Isla Stuart Blomfield

Isla Stuart Blomfield (9 July 1865 – 16 August 1959) was an Australian nurse, sanitary inspector, and health visitor. She spent her career helping to reduce the high infant mortality in New South Wales, advising mothers about breastfeeding. She was the only woman health inspector in Sydney's health department, and she was an executive member of the Royal Society for the Welfare of Mothers and Babies.

Life

Blomfield was born near Mudgee in New South Wales. She was the first of eight children of Margaret (born Cox) and Henry Wilson Blomfield, who was a grazier. Her parents were both born in Australia, and it is presumed that they employed a governess for her. In the following year, she was the nurse-in-charge at the Alice Rawson School for Mothers in Darlington. Blomfield visited young mothers at a rate of 1,400 per year until Baby Centres began in 1915. She advocated that young mothers should receive cheap milk so that they could better feed their babies. Blomfield became an executive member. William George Armstrong claimed that the work with mothers had been the contributing factor to the later observed reduction in infant mortality.