Gullett, Lucy Edith (1876 - 1949)

An early woman doctor and tireless committee-woman, Lucy Gullett was inspired by the success of the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital in Melbourne to found a hospital run by women for women, the Rachel Forster Hospital for Women and Children. She was also a one-time candidate (Independent) for the New South Wales Legislative Assembly seat of North Sydney in 1932.

Lucy Gullett was educated at Sydney Girls High School, and the University of Sydney. She was the first resident medical officer at Women’s Hospital, Crown Street, Sydney 1901-02, and resident surgeon, Hospital for Sick Children, Brisbane, Queensland, 1902-03.She went into general practice in Bathurst, New South Wales 1906-11.

From 1912, Lucy Gullett ran a private practice in North Sydney, and in 1915-16, she served in a Red Cross military hospital in Lyons, France. She was honorary physician to the Renwick Hospital for Infants 1918-32. She helped found the New South Wales Association of Registered Medical Women in 1921 and the Rachel Forster Hospital in 1925, remaining on the hospital committee until the late 1940s, as a life governor, trustee, and vice president. She founded the Lucy Gullett Convalescent Home in Bexley in1946.

She was an Executive committee member of the United Associations of Women from 1935, and its vice president 1936-38, and 1943.
She died in Sydney in 1949.

Books

• Cohen, Lysbeth, Rachel Forster Hospital: the first fifty years, Rachel Forster Hospital, Redfern, NSW, 1972, 48 pp. [ Details... ]

Theses

• Lemon, Barbara, 'In Her Gift: Activism and Altruism in Australian Women's Philanthropy, 1880-2005', Thesis, School of Historical Studies, University of Melbourne, 2008. [ Details... ]