Eleanor Southey Baker McLaglan

Dr Eleanor Baker McLaglan by Steffano Webb, Christchurch, 1940. Eleanor Southey Baker McLaglan (13 September 1879 – 20 September 1969) was a New Zealand medical doctor, who worked in school medicine from 1914 to 1940.

Early life McLaglan was born in French Farm, at Akaroa near Christchurch, New Zealand on 13 September 1879. Her parents were Thomas Southey Baker (1848–1902), an English schoolteacher who played for England in the unofficial football international match against Scotland on 18 November 1871, and his wife Josephine Dicken. She attended Otago Girls' High School and medical school at the University of Otago, graduating in 1903.

Career After qualifying McLaglan spent a short period in Dublin gaining a licentiate in midwifery before returning to New Zealand in 1904. She took up a number of temporary positions including as an assistant medical officer at Seacliff Mental Hospital under Sir Truby King, and positions at Ashburn Hall and in general practice in Auckland. Seven years later, in a report to the Canterbury Education Board, McLaglan warned that the dangers of goitre in school children still persisted. An inquiry into the incidence of tuberculosis in school children was carried out in 1927 by McLaglan and Dr Mary Champtaloup. She retired from school medicine in 1940. Sydney's brother was the film actor Victor McLaglen.

McLaglan published her autobiography Stethoscope and Saddlebags in 1965. She died in Auckland on 20 September 1969, aged 90.

Publications

C.E. Hercus and E.S. Baker, Further consideration of endemic goitre, Part I New Zealand Medical Journal 22 (1923): 88. C.E. Hercus and E.S. Baker, Further consideration of endemic goitre, Part II New Zealand Medical Journal 22 (1923): 169.