Mary Herring

Dame Mary Ranken Herring, Lady Herring, (née Lyle; 31 March 1895 – 26 October 1981) was an Australian medical practitioner and community worker.

A graduate of the University of Melbourne, where she studied medicine and excelled at sports, Mary qualified as a general practitioner in 1921 and became a resident surgeon at Royal Melbourne Hospital. Her work was mainly with poor women, many of whom lived in unsanitary conditions and had inadequate diets. The social mores of the time often kept young women ignorant of matters dealing with sex and pregnancy. She recognised that pregnant women in particular needed more information about what was happening to them, and provided information on birth control at a time when many doctors and a large segment of the community were opposed to it. "She broke taboos", Della Hilton later wrote, and "made forbidden subjects not only matters for discussion, but for action".

In addition to her medical work, Mary supported women's sports and was patron of many charities. During World War II she helped form the AIF Women's Association. She served on its Welfare Subcommittee, looking after the needs of soldiers' families, and was president of the association from 1943 to 1946. In recognition of her medical and charitable work, she was made a Commander of the Order of St John in 1953, and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1960 "for services to nursing in Victoria". On 2 February 1944, the Premier of Victoria, Albert Dunstan, appointed Ned as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria. For much of the next 30 years he would also serve as lieutenant governor of Victoria, this being a common additional function of the chief justice. When Ned became acting governor for eight months in February 1949, Herring found Government House to be in a state of disrepair. She successfully lobbied James Kennedy for funds for its refurbishment, and supervised the work personally.

A foundation member of the Toorak College council in 1927, Herring served as its president from 1947 to 1948 and again from 1960 to 1970. She played tennis and golf, and when her two eldest daughters began playing hockey at school, Herring's interest in hockey was rekindled. A strong believer in the principle that women and not men should administer women's sports, she became a member of the Victorian Women's Amateur Sports Council, and was later the patron of the Victorian Women's Hockey Association. Players visiting from interstate would often stay at her home. This was extended to overseas visitors during the 1956 Summer Olympics, which were held in Melbourne.

In 1953, Herring travelled to London to attend the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, which she viewed from a seat inside Westminster Abbey. In a ceremony at Buckingham Palace on 10 July 1953, the new Queen made Herring a Commander of the Order of St John in recognition of her charity work. This charity work was extensive. Herring was a foundation member and first president of the Victorian Council of Social Service when it was formed in 1946, and chairman of the Vera Scantlebury Brown Memorial Trust from 1946 to 1979. Herring and Vera Scantlebury Brown had both attended Toorak College, and were also medical students at the University of Melbourne together.

Herring was a deputy-president of the Victorian division of the Australian Red Cross from 1944 to 1963, of the Victoria League from 1945 to 1972, and of the Australian council of the Save the Children Fund from 1962 to 1967. On 11 June 1960, she was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire "for services to nursing in Victoria". Mary Herring Hall at Toorak College was named in her honour in 1964.

Death Before her death on 26 October 1981, aged 86, following a long illness, Herring planned her own funeral service, requesting that no announcements be made until after she was buried. In her final days, she moved to Ned's nursing home in Camberwell, Victoria, to be with him. A small private service was held on 28 October 1981. She also planned a state funeral at St Paul's Cathedral for Ned, who died a few months after her on 5 January 1982.