Helen Mayo

Helen Mary Mayo (1 October 1878 – 13 November 1967) was an Australian medical doctor and medical educator, born and raised in Adelaide. In 1896, she enrolled at the University of Adelaide, where she studied medicine. After graduating, Mayo spent two years working in infant health in England, Ireland and British India. She returned to Adelaide in 1906, starting a private practice and taking up positions at the Adelaide Children's Hospital and Adelaide Hospital (later the Royal Adelaide).

In 1909, she co-founded the School for Mothers, where mothers could receive advice on infant health. This organisation, which became the Mothers' and Babies' Health Association in 1927, eventually established branches across South Australia and incorporated a training school for maternal nurses. In 1914, after unsuccessfully campaigning for the Children's Hospital to treat infants, Mayo co-founded the Mareeba Hospital for infants.

In addition to her medical achievements, Mayo participated in a number of other organisations. She was heavily involved in the University of Adelaide, serving on the university council from 1914 to 1960 (the first woman in Australia to be elected to such a position) and establishing a women's club and boarding college there.

She was also the founder of the Adelaide Lyceum Club, an organisation for professional women. Mayo died in 1967, with the Medical Journal of Australia attributing the success of South Australia's infant welfare system to her efforts.

Early life and education

Helen Mary Mayo was born in Adelaide, Australia on 1 October 1878. She was the eldest of the seven children of George Gibbes Mayo (1845–1921), a civil engineer, and Henrietta Mary Mayo, née Donaldson, (1852–1930) and granddaughter of George Mayo, a prominent Adelaide doctor, and Maria Gandy. Her formal education commenced at the age of 10, when she began receiving regular lessons with a tutor. However, Edward Rennie, then a professor at the University of Adelaide advised Helen's father that she was too young to commence study in Medicine, so in 1896, Mayo enrolled in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Adelaide. There she worked as a clinical clerk at the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street, London. In 1906, Mayo returned to Adelaide and started a private practice in premises owned by her father on Morphett Street, next to the family home. With spare time on her hands, she began laboratory work at the Adelaide Hospital and took up an appointment as honorary anaesthetist at the Adelaide Children's Hospital. Later that year, after hearing a talk about the success of a school for mothers in London, she and Harriet Stirling (the daughter of Edward Stirling) founded the School for Mothers in Adelaide. The Kindergarten Union made a room in its offices available for one afternoon a week, where a nurse would weigh babies and Mayo and Stirling would give advice. moving it to Woodville and renaming it the Mareeba Hospital,

Mayo played a central role in establishing Mareeba Hospital and forming its policy, serving as honorary physician, and as honorary responsible officer from 1921 to 1946. Mareeba eventually became a 70-bed hospital, complete with a surgical unit and a ward for premature babies. She used her experiences as a clinical bacteriologist at the Adelaide Hospital as the basis for her thesis, which she was forced to write on the weekends, such was the volume of her workload.

She retired in 1938 and became an honorary consulting physician at the Children's Hospital, but when the Second World War broke out, she returned to the hospital as senior paediatric adviser, at the same time organising the Red Cross donor transfusion service. ), author of ABC of Mothercraft, was appointed medical officer for MBHA in 1937. She was a daughter of industrialist and politician A. Wallace Sandford.

Other activities alt=A group of people pose for a formal group portrait beneath a stone arch. There is only one woman in the group. While the men have removed their hats, she still wears hers. The University of Adelaide Council in 1919. Helen Mayo is first on the right in the front row. Mayo became the first woman in Australia to be elected to a university council when, in 1914, she was elected to the Council of the University of Adelaide, a position she held for 46 years.

Mayo was also heavily involved in the life of female students and graduates of the University of Adelaide. She spearheaded the foundation of the Women Student's Club (eventually the Women's Union) in 1909, and in 1921 initiated efforts to unify the various student bodies at that University into what would eventually become the Adelaide University Union. The construction of the Lady Simon Building for the Women's Union was due in large part to her efforts, as was the founding of St. Ann's College, where she served as chairperson from 1939 to 1959. as is the Federal Division of Mayo. She was posthumously inducted onto the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2001.

Family Helen Mayo never married, but shared a house at North Adelaide with her partner, Dr. Constance Finlayson, and Miss Gertrude Young, sister of Walter James Young. The psychologist Elton Mayo (1880–1949) and judge Sir Herbert Mayo (1885–1972) were her brothers.