biographies

Lawson, Betty Constance (1915 - 2006)

MBE FNM FRCNA MID

Born
9 August 1915
Epping, New South Wales, Australia
Died
15 February 2006
Donvale, Victoria, Australia
Occupation
Matron and Midwife

Details

Prepared by Susan Hudson, 2006


TAKING TEA WITH THE GENERAL

Former Royal Women’s Hospital matron, Betty Lawson (1955-1977), was frail and living in a retirement village when she decided to invite the then chief of the Australian Defence Forces, Lieutenant -General Peter Cosgrove, to afternoon tea. It was 2001, the Australian Army’s Centenary year, and the invitation for the 21 November was gallantly accepted, “as a way of paying tribute to the role of nurses in the armed services,” General Cosgrove said.

At the time Miss Lawson was Australia’s most highly decorated nurse (still surviving), and the action clearly demonstrated that anything was achievable with clear intent – a maxim she had probably lived by for most of her life. About 40 of her friends and the press came to the party too, and a photo of an ebullient Lawson with the smiling general enjoying a ‘cuppa’ appeared in the Melbourne Age newspaper the next day.

After the declaration of war in 1939, Miss Lawson had enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Corps and sailed for the Middle East with the 2/2 Australian General Hospital (AGH). Initially she served with the 2/1st Casualty Clearing Station, but by 1943 was on the Australian hospital ship ‘Wanganella’ - a vessel that travelled more than 10 times around the world during WWII to bring home our wounded soldiers. Later she served with the 2/8th AGH at Lae in New Guinea and Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital. In all she spent five years at war and by discharge had attained the rank of Captain and been mentioned in dispatches (MID).

Miss Lawson’s professional activities post-war were similarly remarkable. She held many senior nursing positions, the culmination of which was 22 years at the helm of Victoria’s major maternity hospital. During her term of office at the Royal Women’s, a new 600-bed hospital was built and vast changes to nursing education and working practices, as well as patient care, took place.

Her significant contribution to nursing was marked when the International Red Cross awarded her the prestigious Florence Nightingale Medal in Geneva 1967, and later when Queen Elizabeth II presented her with an MBE at Buckingham Palace in 1978.

THE BEGINNING

Betty Lawson was the eldest of three daughters born on 9 August, 1915 to tea blending specialist Albert Charles Lawson and governess Florence Octavia Agutter in Epping, NSW. Betty was only 12 when her father died suddenly, and she was devastated, so much so that she hated going to funerals for the remainder of her life. Left alone to raise her children, Florence eventually moved her small family closer to relatives in Victoria. They settled in Ivanhoe, then a community of dairy farms and market gardens. Tall, fit and healthy, the young Betty swam regularly in the nearby Yarra River.

Educated at Ivanhoe State School and then University High School, she completed a commercial course and worked for solicitors Dooley & Breen while waiting to start nurse training in 1934. (According to her sister Patricia, she was “going to be a nurse from the day she was born”).

NURSE TRAINING

After commencing at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in 1934, she went on to become an outstanding nurse, and was awarded the Maudsley Prize in her second year of training. Upon graduating in 1937 she completed her staff nurse year and then studied midwifery at the Royal Women’s Hospital, before returning to the Melbourne to be appointed by then Matron, Miss Jane Bell, to head up her own ward - the youngest charge nurse ever at the hospital.

After the war Miss Lawson returned to the Royal Melbourne to work while waiting to begin her third certificate – infant welfare at Karitane in NSW (1947).

This completed, she applied for and received a Centaur Scholarship that allowed her to study nursing administration at the Royal College of Nursing in London in 1949, where she graduated with distinctions in psychology and ethics. (These Scholarships had been established in memory of nurses who had died when the hospital ship Centaur was torpedoed off Brisbane in 1943.)

Back in Melbourne Miss Lawson became a fellow of the then fledgling College of Nursing, Australia and joined the then Hospitals and Charities Commission as deputy to executive officer Gwenyth Williams. Miss Williams became a close friend and the two lobbied hard to set up nursing bursaries and to help launch a nurse aide training school in Victoria.

In 1952 she became deputy matron of the Geelong Base Hospital and then matron of the Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital (1953-55).

MATRON OF THE ROYAL WOMENS HOSPITAL

When Miss Ruth Meaney retired as matron of the Royal Women’s in 1955, Miss Lawson succeeded her.

Although the Women’s was seen principally as a maternity hospital, Miss Lawson pushed to see that gynaelcological nursing was given greater emphasis and in 1956 had the post-basic gynaecological nursing course reconstructed. This stemmed from her conviction of the importance of the health of women generally, not only as mothers. She also employed the first qualified midwifery tutor at the Women’s and lobbied hard to see the Australian College of Midwives established. She was also the first to introduce refresher courses for nurses returning to the profession after long absences.

The 1950s was also a time of chronic shortage of nurses and dissatisfied with the status of nurses and nursing during those years, Miss Lawson worked hard for improvements to the profession and to see it given greater approbation.

INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS

Miss Lawson stayed abreast of overseas developments by attending international congresses and in 1965, 1969 1973 and1977 she attended the International Council of Nurses (ICN) meetings in Canada, Germany, Mexico and Japan as well as conducting study tours of hospitals throughout the world. Few perhaps knew that the matrons of the various Melbourne hospitals met each other on a regular basis, and Lawson often traveled with Miss Lynly Aitken (Matron, Royal Melbourne) and Miss Lydia Shaw (Matron, Alfred). On these trips there was extensive sharing of information about nursing and health in general, to the benefit of Victoria’s public health system.

COMMITTEES & ASSOCIATIONS

Throughout her career Miss Lawson served on many significant nursing and health committees:
* Past president of the Florence Nightingale Committee of Australia (VIc) (1950 – 1985);
* Council Member & Executive Committee Member Royal College of Nursing (1953 – 1977);
* Member & former President, Hospital Matrons' Association of Victoria (1953 – 1977);
* Nursing Representative, Advisory Committee to Mental Health Authority (1953 – 1977);
* Midwifery Member on Executive, Victorian Nursing Council (1955 – 1978);
* Trustee, Centaur Trust (1963 – 1996);
* Chair, Committee of Management, Melbourne Nursing Aide School; Council, Royal Victorian College of Nursing (1976 – 1984);
* Member & life member, Nurses' Memorial Centre Committee (1978 – 1995);
* Committee Member, Carlton Community Health Centre (1978 – 1985);
* Committee Member and past president Returned & Services Nurses' Club (1978 – 1991);
* Life Member Australian College of Midwives (1953 – 2003).

Her retirement from the Royal Women’s in 1977 left more time for meeting people, gardening (especially growing orchids), the theatre, books and traveling and seeing close friends.

Miss Lawson’s death, aged 90, on 15 February 2006, signified the loss of another great Australian nurse who ran our public hospitals like a tight ship under old the Florence Nightingale system of training, brought to Australia in 1868. She was in part responsible for the high calibre and standing of Australian nurses throughout this country, and the world.

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Lawson, Betty Constance
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Prepared by: Susan Hudson

Created: 25 November 2006, Last modified: 26 November 2006