Adelaide Lyceum Club Oral History

Dr Elma Sandford Morgan was born in 1890 in North Adelaide and brought up in a Baptist household. Attended Miss Martin's school. At 14 her family sailed to Europe amd Elma went to Cheltenham's Ladies College for a year as a boarder. She returned to Adelaide in 1905. She studied piano at the Adelaide Conservatorium under Herr Reimann. She travelled with her family around Australia and in Queensland she met a doctor who suggested she do medicine. 1910 studied medicine at Sydney University. Studied for three years, then went with her family on a trip from China across the Siberian railway to Moscow. She graduated in 1917. She worked in Australia, London and at the Women's Mission Hospital at Bewanee in the Punjab. Then in 1920 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. Eventually settled in Sydney and she worked at the Rachel Forster Hospital. 1928 appointed Assistant to the Director of Maternal Welfare in the Public Health Department, and in 1929 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. Moved to South Australia as a 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 Asutralia 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. Retired in 1964 and then worked at the Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service until she was 80 years old. During 1966-68 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.