biographies

Rawlings, William Joseph (1903 - )

Born
22 May 1903
Carlton, Victoria, Australia
Occupation
Gynaecologist, Medical Practitioner and Obstetrician

Details

Transcription of item published in "The Book of Remembrance", The Royal Women's Hospital, Melbourne. Author unknown.


WILLIAM JOSEPH RAWLINGS
(1947 - 1963)

William Joseph Rawlings was born on 22nd May, 1903, the second son of Charles Henry and Margaret Mary Rawlings who lived in Drummond Street, Carlton, in a direct line with the labour ward of the Women’s Hospital, Melbourne, in those days in the Genevieve Ward wing, a site now occupied by the Kumm-Stephens wing.

His early education was received at first from the Christian Brothers at St. George’s School in Drummond Street, and later he went to St. Augustine’s School in Yarraville where the influence and tuition of Sister Benedicta had a far-reaching effect on his future, not least in securing a bursary that led him to further his education. During these years the boy often played in the grounds of Melbourne University, where the fine old buildings, especially those with large windows and arrays of jars and specimen bottles, proved a source of excitement and veneration. The boy remembered his interest also in military funerals passing along Swanston (then Madeline) Street to the Melbourne General Cemetery, the soldiers in their blue trousers and red jackets, with pipe-clayed helmets and belts. During these years too, in 1917, his father was killed in action in France, where his elder brother was still serving.

A growing awareness of an ancestor, Bartholomew Gosnold (d.1607) - the navigator who discovered Cape Cod and founded Jamestown in Virginia, caused an increasing interest in the sea, taking young Bill first from the boy scouts to the sea scouts, and then to the Merchant Service Cadets with the intention of a life at sea. He even commenced as deck cadet on the S.S. Eumerella and it was intended that this be followed by apprenticeship on a four-masted barque carrying wheat to England in wartime. However, in 1918 came the offer of a much-prized bursary which was to take him to the Marist Brothers’s Assumption College at Kilmore for four years, as a member of the first of the annual groups of five to go thence from the Yarraville school. At the same time, a kindly marine superintendent counseled him to accept the further schooling, while concentrating on geometry and trigonometry with an eye to future navigation examinations. With the passage of two years Bill came to realize that the Captain had really been dissuading him from a life on the sea.

Then Repatriation and Newman scholarships made possible the medical course at Melbourne University, where from 1922 the alphabetical order in the desks ran Eric Price, Louis Rabinov, Bill Rawlings and E. Graeme Robertson. His university career was most distinguished by boxing prowess, wherefrom he could retire after four years as undefeated Australian University Lightweight champion. He received the first full Blue ever awarded in boxing.

After graduation in 1927 he joined the staff of the Ballarat Base Hospital, being Medical Superintendent from 1929 to 1931. He pioneered bronchography and intravenous pyelography in this area.

A McCaughey travelling scholarship for sons of deceased first world war servicemen took him to the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin, where he obtained the Diploma of Gynaecology and Obstetrics in 1932. This was at the time when Bethel Solomons was Master and A.F. Dixon Professor of Anatomy. From here he crossed to England to secure his M.C.O.G. (the membership of what is now the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists), the conferment of which was delayed to 1933 by the need for suitable case histories to be sent from Ballarat.

During his sojourn among the centres of London he married Miss Mabelle Northey Thomas of Ballarat. In 1933 they went to St. Mary’s Hospital, Manchester, where Bill met his lifelong correspondent William Fletcher Shaw and became the first Australian to be Resident Obstetrical Surgeon. In this post he was succeeded by another Australian - Roland Nattrass of Perth.

After his return to Australia he held a few posts as locum tenens and then as surgeon and reliever, from 1936 to 1938, joined a group practicing in the Oakleigh, Carnegie and Glen Iris district. From here, to foster his special interest in obstetrics and gynaecology, he commenced practice on his own in Rochester Road, Canterbury and in Collins Street. At this time he was invited to join an Intermediate Legacy group in which he assisted at the boys’ camps.

All these interests were interrupted by a term in the Army from 1942 to 1945. After return from New Guinea he resumed practice in both Canterbury and Collins Street and was nominated by Lieutenant-General (later Sir Stanley G.) Savige for senior membership of Legacy.

In 1947 he was appointed an Obstetric Surgeon to Out-patients at The (Royal) Women’s Hospital, Melbourne, and soon came to be interested in the problem of the women afflicted with recurrent abortion. He also served as Secretary to the Victorian State Committee during some of the formative years in Australia of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. From 1952 to 1967 he was Federal President of the Australian branch of the Institute of British Surgical Technicians. In 1953 he became an Honorary Obstetric Surgeon to In-patients, a position he held until his retirement in 1963 at which time he was appointed an Honorary Consulting Surgeon to the Hospital. He also ceased practice in obstetrics and gynaecology in this year.

A strong personal characteristic was a clinical curiosity, an apt readiness to embrace and evaluate any new therapeutic method that offered itself. His early papers considered the role of Nembutal in Midwifery and the expectation of relief from the use of Magnesium in Dysmenorrhoea. But the great example of this questing came from his special clinic at The Royal Women’s Hospital for the prevention of Habitual Abortion. Here his enthusiasm was considerable, his personal interest in each patient and her problems much appreciated by the individual. He encouraged, cajoled, admonished, sometimes almost compelled them to carry on. There were always new progestational agents appearing for use and each received spirited trial.

From this work there seemed to be considerable success. Enormous effort, prolonged and detailed, was directed to the hormonal side of pregnancy, often in collaboration with Vera Krieger, D.Sc., seeking a pattern among the individual differences of the case histories encountered. The worth of pregnanediol excretion in such patients, the effect on it of the various hormonal preparations on trial, occupied much time and provoked much puzzlement, for nothing definite would emerge.

I always remember summing-up by a distinguished overseas visitor, after hearing one such attempt at explanation of a case series. He said he did not think the undoubtedly beneficial effects on the series had come from anything that had been done by hormone therapy. Rather it was, he felt, a matter of "What woman would dare to miscarry?" in the face of a strong male personality so intensely personally interested in her destiny.

Bill also became enthusiastically interested in the work on sheep reproduction being done by Dr. N.W. Moore at the McCaughey Memorial Institute at Jerilderie. In consequence numerous weekend expeditions were made there, to see if there was anything that could prove applicable to the infertile human.

I like to remember Bill as a slim, alert man, with a brisk walk and a military moustache, ever interested to talk over a problem and to encourage his juniors. He always struck me as a man of many friendships, all of which he kept, as Samuel Johnson stipulated, in "constant repair". It was regrettable that his years of retirement were marred, almost from the beginning, by considerable worsening cardio-vascular dysfunction. The cerebral vascular complications that darkened his last weeks occurred at the end of a particularly bad year of recurrent ill-health.

Dr. Rawlings is survived by his widow and their adopted daughter Barbara Rose Campbell.

Archival/Heritage Resources

Royal Women's Hospital Archives

  • Book of Remembrance, 1956 - 1975; Royal Women's Hospital Archives [ Details... ].

Prepared by: Robyn Waymouth

Created: 22 September 2006, Last modified: 26 November 2006