This biography is primarily based on an interview with Diana Mason conducted in 1998 for the Stories of Diversity and Success Oral History Project conducted by Dr Tree Cocks on behalf of the New Zealand Medical Women’s Association. Reference Number: OHInt-0780-01. Further sources are listed in the bibliography. The biography was written by Michaela Selway.
1945 Graduate
Contents
Family History and Childhood
Diana Manby Mason was born in Wellington on 29 July 1922 to Frieda Charlotte Manby (nee Todd) and Charles Bertram Shaw. (2) She was the youngest of two daughters, her sister Paula Denise being 18 months older than her. (1) Frieda was born in Sydney, Australia to Clifford and Charlotte Todd in 1897. Clifford was a solicitor and died while Frieda was a young adult. His death was unexpected but he left Charlotte well off financially. Charlotte lived quite extravagantly, however, and though Clifford had earned well, she continued to live extravagantly after his death. This resulted in her running through all the money he had left her rather quickly. (5) Thus, when Frieda decided to move to New Zealand, Charlotte came too. Diana described her mother as ‘a woman of immense energy, foresight and enthusiasm’. (1) Frieda was a professionally trained pianist who would accompany herself while she sang (anything from Tchaikovsky and Brahms to Schubert) and she was always immaculately dressed. (5)
Charles Bertram Shaw was an Englishman who had made his way to Australia in the early 1900s. (2) Because of this, when World War One broke out, he joined the war as a member of the Australian Army contingent. (5) Diana described her father as a dapper and bald, yet striking man. ‘He always made me feel as though I was a person in my own right. He never talked down to me’. (5) After the war, he returned to Australia and opened an import and export firm called Canada Wire and Cable. (2, 4, 5).
Charles and Frieda married in Sydney in 1920 and then soon after moved to New Zealand, where they had Denise in 1921. (6) The family moved to the suburb of Karori near Wellington, where Charles built their family home. (1). Frieda was shocked to find no kindergarten in Karori, so she founded the first one for the suburb and ran it out of their home. (1) Frieda was also extremely interested in health and wellness and opened an aerobic gymnastics studio in Cable Car Lane (2) (4) (5). The gym was so busy, she was able to hire someone to do the bookings, and when the two girls were old enough, they assisted with demonstrations. (5) As a part of this interest in health and wellness, Frieda would make wholemeal flour at home with a stationary bike that she had attached to a grinder. In the evenings, she would get Charles to ‘pedal away furiously grinding whole wheat to make wholemeal flour, which she then took down to the studio and sold to her clientele’. (5) Charles was also quite the jack-of-all-trades, as he worked with wood and brewed his own beer at home. He would sometimes even hold brewing sessions with their neighbours. (5)
Diana described herself as “overweight, frumpy, and with freckles” as a child. (1) Her family had very high standards that were drilled into her from a young age. She was taught to always stand up straight otherwise her grandmother would put a broomstick underneath her arms and across her back – especially because she was always bending over reading a book. She was also taught to not put too much food in her mouth and not to talk with her mouth full – table manners were essential. She was not to use slang. She always got the impression that her parents expected her to achieve well in life. ‘They expected me to make the most of my potential and made it quite clear that they did’. (5) Thankfully, she had a love of learning from a young age. At home, they had a large library and she was always found with her nose in a book. Most of the books were her mother’s. Her mother was happy for her to read anything as long as she was prepared to discuss it with her. This is where she developed her great love for literature. (5) The whole family also did many things together. They would frequently go on camping trips and they enjoyed gardening together in their large vegetable garden. (5) Her father in particular was her pride and joy. ‘I just always wanted to be copying whatever he did. I used to go out in the garden and work with him, and when we would go away on summer holidays, he and I would always pack the car because we were both regarded as the methodical ones of the family’. (5)
She remembered having a happy childhood that was not affected by the Great Depression, even though she grew up during the 1920s and 30s. ‘I do remember very clearly that there was a soup kitchen at the bottom of the street in which we lived, in a parish hall, and we used to see people queuing for food. And this used to disturb us greatly because we always had lots of food. And that really brings home, when I look back on that, it must have made a very lasting impression on me because I’m always sympathetic for the underdog’. (5) Moreover, due to her father’s import and export firm, the family always had cars and wirelesses. This was unusual for the time and the neighbours would often come over to their house to listen. Charles stayed in this business until World War Two broke out, as he was worried the company would go under during the war. Instead, he bought an orchard and became a full-time orchardist. (5)
An Early Entrance to Schooling
Even though she was a year younger than her sister, Diana was determined to keep up with her. Her obituary states that she had a ‘propensity for asserting herself [that] had begun early in her life when, at 3, she hammered on the door and demanded to be let into the kindergarten her mother had begun in Karori for the benefit of her older sister. Consequently, the two girls, 18 months apart, went through school together’. (4) The first school she attended was Karori Primary School, but she does not remember too much of it as the two girls were not there for very long. On one fateful day, which ended up being their last at the school, she remembered Denise mispronouncing a word, which led to her teacher ‘leap[ing] onto the front desk, striding from desk to desk like some vengeful colossus to the back row, to strike her with a ruler’. (1) Denise burst into tears and Diana distinctly remembered wanting to punch the teacher for what he had done to her sister. ‘That has produced a really lifelong impression on me that I see as the most unpleasant use of authority that you can imagine’. (5) Her mother would not stand for it though. ‘God knows what strings my mother pulled, but the next day saw us both huddled together in a double desk at Samuel Marsden Collegiate School, dressed in mufti, and the object of the curious, even scornful, eyes of all those little girls in immaculate green’. (1) Despite their dramatic entrance to the school, Diana grew to love Marsden School, which only encouraged her passion for learning. (1)
Even though she loved the school, like many girls’ schools of this time, it did not teach adequate science. Instead, they taught “home science”. The curriculum did not include any physics or biology, though she did learn Latin. (1)
One moment that always stuck out to her was when she had a clash with her English teacher, who later became a Professor at Victoria University. ‘I told her I wanted to do a thesis on Percy Bysshe Shelley. ‘Far too complex a poet for you to understand yet.’ That was enough for me – twelve exercise books of almost indecipherable scrawl later, she conceded. That same scrawl was the cause of my mother once again charging into battle on my behalf’. (1 – p.22) This happened when the headmistress, Miss Mayhew, told Diana that she would never pass the university entrance exam unless she improved her handwriting. In response, her mother took Diana’s notes down to Vic Uni and gave them to the head of the English Department at the time – Professor Ian Gordon. He laughed and said he had seen much worse. (1) Incidentally, Diana graduated in 1938 as Dux. (2) (4) (5) She later heard from her husband that her future mother-in-law was actually in attendance at her high school graduation. ‘I trudged up and down to the stage with monotonous regularity for armfuls of books. Over the family dinner-table that night her comment was ‘It’s a very good job that Shaw girl has brains, because the poor thing hasn’t got anything else’.’ (1)Diana had known since a young age that she wanted to become a doctor. When she first proposed the idea, her father thought that she was being silly and that she must mean nursing. ‘In leapt my mother, ambition rampant – ‘Nonsense, Charles, the child must do what she wants, no matter what the odds’.’ (1) She thought that her decision to pursue medicine stemmed from her mother being so health-conscious. They had always eaten a very healthy diet and Diana believes this led to them contracting very few illnesses growing up. The family doctor was only called for extreme illnesses such as scarlet fever, measles, and throat infections. Otherwise, there was a family remedy for almost everything, such as hanging your head over a bowl of boiling water with a towel over the head to steam the sinuses. ‘I also had a keen interest in people who weren’t as fortunate as I was. And I thought I might be able to do something to help them’. (5)
Because of her interest in pursuing medicine, after finishing her time at Marsden School, her parents intended to enrol her for one year at Nelson Girls’ College so that she could study pure science in preparation for her degree. ‘And I absolutely refused. I said, I’m not going to another school. I’m not going to leave Wellington to go to boarding school… I’m going to university… And you can imagine the horror-stricken student that I was when I sat in lectures for the first time for physics, for inorganic chemistry, and organic chemistry… The professors might just as well have been talking to me in Swahili because I didn’t understand a word’. (5)
The Surprise of Medical Intermediate & Taking a Gap Year
Diana was only 16 years old when she began Medical Intermediate at Victoria University College in Wellington in 1939. (2) (4) She entered this course believing that academics would never trouble her, since she had graduated as Dux of her school. ‘Not true – physics was Chinese to me, both chemistries not much better. At the first term exams a result of 19 per cent in physics was such a shock that I dragooned a childhood friend who was repeating Medical Intermediate to give up his first term holiday to coach me in the basics of physics. Nothing in my life was to be such hard work as those next two terms’. (1) To ensure that she kept up, Diana would also wake up at 4 am to study, and then she would continue to work late into the night after her classes. (1) Her hard work paid off though, as she was rewarded with an offer to study at Otago Medical School the following year.
While that may have been her original plan, it did not eventuate. The summer between Medical Intermediate and what should have been the beginning of Medical School, Denise got married in Australia. A second cousin of theirs had previously come over from Australia to learn wool classing, and he had requested to live with their family while he did so. While in New Zealand, he fell in love with Denise and the couple decided to get married. Unfortunately, because of their biological connection, Charles did not agree with the match. ‘And I think I pointed out with some spirit that it was a perfectly acceptable arrangement in the British royal family’. (5) In the end, only Diana and her mother flew over to Australia for the wedding, but her father stayed behind to make a statement.
For the rest of the summer following the wedding, Diana and her mother rented an apartment in King’s Cross in Newtown. Diana described it as a very interesting area with interesting shops and people. Plus, there was very little crime. (5) Because she was enjoying herself so much, she decided to delay her entrance to medical school so that she could experience the Australian outback. She wrote a very ‘lordly’ letter to Otago saying she would delay her degree by one year and could they hold her place. ‘My impertinence staggers me in hindsight, but it was the most fateful decision I was to make in my entire life’. (1) Because of her love of learning, and because she did not know what else to do with the year, Diana enrolled in the second year of a Bachelor of Science at Victoria University College, where she was enrolled in Biology II and Organic Chemistry alongside a few humanities subjects, such as German. ‘Because it was so easy and unimportant to me, I devoted but a tenth of my energy to it, and set about trying to discern what a university life should be about’. She threw herself into extracurriculars, taking up debating, drama, tramping, music, and philosophy. It was through these that she met Bruce Edward George Mason, who would become her husband. They met at a ‘hop’ in Wellington. ‘It was just a dance where you went along in day clothes and danced. They were great fun. And I was dancing with somebody and up strode this tall, elegant-looking man and said, “excuse me, I’d like to cut in”. And off we went’. He said that he knew her; they had played together in their prams as children. (5) Diana was ‘slowly bewitched by his quick-silver mind, his outpouring of words and his stunning piano playing’. (1) Bruce was the son of Howard George Mason, a New Zealand-born accountant, and Anne March, an Englishwoman, born on 28 September 1921. (3) (5) It was Anne who had been in attendance at Diana’s High School graduation.
It was through this second year at Victoria that Diana learned that university was not just for learning. She carried this belief into her Medical School years, where she founded the Fabian Society and continued learning German and music. (1) She even wrote quite liberal, outspoken editorials in the Critic, which is the student magazine of the Otago University Students’ Association founded in 1925. (5) However, it was never her intention to stay in Wellington, and the thought never crossed her mind to drop out of Medical School to stay at Victoria. Thus, at the beginning of 1941, she made the trip down to Dunedin.
Attending Medical School in the War Years
Diana began her medical degree in 1941, where she was one of 9 women in a class of 100. The intake was lower this year than the normal 120 due to the war. (1) (2) The war heavily affected their studies. All the students knew they were privileged for being exempt from war service, which also meant they were surrounded by more men than most other young women around New Zealand. But everyone in the class knew someone who had been sent away to the war. She remembers that they were not taught about contraception or anything about sexuality or sexual health. Their few lectures for obstetrics were read from a textbook and she did not remember learning about gynaecology. They were also not taught how to relate to patients and even their psychiatry training was rudimentary. It only involved a visit to Seacliffe Lunatic Asylum (closed 1973). ‘The hospital itself was a horror story as anybody who has seen Jane Campion’s film about Janet Frame will realize… Primitive in the extreme’. The students felt that ‘the patients were actually trained to entertain the students when they came. They used to draw wild diagrams’. (5) Her favourite professor and therefore subject was Percy Garland who was the professor of anatomy. He was a northern Englishman with a strong accent and a wonderful sense of humour. He did not just teach the students about anatomy but about life.
Even though the intake of women was low, Diana never felt personally discriminated against. Rather, there was a constant pressure to out-perform her male classmates in order to justify her right to be there. ‘We all very soon realized that we had to be a damn sight better than the men in order to succeed. All the nine of us felt that we really couldn’t even not do well because we would be not only letting ourselves down, but we would risk both the staff and the students saying, what on earth are you doing here? … We were going to prove not that we were as good as the men, but that we were better than the men.’ (5) Diana ‘always maintain[ed] that hard work was the best answer to discrimination, and could be unsympathetic to accusations of gender discrimination in medicine’. (2) Her opinion did slightly change at the end of her career though. ‘Perhaps that is true, and after a lifetime in medicine I realise that you ‘make it’ in the eyes of your colleagues, regardless of sex or colour, only if you show you can do it. If not, discrimination is certainly the name of the game.’ (1)
Overall, Diana preferred Dunedin to Wellington as a place of study. There were two things she noted: Firstly, Dunedin seemed proud of the university and its students. It was these two things that set the atmosphere of the city. The campus in Dunedin was much nicer and the city almost wrapped around it, whereas in Wellington, the university was far away on a hill. Secondly, it was that she entered a course where she was going to be with the same people for the next four or five years, which created a camaraderie that you did not get in other courses. (5)
In her fifth year, Diana was sent to Te Puke. All of the students were given temporary registration and placed around the country to relieve ‘war-weary’ GPs who had not had a break the entire wartime. (1) The clinic she was put in charge of covered the whole area between Tauranga and Rotorua and it had two rooms. I didn’t know the first thing about anything, absolutely nothing except bookwork. I certainly had no idea of how to handle patients and I didn’t know how to recognize clinical conditions. (5) Two events stand out to her from this practice. On her first night, there was a horrible car accident just out of Te Puke. She was called to go down there. The leg was almost severed off and she had to tourniquet it while they waited for the ambulance. Another memorable patient from this time was when a woman who worked on a dairy farm came in with a bandage on her lower leg. ‘She had a filthy, tattered bandage over her right leg, the smell of which was beyond description. When I finally got down to the large wound underneath and found it crawling with maggots, I rushed into the next room, not to the books but to the lavatory, where I vomited violently, the while asking myself whether I was not entirely deluded in my belief that medicine was what I wanted to do’. (1) (5)
During this year, she developed a way to get around her lack of knowledge. ‘My invariable ploy was to take a history, say ‘Excuse me, I hear the phone’, and dash into the consulting-room next door to look up the appropriate book of medicine, surgery or gynaecology, in all of which I was supposed to be, if not all-wise, certainly all-knowing. That was indeed a school of hard knocks.’ (1) (5) Similar to Dunedin, she did not feel any discrimination in this clinic for being a woman doctor, however, she did find the nurse at the practice and the midwives who worked at Tauranga Hospital to be quite antagonistic. (5) She was thankful to return to Dunedin at the end of the year, where all of the fifth-years compared notes and shared how out of their depth they felt. (5)
In her sixth and final year, she applied and received a position at Wellington Hospital. She elected Wellington as Bruce was finally returning home to New Zealand from the war. When she first moved to Dunedin, they maintained their relationship via letters, which she was glad about as she believes she would have found him much too distracting if he had joined her in Dunedin. (5) Not long after, however, he had been conscripted to the war. His training was based in Palmerston North and he absolutely hated it. Diana thought it was because he was too intellectual. The only positive thing to come out of this was his friendship with the Wiley family. Bruce met David Wylie in the training program, who invited him to spend his leave with his family. They were very cultured and allowed Bruce to practice on their grand piano. David’s sister, Stephanie Joy Ellis (nee Wylie), ended up in the year behind Diana at medical school. (5)
It was David who informed Bruce about a new pathway he could take in the army. There was a scheme where men who had officer-like qualities (OLQ) could go to England and train to become officers in the navy. David was doing this and he persuaded Bruce to apply too. He signed up and was accepted on the spot due to his qualifications. The training was based in London, which he absolutely loved. ‘He mopped up everything cultural, which was still going on in London. He used to go to readings by Edith Sitwell. And he spent any time he had off at the Churchill Club.’ (5) After four years in the war, Bruce was invalided out due to a major wound and he ended up back in Wellington at the beginning of 1945. During their correspondence over the last few years, the couple had decided to get engaged. However, they thought it would be best to get to know each other again in person since they had both had such varied experiences over the last four years, experiences that could not truly be captured through the mail. (5) It required much time and patience from the two strangers that we had become to each other to find out if we really did want to marry after all. (1) But in the end, they decided they did indeed. During Diana’s year in Wellington, she took Bruce up to Tauranga to meet her family. Charles was very direct with Bruce, stating that he was not allowed to marry Diana until after she had completed her studies. ‘Aye, Aye Sir’ came the immediate response, accompanied by a full naval salute. (1)
During the rotations, she lived with three other medical students who had also secured sixth-year positions in Wellington. One of Diana’s rotations was at Wellington Hospital and she found she was expected to do a lot more than the average final-year student due to the shortage of doctors in New Zealand because of the war. (1) She remembers two significant events from Wellington Hospital: 1) having to give a blood transfusion to a 24 hour old baby and 2) giving ‘rag and bottle’ anaesthetics for a surgical induction of a toxaemic girl, which resulted in an emergency Caesarian Section. The doctors who ran this, Kenneth Pacey and Thomas F Corkill, were Obstetric & Gynaecologist doctors, and they were her inspiration to pursue obstetrics later in her career. (1) Diana’s final placement was at Silverstream Hospital, which had originally been built for the American Army but was later turned into a geriatric hospital. This placement stood out to her because it was through a patient that she obtained a home for Bruce and herself after their wedding. She knew that the patient was not going to live much longer ‘and I had the temerity to say to her son “had he thought what he might be going to do with the flat”.’ She mentioned that she was getting married soon and would he be willing to rent it to them. He agreed and Diana’s father paid the rent in advance so they could secure it before the wedding. It was two pounds a week. (5)
Diana returned to Otago to sit her final exams early in December, and due to the quick turnaround for grades required for medical students, she received her degree on Friday 14th December. The following day she flew back to Tauranga and got married on Monday 17th December in her father’s orchard. (1) (2) Bruce and Diana spent their wedding day in a hotel in Tauranga before taking the train to Wellington the following day. The couple decided to drop into their new home in Thorndon on the way to the rest of their honeymoon in Queen Charlotte Sound and found quite the surprise – the owners’ family had let themselves in and a wake was underway for their mother, Diana’s former patient, who had died three days earlier! (1) (5)
Early Days of Marriage, House Surgeon Years, & Bill Shirer’s GP Clinic
The couple spent their first two years of marriage in the old flat in Thorndon while Diana was completing her junior and senior house surgeon years at Wellington Hospital. Bruce obtained a position at the Alexander Turnbull Library and the War History Branch of Internal Affairs. She described these years as being full of hard work, poverty, and joy. They had no car and no money for frivolous items such as alcohol, but they developed many friendships in the area and enjoyed learning how to do life as a married couple.
One episode emerges. We were walking along Lambton Quay which he described in We don’t want your sort here as ‘Lambton Quay with your air that’s like win, and your curve serpentine.’ I saw an elegant dress which I coveted with the outrageous price tag of £50. We carried on. Next day Bruce returned to the shop and put a deposit on it. He had seen a competition for a Latin essay ー prize £50. He set to work, certain that he would win. Win it he did ー bought the dress and secreted it until we had one of those inevitable small tiffs of the newly wed. He then produced it with a magician’s flourish and reduced me to a sodden heap of happy tears. (1)
After her two years as a house surgeon, Diana decided that she wanted to pursue paediatrics, for which she would need to complete postgraduate training in England. Bruce was also interested in returning to London so as to break into the West End. (1) As the couple did not have enough money to fund the trip, in 1948 she started looking for an alternative job that would pay better than the hospital. (2) She had been earning £250 per annum. When looking through the newspaper advertisements, she saw one for a Newtown practice that was looking for a young woman graduate. The practice was run by an old male GP, Dr William (Bill) Shirer. ‘He had a huge practice based on his entrenched belief that one never turned anyone away and never refused a call twenty-four hours a day seven days a week.’ He already had a male assistant and thought that a female assistant would enhance the practice. The position was well-paid, included a car, and all of the required equipment was provided. (5) It was a lot of work though; along with her regular hours, Diana worked every other night and every other weekend. (1)
Her pay was not by salary, as the hospital had been, but rather by patient. If the patient came to the clinic, the cost was 7 and 6 pence, and a house visit was 10 and 6 pence. (5) The majority of her house visits were for Mercilil injections, which was a diuretic. This involved boiling the glass syringe in a pot before she could administer it. She remarked that most of these patients could have come into the surgery, but for some reason, they did not. Diana also remembered giving theophylline injections for asthma attacks. She remembered one terrible occasion when she was giving a woman an intravenous injection of theophylline and she died. It scarred her and for a time she did not know if she could continue with medicine – this was the one and only time she questioned her choice of career. It was Bill Shirer who restored her self-confidence. (5)
How was it to be a young woman general practitioner in 1947 in the rough and tumble of Newtown, with its fascinating cross-section of Polynesians, Maori, Greeks, Indians, Chinese and Italians? Most of them were in the lower socio-economic groups, and most had never considered that ‘a mere slip of a girl’ could advise them on their problems. Old Bill was a good mentor; he not only held my hand and guided me through many a sticky patch, but also conscientiously set about educating his patients to accept me. (1) The area was quite rough, and in later years she marveled at how she would walk into these houses at 1 or 2 am without a backward glance. ‘I felt somehow protected by my invisible professional cloak’. (1) She even found that it was often the poorest who were the most grateful and would pay in prized food like a chocolate bar or a can of sweetened condensed milk.
Moving Overseas & the Disappointments of London
After a year at the Newtown GP clinic, Diana and Bruce realised it was time to make a decision about their next phase of life: would they continue with their plan to move to England, or should they settle into Wellington life and have a baby? Diana described making the decision in the “naivety of youth”. They opted for both! Diana fell pregnant relatively quickly and the couple decided to stay in New Zealand until she had given birth. She continued to work at the GP clinic in the meantime, focusing more on obstetrics with Dr Gordon Finley. She would primarily administer the anaesthetics for the surgical inductions. (5) Since she had delivered so many children at the clinic, Diana never believed that she would have trouble herself. But she ended up having a very long and painful 30-hour labour that resulted in an emergency Caesarian section. Diana remarked that this ‘produced feelings of guilt and failure in me, feelings that I have since seen reproduced countless times in my patients. ‘Having a baby is natural’ we all say, and resent nature letting us down. We question ourselves as to how and where we went wrong.’ (1) (5) It was experiences like this that led her to be a much-loved GP Obstetrician in later life.
The Mason family set off for England when Belinda, their daughter, was only six-weeks old. They boarded the Mataroa in May, 1949 and arrived in London at the height of summer. (2) With a young baby, Diana had high expectations for accommodation, but the only apartments the family could afford did not even come close to these standards. ‘Remarks such as ‘What day of the week would you want a bath?’ made New Zealand seem not only a paradise, but a civilised one at that.’ (1)
Thankfully, they reconnected with some friends from their theatre days in Wellington. Richard and Edith Campion were studying acting and production, respectively, at the Old Vic Theatre School. They decided to share accommodation and found a nice house at 13 Markham Square, Chelsea, where they stayed for two and a half years. ‘It was one of the few intact Georgian squares, with a charming church at the end and a garden in the middle to which residents had a key. Here we lived in comfort and happiness, and forged a friendship that has retained its bonds ever since.’ (1) They lived together just after the war, and due to Edith’s wealthy family in New Zealand, the inhabitants of 13 Markham Square were not as affected by England’s rationing as others. Edith would receive packages of ham and other New Zealand goods. Diana did remember, however, that everyone had to experiment with whale meat – one of the only readily available meats of the time. The goal was to disguise the taste of the meat as much as possible, which often resulted in some type of curry. (5)
Diana enrolled in the six-month postgraduate paediatrics course at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Incidentally, three other women Otago graduates were in her class: Juliet Carleton Harrison (nee Williams), Shirley Lyford Tonkin (nee Curtis), and Patricia Hunter Cook (nee Will). (1) They hired a nanny for Belinda, which allowed Diana to attend the course. She did not live in but came by from Monday to Friday and cost £5 a week. Notably, it was during this course that Diana felt discriminated against for being a woman in medicine for the only time in her career. All of the male students were referred to by the title of Doctor whereas all of the women were called Miss or Mrs. ‘I seethed, but ascribed it to the conservatism of the Brits versus the liberalism of the Kiwi.’ (1) After the six month course, Diana worked for London City Council’s (LCC) Infant Welfare Clinics to further her knowledge. (2) Here, she found that a lot of children had nutritional problems because of the war times. The LCC provided supplements for free, mostly orange juice and cod liver oil. (5)
Following the course at Great Ormand Street Hospital, Diana enrolled for a membership course at Hammersmith Hospital, which she was accepted to. However, she never actually started. While Diana’s time in London had worked out well, the same had not been the case for Bruce, who had received rejection after rejection. He ended up teaching children involved in stage and screen work. ‘This led to a sudden change of plan which bent my life once again. I was ironing my white coat in the kitchen in Markham Square. It was an ‘area’ kitchen below street level. I watched those myriads of feet tramping past the window in the morning rush-hour. I was about to join them, as I had enrolled for a Membership course at Hammersmith Hospital and my starting day had arrived. I turned off the iron and immediately knew that I was not going, that New Zealand was far more important for Bruce than London, that I was fed up with studying and sitting exams, and that the time had come to go home. I rushed upstairs and poured all this out to him, finishing up by saying ‘Let’s have another baby’.’ (1)
The trip back to New Zealand was going to be expensive, and Diana knew that locums in London paid well. The family took a quick holiday through France and Italy with Richard and Edith and then Diana worked various locums around London for most of the year until they had saved enough for the tickets back to New Zealand. Diana found these locums quite depressing, especially compared to the standard of clinics in New Zealand. Most of the time, she had to make up her own medicines and the standards of the other doctors was very low. (1) ‘The nurse would go into the waiting room and say, how many people here have got coughs? And a certain number of hands would go up and I would have to go into the room next door and mix up a cough mixture for them. And out they’d go, I never listened to their chest.’ (5) They blew all of their savings on a first-class ticket back because by this point she was six-months pregnant and did not feel she would cope with the discomfort of anything lower. ‘What a mistake. It was the most boring, tedious trip, and we must have been the youngest passengers by some thirty years. Added to which our Kiwi hackles rose that two hundred or so had three-quarters of the ship, while some two thousand in tourist class had the other quarter. Never again, we swore.’ (1)
A New Beginning in New Zealand in Familiar Places
By the time they returned to New Zealand, Diana’s parent’s had moved from their orchard in Tauranga to Mount Maunganui. They offered for Bruce and Diana to take over the orchard, which Bruce instantly fell in love with. (1) He ultimately decided that he wanted to stay up there and write in his mind while he was pruning and picking and write it down when he came in in the evening. (5) Diana gave birth to their second child, Julian, and spent the time on the orchard getting used to life with two children. It did not last long though, as Diana thought Bruce would grow to resent not having direct contact to live theatre. In the end, she decided to take a trip down to Wellington to see what opportunities might move them down there. Firstly, she visited her old employer Bill Shirer. ‘And he said to me, have you got any money? I said, no. Have you got a car. I said, no. He said, you want to do pediatrics, don’t you? How are you going to afford to set up doing pediatrics with a room that you’ll need in the city if you haven’t got a car and you haven’t got any money? Have you got anywhere to live? I said, no. And he said, I’ll give you a car. You can live in the flat above the surgery. You can come back here until you’ve earned enough money to go down into the city.’ (5) This occurred almost immediately, in 1952. They ended up living in the flat above the surgery in Riddiford Street for two and a half years. (2) They once again had a nanny to look after the children, though it was not as easy to find one in New Zealand as in England and they went through quite a few troublesome nannies until they found a decent one.
Bruce also started working from home, which meant that he was able to help out with the children as much as needed. Later in life he joked that he was New Zealand’s first house-husband. This was helpful because Diana’s work became very busy very quickly. Though she started in paediatrics, she soon realised that she preferred obstetrics. Bill kindly gave her all of his maternity patients and she worked closely with other obstetricians in the area, such as Ken Pacey, T. F. Corkill, and Gordon Findlay. She worked days and alternate nights whenever she was required for a delivery. On average for the rest of her career, Diana delivered 300 babies a year! (2) (5) Diana gave birth to their third child, Rebecca, in 1954, and the family moved to Kilbirnie. (2) Diana credited much of her childrens’ upbringing and development to Bruce, who filled in whenever Diana was unable to be at home. Though Diana loved her work, she did sometimes feel bad that she was unable to be at home as much. Her children received a lot of ‘flack’ from their peers for having a working mother and a father that stayed at home because this was definitely not a normal situation at this time. ‘I have been blessed by a great deal of energy which I am sure I inherited from my mother. This combined with a high degree of organisation, and unbounding good health, enabled me to juggle all the facets of my demanding life without flying apart at the seams. (1)
Superintendent of Alexandra Hospital & the Home for Unmarried Mothers
In 1958, Diana was offered the position of superintendent at Alexandra Hospital and it’s attached Home for Unmarried Mothers by the previous superintendent, Dr Brian Corkill. This was a private hospital in Wellington that had been opened by the Women’s Temperance Movement to look after girls around New Zealand who had become pregnant outside of marriage, impoverished women, or prisoners. The majority of the women ‘didn’t want it known in what area that they came from that they were pregnant and most of them had their babies adopted. Some of them didn’t even know who the father of the baby was.’ In return for the care they received, the women would work on the wards. There were at least 20 women in various stages of pregnancy at a time and they normally stayed for three months. Though the hospital was well advertised, the majority of the funding came from hospital private patients at the hospital who paid well for a private room. (5)
Diana’s responsibilities were delivering babies, holding a clinic every week, and teaching midwifery to the nursing staff. Looking back on it in later life, she remarked that the adoption process was quite terrible and the whole situation must have been quite traumatic for the girls. The babies were removed from the mothers quite quickly, normally after ten days, which was just enough time to see if the baby had any congenital defects. Even then, for the ten days, the babies were handled primarily by the nursing staff and the mothers had very little contact with them. Only a vast minority kept the babies; generally those who had already planned to keep them. Most of the adoptions were organised privately, and the rest went through the welfare department. Private adoptions occurred when prospective parents wrote to Diana or the hospital. Diana would initially ensure that the parents were suitable before a lawyer would take over to manage the mechanics of the adoption. (5)
Due to the nature of her work, Diana worked quite closely with Plunket and Karitane nurses. ‘They provided a very good service by having mothers and newborn babies together in a situation where the mothers had nothing to do except come to know their babies and overcome feeding problems and things in the very early days instead of going home and bursting into tears because they’ve got to do the washing and the ironing and at the same time try and grapple with breastfeeding. This was all organized for them.’ (5)
The girls at Alexandra Hospital loved Diana, and she often received gifts of thanks. They were small gifts, such as a handkerchief or a cake of soap. Many of the women stayed in touch with Diana afterwards as well. In 1977, Diana received an O.B.E for her obstetric work at Alexandra Home for Unmarried Mothers. (1) (4) Diana stepped down as superintendent in 1978. (2) (5)
At the same time as working at Alexandra Hospital, Diana established a student medical service at Victoria University. There, she worked as an obstetrics and family planning advisor. She was a large proponent for family planning, and was renowned for providing unmarried women with contraception. (2) ‘She advocated ‘family planning rather than child destruction’.’ (4) Diana also taught general practice to fourth-year medical students. (5) Following her time at Alexandra, Diana served nine years on the National Disciplinary Committee. It was onerous but fascinating. She found it hard to sit in judgement on one’s peers to search for the truth. There were six on the council at a time. There was also a lot of travelling involved, all around New Zealand, which meant time away from her work. You could tell about falsification of records and your instinctive feeling of who you would trust as an expert witness and who you wouldn’t and many side issues apart from the actual case that you were handling at any one time. And I can honestly say that the five others that I worked with were of the highest integrity and that we all wanted to do the very best we possibly could for the patient, primarily and for the doctor… I would say that the gut feeling that we all had. Here’s a patient who’s complaining. Why are they complaining? Because something has gone wrong and something has been done incorrectly. (5)
Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child
While she was working at Alexandra Hospital, Diana was approached by the members of what would soon become known as the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC – now known as Voice For Life). Through her work as an obstetrician, Diana developed an ‘abhorrence’ for abortion. (1) She was often approached by women requesting an abortion. Once, she was even offered $100. A few women would ask directly, but since it was illegal, many were indirect. Diana would respond by explaining what an illegal abortion would look like and the implications for them later in life. She would then explain that if they were still intent upon it, they would have to look elsewhere as she would not do it. (5) Because of her opinion on the topic, she received a lot of criticism from colleagues and friends, who felt this contradicted her otherwise liberal opinions. (1) (2)
Early in 1970, Diana was asked to speak at the inaugural meeting for SPUC in Wellington. The meeting was held in the town hall. ‘It was absolutely chocker block full. And I was one of the speakers. And I spoke about my experiences with these single girls and the immense courage that they had taught me and the importance of the force of life going on from one generation to another.’ Diana believed that it was ‘vitally important that life was for living, and that my job on earth was to save life, not take it.’ (5) In 1973, Diana was elected as the president of the Wellington branch, and then the national president from May 1974 to late 1976. (2) ‘I was profoundly grateful to have his [Bruce’s] total support when I became the National President for the Society for two years. And how much I needed his support and love at that difficult time. Professionally they were the most unhappy years of my career. Not only was I as busy as ever with my obstetrics, but I was besieged day in and day out with requests to lecture, to debate, to appear on television, to make snap pronouncements to the press, to chair meetings, to interview politicians and to travel. Worst of all was the unexpected antagonism I encountered from my colleagues and my personal friends.’ (1)
In Diana’s entry to the Encylopedia of New Zealand, Sarah Burgess wrote: ‘During her presidency, SPUC agitated for greater restrictions on abortion. In September 1974, alongside other prominent members of SPUC such as Ruth Kirk, she led a large anti-abortion march through the streets of Wellington, and the following August presented a petition signed by 113,000 New Zealanders to the government. Diana used her position as a respected obstetrician to present her arguments, and her evidence to the 1975–77 Royal Commission on Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion drew heavily on her medical expertise and experience of pregnancy and childbirth.’ (2)
Despite the antagonism Diana experienced, what she remembered most from this time was the warmth and good heartedness of the members she met. After two years as president, Diana stepped down. The role was taking too much time, it was emotionally exhaustive, and her love ultimately lay in delivering babies. ‘The more political it became, the less happy I became’. (5)
Retirement from Practice but not a Retirement from the Medical Community
Diana officially retired from her obstetrical work in 1988 after more than 30 years. Reflecting at the end of her career, Diana remarked: ‘There are innumerable changes from the patient’s point of view, the division of family medicine into so many different compartments so that you don’t get a one overall consistent person that you are dealing with who knows all the family, knows all the history, can coordinate any other services that might be necessary for that person, but still keeps it under one general roof. Now people are hived off into many different directions and most of whom don’t know anything about all the other bits that are being looked after.’ (5) Despite retiring, Diana remained involved in the medical community. She was elected as the second woman president of the Wellington division of the New Zealand Medical Association, of which she had been a member since its inception. She was also a founding member of the College of GPs. (2) (5)
In retirement, Diana continued to lead a busy social life. She was usually seen at plays, concerts, and lectures held by the University of the Third Age. She was a ‘flamboyant part of Wellington’s cultural life, guaranteed to stand out in the crowd at orchestra or theatre events, tall, proud and magnificently got up.’ (4) Diana remarked that ‘one of my greatest pleasures now [in retirement] comes from chance encounters all over New Zealand with women whose babies I have delivered five, ten, or twenty years ago. The eagerness with which they rush up to tell me of the prowess of their progeny is heart-warming in a most special way.’ (1)
The Mason family were very close, and Diana remembered fondly the car rides they would take to Mount Maunganui, which were always filled with singing. Rebecca had developed Bruce’s love of music whereas Belinda and Julian always wanted to listen to the Beatles or Elvis. (1) In 1978, Bruce began having complications and he was initially diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy. Diana did not believe that this was true, but she was told by the specialist to “stick to obstetrics and leave neurology to the neurologists.” In refusal, she travelled with Bruce to Queen’s Square Hospital in London, where he was reexamined and diagnosed with carcinoma of the parotid gland with paralysis of the facial nerve. They attempted treatment with multiple operations over four years. In the end, however, Bruce wanted to move home for his final days. They decided to travel to all of the places they had always talked about visiting, and so travelled around England, Italy, and South America on their way back to New Zealand. In October 1982 they arrived back in Wellington and Diana turned their bedroom into a mini-hospital. ‘By post, by phone, and on foot, men and women of art, literature, theatre, music, journalism and even medicine came to pay homage. With them all he scintillated and jokes flowed. Not long before the end he struggled to play a few bars on his beloved piano, with the inevitable oxygen tank on wheels at his side. He turned and said ‘That was a breath-taking performance wasn’t it?’ Shortly before midnight on 31 December 1982 he slid from coma into death, in our own bed, and with all of us with him.’ (1)
When writing her autobiography in 1986, Diana wrote: ‘Perhaps for his children a light went out in a corner of their lives; but for me the devastation was overwhelming. I am left with an aching void that might have surprised even him, and that nothing – no music, no golf, no family, no friends – ever fills. I am delighted that I have my profession and that nothing has ever interfered with my ongoing joy in delivering babies. But every ship needs an anchor, and perhaps it is now the destiny of mine to travel aimlessly without him until it also founders on the rock of death.’ (1)
Diana moved into an apartment in Wellington until health complications moved her to Rita Angus Retirement Village in Kilbirnie. (2) She passed away aged 84 on 5 June 2007. She is survived by her three children.
Bibliography
- Diana Mason, ‘The Force of Life’ in Margaret Clark, Beyond Expectations Fourteen New Zealand Women Write about Their Lives, Wellington, pp.21-36.
- Sarah Burgess. ‘Mason, Diana Manby – Biography’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 2020. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/6m8/mason-diana-manby (accessed 19 July 2023)
- David Dowling. ‘Mason, Bruce Edward George’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 2000. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/5m37/mason-bruce-edward-george (accessed 19 July 2023)
- ‘Diana Manby Mason’, The New Zealand Medical Journal, Vol. 120, No. 1257, 29 June 2007.
- Diana Mason, Interview by Tree Cocks, 15 May 1998, Stories of diversity and success oral history project, Alexander Turnbull Library, OHInt- 0780-01.
- Births Deaths and Marriages New South Wales.
- Births Deaths and Marriages New Zealand.
- Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 69, 19 September 1933, p.3.
- Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 144, 15 December 1938.
- Class list for the 1941 Anatomy and Histology class. Courtesy of the Otago Medical School Archives.
- Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 33, 7 August 1943.
- New Zealand Gazette Medical Register, 1961.
