Page 6 - Luce 2016

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JCH & ANZAC

Having reached the centenary of the Gallipoli landings in 2015, it
is timely to consider our own College’s role in the ‘Anzac legend’.
At Janet Clarke Hall, as throughout Australia, Australia’s wartime
sacrifice has engendered deep national pride. Yet it also brought
deep sadness to the students, staff, and families associated with
Janet Clarke Hall. For many of JCH’s pioneering women, patriotic
duty, and ambition for equality were equally powerful forces
during their wartime service.

It is fair to think of the ‘Anzac’ legend, first celebrated at the
anniversary of the Gallipoli landings on 25 April 1915, as a
powerful, masculine myth of a knockabout, courageous bloke
holding a bayonet and joking in adversity. Yet we should
always remember that women and men pay the price of war
together. Despite two bruising debates on conscription, the
First AIF (Australian Imperial Force) remained to the end a
voluntary and civilian rather than a conscript army, drawn
from the families of Australia. Everyone in those families – their services, including some remarkable alumnae – women
mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, for whom neither tacit nor open discrimination would dampen
carried the legacy of the First AIF in some way. It was no their patriotism or contribution. The demands of wartime
different for the women of Janet Clarke Hall between 1914 medicine were to prove life-changing for those JCH doctors
and 1918, and again between 1939 and 1945. who served abroad or at home.

In the Great War, strong barriers stood in the way of women Before the outbreak of the Great War, Dr Helen Sexton
who wanted to play their part in the war effort beyond socially (1887), the third woman to graduate in Medicine from the
prescribed, patriarchal ideas of ‘womanly support’. For those University of Melbourne, had already acquired a considerable
women who were able to serve, nursing and medicine offered reputation as a surgeon. Travelling to England at her own
one way to help the war effort. As for our soldiers, wartime expense, she offered her services to the Royal Army Medical
nursing exposed these women to the full horrors of modern, Corps – but was refused. Helen had helped to found the
industrial warfare. As Michelle Moo has observed, the Great Queen Victoria Hospital in Melbourne in the face of
War presented ‘an extraordinary test of discrimination against women doctors, and
the limits of the profession: and would she ignored resistance at home and in Britain
elicit vast advances in medicine: plastic to establish her own hospital (the ‘Hopital
surgery, psychiatry, and innovations in the Australien de Paris’) for wounded French
treatment of wounds, broken bones and soldiers. It opened by July 1915, quickly
disease were all to emerge from the ruins’. developing innovative medical techniques
As the sheer scale of death, disease and to cope with the horrific battlefield injuries
injury soon broke down, to some extent, and diseases sustained on the Western Front.
the barriers (if not male prejudice) against Among the notes from a surviving casebook
their service, the war allowed some women for 1915 is the record of one soldier, for
to contest contemporary notions of female example, requiring wound incisions to remove
‘domesticity’. embedded shreds of uniform and half a bomb
screw from his leg. Along with massive trauma
Neither Australia nor Great Britain allowed injuries to bone and flesh, Dr Sexton cared for
women to join the Australian Army Medical soldiers suffering from gangrene, pneumonia,
Corps or the Royal Medical Corps as doctors typhoid and syphilis. Thereafter Dr Sexton
during the Great War. Indeed, Dr Margaret worked as an assistant surgeon at the ‘Val
Henderson (1934) was among the first de Grace’, a hospital specialising in facial
women allowed formal Army rank when reconstruction surgery. Her efforts were later
Australia finally lifted the restriction in 1943. recognised by the French government with
Yet a desperate need for trained medical receipt of the ‘Medaille de la Reconnaissance
staff meant that many women did join Française’, presented to civilians who had
military hospitals. In all, sixteen Australian Dr Vera Scantlebury in her shown exceptional acts in the presence of
women doctors travelled to Britain to offer wartime uniform an enemy.

6 LUCE Number 14 2015