dr Davidson. Later Brookes became a technical assistant and eventually senior lecturer as a systematic entomologist. Following her retirement, in 1982, she presented her insect collection to the Australian National Insect Collection in Canberra. Brookes was a member of the Lyceum and Minerva Clubs. In 1999, Year of the Older Person, Brookes was invited to a symposium in Canberra as an outstanding older woman scientist.

Honor Cameron Wilson studied physiotherapy in the 1930s. She joined the Australian Army during World War II serving in the Middle East, Perth and with a plastic surgeon in Heidelberg, Victoria. Wilson returned to the Physiotherapy department at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. She completed post graduate work in London and became a lecturer. Her interests included art, and she was involved with the Lyceum Club art circle.

Madge Parker was born on the Yorke Peninsula and lived near Ardrossan. Her father grew wheat, barley and oats. They moved to Adelaide when her father retired and Madge was 16. She went to London in 1939 to completed a course dealing cosmetics and came home via America. She worked in Sydney and was in Melbourne when she joined the Women’s Royal Australian Air Force (WRAAFS) where she completed an officers’ course.

Stroma Buttrose was a pioneering figure for Australian women in architecture. She was the first female Planning Assistant in South Australia, and the first female Commissioner of the Planning Appeal Board. She was the author of numerous architectural publications, most notably City Planning in Australia in 1975.

Gwenyth Hannon attended St Peter’s Girls’ School. Hannon won an Education Department scholarship to dentistry at University. Following her graduation, in 1932, she became an Education Department dentist. In this position she travelled around the state doing dental work at schools. She married a fellow dental student who had a practice on North Terrace. Hannon worked in the dental practice from the war years. Her husband was killed in 1945 and Hannon was one of the initial members and one of the first vice presidents of the War Widows’ Guild.

Elizabeth Webb Nicholls was born in Adelaide to Mary and Samuel Bakewell in 1850. She joined the Christian Woman’s Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1886, and was elected provisional president in 1888. In 1889 she became Colonial president, a position she held until 1897. From 1894-1903 she was the Union’s Australian President, and post-Federation, she served as State President from 1906 to 1927. She joined the South Australian Women’s Suffrage League and subsequently became a League Councillor. In 1894 Elizabeth Nicholls assumed the role of Colonial Superintendent of the WCTU’s Suffrage Department. She was appointed to the Board of the Adelaide Hospital from 1895-1922 and was a justice of the peace – one of the four first women – from 1915. She died in 1943

Rosetta Jane Birks (née Thomas) was born in March 1856. She joined the Ladies’ Committee of the Social Purity Society which led to her interest in women’s suffrage. She joined the South Australian Women’s Suffrage League, becoming its treasurer. After suffrage was granted she joined the short-lived Woman’s League, working with Catherine Helen Spence, Lucy Morice and others. She was appointed to the board of the Adelaide Hospital in 1896. In 1902 she helped form the National Council of Women as well as becoming president of the Young Women’s Christian Association. She died in 1911.

Mary Frost attended Miss Carter’s School, East Adelaide School and St Peter’s Girls School. She went to Adelaide University to do English. At the outbreak of World War II Frost was in England teaching at a school in South Devon. She returned to Adelaide after the war, returning in a flying boat. Frost became an English teacher at St Peters where she won two Tennyson medals at the school. Later she became head of the English Department. Frost compiled A History of St Peter’s Girls’ School from 1894-1968, in 1972.

Serena Thorne was born in Devon in October 1842, daughter of Samuel and Mary Thorne. In 1865 the church sent her to Queensland to help establish Bible Christianity and she arrived in South Australia in 1870, preaching throughout the colony from church halls to street corners. In March 1871 she married Octavius Lake whom she had known in Devon and they worked together to further Bible Christianity in South Australia. Serena Lake attended the foundation meeting of the South Australian Women’s Suffrage League in 1888 and was appointed to the Council. In 1889 the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) appointed her to the dual positions of Colonial organizer and Suffrage superintendent. In 1891 she was made a life vice-president of the WCTU. She died in 1902 aged 60.

Phyllis Crompton’s grandfather came to South Australia on the ship ‘Fatima’ and lived at Stonyfell. Her father worked for him in the business which sold skins, wool and olives. Crompton and her sister were born in her parents house at Malvern and after her brothers were born they moved to Parkside. She attended Creveen School at North Adelaide and caught the tram to school. Crompton and her sister went to London and attended the Queensgate boarding school for a term, followed by a year at a school in Paris and then the Sorbonne. Returning to Adelaide Crompton went to Adelaide University and studied history. She became honorary secretary of the Junior Red Cross and joined the Lyceum Club in 1928.

Dorrie West went to school in Horsham, Victoria, before moving to Adelaide with her family. She completed a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Adelaide in 1921 and her teacher training. A teacher at Adelaide High School she left her position upon marriage in 1934, as was the custom of the time. During World War II she returned to teaching. She was an active member of both the YWCA and the Australian Federation of University Women. Following the death of her husband she joined the Lyceum Club and was President 1957-59. Her bequest to the University of Adelaide supports postgraduate scholarships for women and concerts at the Elder Conservatorium in Adelaide. Relatives remember Dorrie as being very engaging and encouraging.

Dr Elma Sandford-Morgan was brought up in a Baptist household. She attended Miss Martin’s school before her family sailed to Europe. Here she went to Cheltenham’s Ladies College for a year as a boarder. Returning to Adelaide in 1905, she studied piano at the Adelaide Conservatorium under Herr Reimann. Later she travelled with her family around Australia and in Queensland she met a doctor who suggested she do medicine. In 1910 she commenced medicine at Sydney University. Three years later she went with her family on a trip from China across the Siberian railway to Moscow. She graduated in 1917 and worked in Australia, London and at the Women’s Mission Hospital at Bewanee in the Punjab. Then in 1920 she went to a hospital in Bagdad. Here she married Captain Harry Morgan and their daughter Rosemary was born in 1922. Son Gavin was born in 1925. Later the family settled in Sydney and she worked at the Rachel Forster Hospital. 1928 she was appointed Assistant to the Director of Maternal Welfare in the Public Health Department, and in 1929 was the first woman to become Director of Maternal Welfare in the Public Health Service. She was a district commissioner in the Girl Guides and a representative to the Australian Federation of University Women. Moving to South Australia, Sandford-Morgan became Health Officer with the Mothers and Babies Association and helped set up Torrens House, a mothercraft training centre. During World War II joined the RAAN as a medical officer, was working in general practice, and for two years organised the Health Services of South Australia as the only woman member of the Parliamentary Commission. After the war she visited Europe and on return obtained a locum tenens as neoplasm registrar to the Anti-Cancer Foundation. She was appointed by the University of Adelaide to the Radio Therapy Department where she worked for eleven years. Sandford-Morgan retired in 1964 and then worked at the Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service until she was 80 years old. During 1966-1968 she attended the Medical Women’s International Association conferences in Rochester and Vienna and became president of the Australian Medical Women’s Association to work against bias according to sex and equal treatment of women doctors. Her main interest was preventative medicine and public health.

Maisie Hone was born in 1897 in Mitcham. Her family moved to London when she was three so her father could study medicine. On their return he bought a motor car which was driven by a chauffeur. She went to school at Mitcham, Miss Thornber’s and MLC and studied at Adelaide University. She organised annual concerts for women only. In 1923 she married Ray Hone and they went to England on a cargo ship as Ray was the ship’s doctor. They returned in 1924 and their daughter Mary was born. Hone joined the Lyceum Club when it was still on North Terrace and was involved in the luncheons and the circles. Ray was away for three and a half years during the war. She started looking after children on Friday mornings to help mothers on their own and continued this for 20 years.

Shirley Cameron Wilson was the youngest child of Dr Charles Ernest Wilson who was a GP in Kadina and Nellie the daughter of William Strawbridge, the Surveyor General of South Australia after Goyder. Wilson attended Walford House School when the family returned to Adelaide. They moved to “Woodfield” in Fisher St Fullarton. Wilson trained as a nurse at Royal Adelaide Hospital, won the Gold Medal, and then did a year of midwifery training in Melbourne. During World War II she enlisted as an army nurse and before she was called up worked in the Women’s Land Army. She went to New Guinea with the 2nd 8th General Hospital and stayed 13 months. After the war she studied at Melbourne University. She came back to nurse her mother, father and aunt until they died. During this time she developed an interest in art and completed her research for the book The Bridge over the Ocean which she wrote with Keith Borrow. She and her sister Honor moved to adjoining units in Hazelwood Park in 1973 and Wilson worked on her book about South Australian Women artists. She was the leader of the Antiques and Collecting Circle at the Lyceum Club for nine years.

Kathleen Waterhouse was born at Clare, South Australia. In 1914 she commenced training at the Adelaide Children’s Hospital. In 1917 Kathleen joined the Australian Army Nursing Service, and was posted to India until after the end of the war. In 1930 she was appointed Deputy Matron of the ACH, and in 1945 she became the Matron of that hospital, until her retirement in 1952. Miss Waterhouse was active in nursing affairs, and was a Foundation Fellow of the College of Nursing, Australia. She also served on the Council of the SA branch of the Australian Trained Nurses’ Association.

Dora Woods, née Birks, was born in Adelaide and began training at the Adelaide Children’s Hospital in 1909. In 1916 she was called up for nursing duties with the Australian Army Nursing Service. This interview deals with her army nursing experience, mostly in France, and with the period following the end of the war, in London. Dora returned to Australia in 1919.

Margaret Trudinger was born in Adelaide, South Australia. ‘Trudie’ was on the staff of the Wallaroo Hospital when called up, in June 1940, to the Australian Army Nursing Service. Her nursing experiences in the army included postings to Woodside, Daws Road (both in South Australia), Palestine, Egypt, Port Moresby and Lae.

Jean Ashton was born at Woodside, South Australia. After appointments at Lameroo and Jamestown in South Australia, Jean did infant welfare training in Hobart, Tasmania, while awaiting call-up for the Australian Army Nursing Service. In 1941 she went with the 13th Australian General Hospital to Malaya and was among those who escaped from Singapore just before its capture by the Japanese in February 1942. When the ship ‘Vyner Brooke’ was sunk in Bangka Strait, Jean and fellow nurses were interned by the Japanese. She was among 24 nurses (from a total of 65) who survived until their release in September 1945.