The other day I mentioned my great aunt Mabel who was one of the first women doctors to graduate (1905) from Melbourne university (1st picture). She married in 1909 (2nd pic) and being a woman in a male dominated field she was forced to move to outback Queensland to get work. She travelled by camel on her rounds. This is the photo I mentioned although I can't see her doctor bag that I remember - perhaps a different photo (3rd pic). Since 1915 photography has come a long way. This was was one of the early, user-friendly cameras I guess.
We do have artist ancestors from this time. They helped establish an art school in Melbourne but I need to research that more closely.
The woman I mentioned and the photo at the bottom.
4 comments:
Great pics! Even better story!
She was very pretty! That wedding portrait is fantastic.
Thank you so much for sharing.
I wonder what she thought about having to go into the outback to find work...?
Our daughters are so spoiled now, me too, I am blessed to atleast be somewhat protected politically. It really is hard to understand how such women like this coped with such an oppresive reality on a personal level.
I would probably have wound up stoned to death before I was even 16 if I had not been born lucky.
In that wedding portrait, she looks so delicate and manicured.
But if you enlarge it and just stare into her eyes, past her glasses it is strange how determined her eyes seem staring back from under that perfect hairdo.
She's GREAT!
Thanks Christy - her mother's story is even more amazing but yes ..... the women all along that side of my heritage were very, very determined indeed. Particularly through that generation and one or two before. Mabel was one of 16 children. 14 survived infance and childhood. 13 survived well past 70.
I guess it was these pioneering women (the suffragettes in your country) who paved the way for women who came along after them. I'm grateful for their determination and adventurous spirit and ability to find solutions against all the odds.
Ok. I'll bite.
Tell us her mothers story?
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