Wuhoo Timaru - Find Free Fun! - Her father wanted a teacher. Mary Lindsay had other ideas: Timaru Hospital’s matron

By Roselyn Fauth

When Mary Lindsay was a teenager, her father directed her towards teaching. Mary wanted to become a nurse. She eventually “got her way”, as her obituary rather wonderfully put it, and began work as an aide in a private hospital in Timaru.

That would be a good place to begin her story, except I did not know any of it when I began looking for her. All I had was one line in the 1948 New Year Honours: Miss Mary Letitia Lindsay, Matron, Public Hospital, Timaru. A name, a job and an OBE. It told me she had mattered. It did not tell me why...

A problem with her name

My first difficulty was working out what she was called. The honours list named her Mary Letitia Lindsay. Hospital records often shortened this to M. L. Lindsay. The nursing journal Kai Tiaki called her Letitia Lindsay, while the official register of nurses listed her as “Lindsay, Letitia”.

For a while, I wondered whether I had found two different nurses. The career details joined the records together. The Letitia Lindsay who trained at Dunedin Hospital was the same woman who became matron at Waimate and then took charge of nursing at Timaru.

She passed the State examination in December 1917 and entered the nurses’ register in January 1918. Her registration number was 2228.

I could find that number quite easily. Her birth date proved much harder. That imbalance followed me through the search. The professional system had recorded Matron Lindsay in considerable detail. Mary herself was more elusive.

A matron within a few years

After training at Dunedin Hospital, Mary became a ward sister at Waimate Hospital. According to her obituary, she was promoted to matron only a year later. She was certainly matron by early 1922, only a few years after qualifying. Then she left.

Hospital Board reports recorded her proposed resignation and revealed that at least one member thought accepting it would be unwise. Before she went, patients in the men’s ward presented her with a fountain pen. The fuller explanation appeared in Kai Tiaki. Mary had been called away to nurse her invalid mother. Although the hospital was reportedly prepared to grant her extended leave, she resigned. Her paid nursing career stopped. Family nursing took its place.

The records do not tell us whether she resented the interruption or considered it inevitable. They simply record that she went. After her mother died, Mary returned to Waimate. In January 1926, Kai Tiaki reported her reappointment as matron and treated it as recognition of the quality of her earlier work. She had not been forgotten.

Thirteen applicants

In 1927, Timaru Public Hospital needed a new matron. Mary was released temporarily from Waimate to act in the position. Thirteen people then applied for the permanent job. The Hospital Board committee recommended Mary unanimously.

This was not an automatic transfer between neighbouring hospitals. It was a contested senior appointment, and she was chosen over twelve other applicants. Mary became matron of Timaru Public Hospital in September 1927. She remained there until 1949.

A matron’s work extended well beyond bedside nursing. She was responsible for the organisation of the nursing service, the supervision and training of probationers, staffing the wards and maintaining standards across a hospital that operated day and night.

A 1939 report recorded 151 employees at Timaru Hospital and 2,108 inpatients during the previous financial year. Mary did not command every department, but nursing and much of the domestic organisation that supported it fell within her sphere.

An OBE without an explanation

Mary was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1948 New Year Honours. The official notice identified her as matron of Timaru Public Hospital. It did not provide a detailed citation. It is reasonable to understand the award as recognition of her nursing and hospital leadership, but those are not the words of the official record. Her job title was apparently expected to explain enough.

By then, her responsibilities also reached beyond Timaru. From 1941 until 1949, she served on the New Zealand Nurses and Midwives Registration Board, helping oversee the standards and registration of the profession nationally.

That seemed important. Yet I still knew remarkably little about the kind of leader she had been.

The Lindsay Wing

Mary retired from Timaru Hospital in 1949 after reaching the statutory retirement age. In 1955, a new wing of the Nurses’ Home was named after her. Mary returned to plant a golden ash to mark its opening. It was an appropriate place to carry her name. The Nurses’ Home was where generations of young women lived while they trained. They slept there, studied there, worried about examinations and recovered between shifts.

Photographs of the commemorative tree and plaque survive in Timaru District Libraries’ Aoraki Heritage Collection. The wing itself appears to have gone. It was part of the older Nurses’ Home complex, apparently removed during later redevelopment, although I have not yet found a demolition notice naming the Lindsay Wing specifically.

I do not know whether the golden ash survived or where the plaque went... That remains one of the unfinished parts of the hunt.

The cutting I nearly missed

By this point, I thought I had found about as much as I was going to find online. I had followed Mary through nursing registers, Hospital Board reports, professional journals and honours records. I knew where she trained, why she left Waimate, how she won the Timaru appointment and that part of the Nurses’ Home had carried her name.

Then I found her obituary in the Aoraki Heritage Collection. It had appeared in the Timaru Herald on 25 July 1975, the day after she died in Auckland. In one newspaper cutting, Mary began to emerge from behind her title. The obituary explained that her father had wanted her to teach, while Mary had insisted on nursing. It described her as a small woman with seemingly limitless energy. More importantly, it told me what she had done at Timaru.

Drawing on Dr C. McKenzie’s history of the hospital, the obituary said Mary arrived in 1927 to find unsatisfactory nursing conditions. Her sincerity and force of character brought about a striking change. She gathered a capable group of sisters around her and created what McKenzie called an atmosphere of job satisfaction. The nursing service then received consistently high assessments from departmental officers. Her influence extended beyond the nurses. She gained the cooperation of kitchen and laundry staff, porters and others working throughout the hospital. That detail made the rest of the story fall into place.

A matron could demand obedience through rank. Willing cooperation had to be earned. Now the OBE made more sense. So did the Lindsay Wing. Mary had not merely held the job for 22 years. She had changed the way the hospital worked.

Retirement, again

The obituary also corrected my assumption that Mary’s nursing life ended when she left Timaru. Statutory retirement removed her from the hospital in 1949, but in 1952 she took charge of the Darby and Joan Home for older people in Wellington. She remained there until she broke her leg.

Later, although she was over 70, she again held a position in charge of an institution caring for elderly people. Only after her final retirement did she settle at Selwyn Village in Auckland.

Even retirement had several attempts at her. In October 1974, despite her advancing years, Mary returned to Timaru for celebrations marking the 110th anniversary of the hospital’s nursing school. The following year, her obituary said that generations of nurses remembered her with gratitude and affection.

There is one mistake in that obituary. It says Mary received her OBE in 1941. The official honours records confirm that it was awarded in 1948. The wrong year may have slipped in because 1941 was when she joined the Nurses and Midwives Registration Board. It was a useful warning. A newspaper cutting can unlock a life and still get something wrong.

What Mary’s story left me thinking about

I began with a line in an honours list.

The search led to a registration number, a fountain pen from patients, thirteen applications for a job, a vanished Nurses’ Home wing and, finally, an obituary I nearly missed.

That last cutting changed the story.

It showed a young woman resisting the profession chosen for her. It showed a matron who stepped away to care for her mother, returned to leadership and later transformed a troubled nursing service. It showed someone who reached statutory retirement and carried on working elsewhere.

Mary repeatedly arrived at points where other people or circumstances seemed to have decided what happened next.

Her father chose teaching... Family illness interrupted her career... The hospital retired her. Age and a broken leg might reasonably have ended her working life. Yet when she could, Mary began again.

I still cannot tell you when she was born. I have not found her letters or heard her voice. I do not know whether her golden ash remains somewhere in the hospital grounds.

But the pattern of her life is visible. Mary Lindsay chose nursing and kept choosing it. She trained nurses, rebuilt a hospital service, contributed to national professional standards and carried her experience into the care of older people long after Timaru required her to retire.

The OBE was not the whole story. It was the clue that started the search.

Timeline

December 1917
Letitia Lindsay passed the State examination for nurses after training at Dunedin Hospital.

January 1918
She was registered as a nurse. The 1918 register recorded her under the name Letitia Lindsay.

By 1922
She was serving as matron of Waimate Hospital.

1922
She left Waimate because of serious illness in her family. Although extended leave was reportedly available, she resigned so she could nurse her invalid mother.

Late 1925 or early 1926
Following her mother’s death, she was reappointed matron of Waimate Hospital.

1927
She was released from Waimate to serve temporarily as acting matron at Timaru Public Hospital. Dr C. McKenzie reportedly wrote that Mary found unsatisfactory nursing conditions at Timaru Hospital when she arrived in 1927. She assembled a capable group of sisters and created what would now be called an atmosphere of “job satisfaction”.

September 1927
She was unanimously selected from thirteen applicants as Timaru Hospital’s permanent matron.

1939
A newspaper report recorded Timaru Hospital as employing 151 people and treating 2,108 inpatients in the previous financial year.

1939
Free public hospital treatment was introduced under the health benefits associated with the Social Security Act 1938, increasing demand on public hospitals.

1941 to 1949
Mary was a member of the New Zealand Nurses and Midwives Registration Board. She was not only supervising nurses locally. She was participating in the professional system that determined registration and standards across New Zealand. This may also help explain why she was considered worthy of an OBE in 1948.

1 January 1948
Mary Letitia Lindsay was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the New Year Honours. (research note explaining that her 1975 obituary incorrectly gives 1941.)

1949
She retired after approximately 22 years as matron of Timaru Public Hospital.

In 1952, she took charge of the Darby and Joan Home for the aged in Wellington. She remained there until she broke her leg. Later, although already over 70, she held another position in charge of an institution caring for elderly people. Only after this final retirement did she live at Selwyn Village in Auckland.

1955
The Lindsay Wing of the Nurses’ Home opened. Mary planted a golden ash to commemorate the occasion.

8 October 1974
The Timaru Herald reported on her return to Timaru for a nurses’ reunion. The article confirmed that the Nurses’ Home wing had been named to record her contribution to nursing.

25 July 1975
The Timaru Herald published her obituary following her death in Auckland.

Sources
Official nursing registration

New Zealand Gazette, Register of Nurses, 28 February 1918, issue 32

https://library.victoria.ac.nz/databases/nzgazettearchive/pubs/gazettes/1918/1918%20ISSUE%20032.pdf

https://gazette.howison.co.nz/nzg/1918/issue/32/page/711

Waimate Hospital and family-care interruption

Kai Tiaki, October 1922, report concerning Letitia Lindsay’s leave and resignation

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/KT19221001.2.59

Kai Tiaki, January 1926, report of her reappointment as matron of Waimate Hospital

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/KT19260101.2.57

Appointment at Timaru Hospital

Timaru Herald, 15 September 1927, Hospital Board report and appointment