Hospitals, Health & Schools

Patient Bridget Leighy in bed on the verandah of Kalgoorlie Hospital with nurses, 1903, courtesy of State Library of Western Australia.

The discovery of gold unleashed another fever - typhoid. Lack of water, unhygienic conditions and inadequate disposal of waste meant the newly arrived settlers quickly succumbed to disease. Care for these people were women's responsibility. Nurses cared for the sick in government institutions as well as private hospitals, at first simply canvas tents. [1] After the initial typhoid epidemics swept the goldfields no subsequent epidemic disease had such a serious impact.

Tuberculosis, however, was a more insidious killer with a high incidence on the fields. Coolgardie Hospital became Western Australia's first tuberculosis sanatorium where many miners were treated for the disease, which also infected their carers. Miss Margaret O'Brien, who had trained in Adelaide became the first Matron of the Government Hospital in Coolgardie 1893. The Kalgoorlie Hospital opened two years later in March1895 under Matron Alerdice. [2] Typhoid continued to kill patients and nursing staff until the advent of clean water. [3]

Post WWII, Public Health nurses like Alice Flood monitored miners with tuberculosis and helped to administer their anti-tuberculosis therapy. She also ensured that men with silicosis were X-rayed regularly to prevent them contracting tuberculosis and becoming infectious. This miners' occupational lung disease increasingly affected miners and women nursed them, both at home and in hospital, through their long decline to invalidism and death. In 1915 a voluntary Mine Workers' Relief Fund was introduced in lieu of compensation to assist sick miners and their families but life was a grim struggle. After their husbands' inevitable deaths widows had to take on paid work to supplement their relief money, most selling their domestic skills washing, ironing cooking and cleaning for others. The cost of gold in human lives in both injuries and disease is an underplayed part of the goldfields story; wives, however, lived with the consequences.

Women's health was an important concern in the district. Public health nurses monitored the health of young women sex workers. And women like Frederica Cooke, became midwives and a vital role in towns where the young couples were in plentiful supply.

Education

Young trainee teachers, Olive Hadden and Jean Musk with friends ca 1920s, courtesy of Tom Scott.

For many women the education they received allowed them to become independent. Many remembered their teachers as inspirational and became teachers themselves. When they married, women had to resign from their teaching position but were often re-employed because of the shortage of teachers.

Others trained to be nurses and thus entered a career which enabled women to earn money during their apprenticeship and gain some independence.

However most women in the early 1900s were denied a full education instead relying on their domestic skills to sustain them until marriage - and often during their marriage or after the death of their husband.

Women's Stories

Read more about women from Kalgoorlie-Boulder in the Australian Women's Register.

Nerina Beccarelli - Domestic worker and gardner
Frederica Cooke - Midwife
Olive Scott (Hadden) - Teacher

Audio

Title: Lorna Mitchell discussing working as a teacher with mentally handicapped children in Kalgoorlie
Type: Interview
Source: Criena Fitzgerald

Hospitals, Health & Schools

Education

Women's Stories

Audio

Images

Notes