biographies

Place, Jessica (1909 - 1994)

RN

Born
4 January 1909
Daylesford, Victoria, Australia
Died
1994
Occupation
Nurse and Nurse Educator
Summary

Compiled by Ann Westmore PhD, August 2006

Jessica McBean Place, RN, nurse educator, helped rejuvenate gynaecological nurse training at the Royal Women’s Hospital and introduced a refresher course for nurses that encouraged many former nurses to return to the profession. She was an excellent writer and communicator and composed The Royal Women’s Hospital Midwives’ Pledge.

Details

Jessica Place was born on 4 January 1909 at Daylesford and was educated at the local Catholic (Holy Cross) convent, although her family’s religious affiliation was the Church of England. From an early age she wanted a career despite her father preferring that ‘his daughters remain home, and sew a fine seam, until they were handed over in matrimony’.

She eventually gained her father’s approval to study nursing provided she did her training at the local hospital under the guidance and observation of the family doctor who was mentor and friend to the family. Accordingly, she started her nursing career at the Daylesford and District Hospital in the early 1930s and, through its affiliation with the Women’s Hospital, came to Melbourne in 1932 to complete her training.

Training at the Women’s
She undertook her midwifery training at the Women’s, starting in August 1933, under the motherly eye of Matron Margaret McDonald, whom she found was kind to young and inexperienced pupil nurses. She just missed out on receiving the payment of 5 shillings a week offered to midwifery trainees from April 1934. Although she enjoyed midwifery, she was attracted more to gynaecology and general nursing.

In 1935, she was appointed to the Women’s Hospital staff as a junior operating theatre sister, where she learned on the job ‘by trial and error’. Reflecting later on this phase of her career she said “It is astounding to look back on now, but it was due to the honoraries who asked that I be appointed to this position and they agreed with Miss McDonald that they would teach me. They were true to their word, and I owe a great debt of gratitude to the honoraries of those days who held true to their word and taught me all that I know in the theatre.”

One of the honoraries whose teaching she valued most was Dr Bertram Milne ‘Old Bertie’ Sutherland (1877-1951), a member of the honorary medical staff from 1914 to 1938 inclusive, and its chairman from 1930-38. He was well regarded for his kindliness, wisdom and reliable counsel, and his meticulous attention to ethical standards. For these reasons, he was appointed to the hospital’s Committee of Management on his retirement in 1938, remaining in the position until his death in 1951.

With support from "Old Bertie" and other honoraries, Place was soon the Senior Theatre Sister which involved being on call every second night and for 48 hours every second weekend. Though the rate of pay was hardly princely, at £2/7/6 a week, she saved enough for a single fare to England together with spending money of £30. Travelling with a colleague, she left Australia early in 1938 aboard the Jarvis Bay leaving her parents ‘appalled and dismayed but, she suspected, secretly delighted’. She nursed for a time at Hartford Hill Chest Hospital, Warwickshire, then at the exclusive St. Thomas’ Hospital in London, and at a hospital in South Africa, before returning to Australia via Britain. Her family and colleagues treasured her letters, as she had the knack of describing experiences so vividly that they, too, felt they were on the trip.

Teaching at the Women’s
Her communication skills set her apart and when she returned to Melbourne towards the end of 1940 she was rapidly installed as tutor in the hospital’s gynaecological section. The appointment came about after Place visited ‘Old Bertie’ in his Collins St rooms. No sooner had he greeted her than he whisked her away in his car to the Women’s Hospital. He headed straight for McDonald’s office and said, ‘Good morning Matron, here is your new tutor’, a clear indication that some honorary staff had a strong influence on the choice of nurse teachers at the time. Twenty minutes later Place left the office, equipped with a text book and a date on which to start her new duties, 4 January 1941, her 32nd birthday.

Diminutive in stature and always perfectly dressed with small precise writing to match, Place was a much loved teacher of both postgraduate nurses and general nursing students. She virtually never raised her voice, relying on approval and example to get the most out of her students. ‘If you’d failed to drape a patient properly for a procedure, you felt so ashamed,’ said Billie Lindsay, (née Snowdon) who graduated from the combined training school for nurses at the Women’s and Prince Henry’s Hospitals in 1953.

Lindsay remembered Place for her warmth, caring and enthusiasm and her expectation of high standards in behaviour, courtesy and dress. ‘She also set high standards for knowledge and written work, insisting that no pupil nurses would be allowed to sit for an examination until they reached a higher level in practice tests than would be needed for a pass,’ she said.

Lindsay, who became Assistant Director of Nursing at Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital, had tremendous admiration and respect for Place, and used her as a model for her own approach to nursing. From Place she picked up the dictum, ‘Never ask someone to do something you won’t do yourself’ and so pupil nurses knew the expectation was that they would fulfil any and all instructions given. Lindsay also adopted Place’s motto to ‘Be fair, firm and friendly, but never familiar’.

Lindsay recalled that Place’s empathy for patients was conveyed in the instructions she gave about feeding patients with a visual impairment. Place considered it essential that nurses describe to patients how the tray was arranged and to ask if they liked to be fed their meat and vegetables together or separately, she said.

Lessons for life
To Place, thoughtfulness for others counted a great deal, and she could be relied upon to remember details of the smallest treats others enjoyed. Lindsay was touched that she remembered her penchant for liquorice straps, for example. She advised pupil nurses to discontinue nursing if they ever found themselves becoming hardened, a state of mind which implied the presence of a barrier between the nurse and her colleagues or patients, whether in terms of acceptance of them or of the patient’s illness.

Another nursing colleague, [Deputy Matron] Jean Crameri, said that over the years, Place left her mark on countless nurses who benefited from her dedicated, skilled teaching. Many of these nurses remained her good friends.
The medical staff, too, admired her greatly. Dr Gytha Betheras who started her career in obstetrics and gynaecology in the late 1950s before establishing clinics in family planning and sexual counselling in the 1970s, said that with Betty Lawson as Matron and Place as Tutor Sister, post-gynaecological nurse training at the hospital was rejuvenated from the 1950s onwards.

Place drafted the Royal Women’s Hospital Midwives’ Pledge at Lawson’s request to mark the first Midwifery School graduation in September 1967. It embodies nursing ideals in the style of the Nightingale pledge for nurses, reading as follows;

“Before this assembly, and in the presence of my colleagues, I pledge myself to practise my profession of midwifery with dignity and honour. To the medical profession I offer my allegiance and co-operation, and under their guidance I will exercise with diligence and care my nursing knowledge and accomplishments to ensure the well-being of mother and babe. It is my sincere hope that, both as a woman and as a midwife, I may be granted the grace of compassion, that I may comfort and support my patient in her hour of stress, and care for both mother and babe with kindness and understanding.”

Place was the only nurse ever invited to give the Tracy Maund Memorial Lecture (TMML), inaugurated by Drs Frank Forster and J. W. (‘Hoppy’) Johnstone in 1964. In giving the 7th TMML on 10 March 1970, Place warned that “We have an impressive and beautiful hospital but great hospitals can become dehumanised machines, the individual but a bed number – the sick human being just so much clinical material. It is NOT the splendour of the architecture or the lavishness of the equipment that makes a hospital great – although both augment its efficiency - it is the quality of the medical and nursing services offered to the patient.” The risk of mistaking style for substance meant the hospital might be entering its “most dangerous period”, she added.

Retirement
Place worked part-time from early 1971 and retired in mid-1976 having suffered some ill-health the previous year. At her farewell function, Matron Betty Lawson described her as “a total RWH product” who had taught 343 students, many of whom had themselves joined the hospital’s staff. “Sister Place has found the teaching of nursing aides to be very rewarding and our results bear out the effective teaching she has given this important nursing group.” Lawson also credited Place with introducing a Refresher Course for nurses in June 1964, “as a result of which 236 nurses have been re-orientated to nursing”.

In her farewell speech, Place displayed her typical warmth, musing on the tremendous number of pleasant associations with the hospital she retained, not only with medical and nursing staff members and paramedical units, but also with countless others who worked around the hospital. “I’ve had marvellous friends in the store, the maintenance department, among porters and maids and I’ll remember them all with great affection.” On the issue of how she would spend her retirement she said, “No previous experience. Never done it before”. In the event, she mastered the required skills, living until 1994, well into her nineties.


Sources:

‘The Avenue of Years’ Tracy Maund Memorial lecture 1970 A91/32/113;

Personal communication, Billie Lindsay to Ann Westmore;

Tape of Jean Crameri’s farewell function on 4 July 1975 (RWH Archives, not yet accessioned);

Speech by Gytha Betheras at Betty Lawson memorial service, 12 April, 2006;

Anon, ‘Sr. Place to Retire’, RWH Bulletin, 9, 5, 1976, p.1.

Archival/Heritage Resources

Royal Women's Hospital Archives

  • Jean Crameri’s farewell function, 1975, Unaccessioned; Royal Women's Hospital Archives [ Details... ].

Published Resources

Books

  • Place, Jessica, The Avenue of Years, Royal Women's Hospital, Carlton, 1972, 18 pp. [ Details... ]

Journal Articles

  • Anon, 'Sr. Place to Retire', Bulletin, vol. 9, no. 5, Royal Women's Hospital, 1976, p. 1. [ Details... ]

Prepared by: Robyn waymouth

Created: 17 November 2006