Class of 1923
14 January 1900 – 16 March 1988
Caroline was born into a medical family in a country town in Otago on 14 January 1900. She was the oldest of three daughters of a country doctor and nurse, Andrew and Margaret Simpson Stenhouse (nee McLeod). Both her parents came from Scotland and integrated into the colonial lifestyle of their communities. Caroline recalls that her mother’s family played a prominent role in the development of education in Southland, and her paternal grandfather Stenhouse used modern mechanical devices on the farm well before the turn of the century. (1)
During her early years, she had “I had been surrounded by all the trappings of a busy country doctor’s life. I absorbed the medical talk. There were perpetual telephone messages, the coming and going of patients to and from the house, and the urgent calls, often to sudden illnesses or accidents on distant farms….on a fine day we sometimes accompanied father on his rounds – and then what joy it was for us to go spanking along the country roads! From the high [horse drawn] carriage we could see everything that passed, and there were moments of bliss when Jim, the groom, even allowed us to take the reins and drive the horses.” (1, p.153)
Caroline gradually began to appreciate the motives that lay behind her parents lifestyle: “the welfare of patients was paramount….no call was ever ignored or refused and I never saw even an unreasonable request ruffle father’s equanimity.” (1, p.154) Both her parents were “on duty for twenty-four hours of every day and for 365 days each year.” (1, p.154)
From an early age, Caroline wished to be a doctor. “I found myself a pupil at the local school, with the wish to be a doctor foremost in my mind.” (1, p.154) Her mother insisted that all three daughters should be educated in a profession so that they could have their independence. One sister became a dentist (Margaret Grace), one chose to teach (Janet Erskine), and Caroline studied medicine. Janet unfortunately died prematurely at the age of 32.
Caroline enjoyed her school years. She described the local primary and secondary schools as excellent. Her high school years were overshadowed by World War I, but she managed to end her last year at school as first in the school, with a record of being a thoughtful and conscientious pupil. (1, p.155)
In 1918, she was accompanied by her father to Dunedin. She looked back on her “eighteen year old self with astonishment; I was incredibly naïve and unsophisticated…full of enthusiasm and eager to begin.” (1, p.155) Her first shock came when she found out that her “schooling, especially in mathematics, has been woefully inadequate for the preliminary science subjects that we had to tackle.” (1, p.155) She recalled 55 years later, “the calibre of our professors, many of whom were of international standing, including some who were splendid teachers. The Otago Medical School, although expanding rapidly, was still small enough for the professorial staff to know each student individually.” (1, p.155) The teachers would invite students en masse to their homes and continued to follow their careers many years after they left medical school. (1, p.156)
Caroline said that she never personally encountered any hostility or prejudice against women as doctors. As a student, she felt that they were simply accepted as part of the student body. Attendance at lectures was compulsory, and heads were counted during each session. (1, p.156) At the beginning of World War I, the numbers each year were only one or two, but with the war, more women students were able to enter. It was during Caroline’s student years that the first New Zealand branch of the Medical Women’s International Association was formed in Dunedin. She was present at the inaugural meeting. As she recalled, the aims were “to further the interests of women in medicine”. (1, p.156)
After Caroline graduated in 1923, she wrote (many years later): “the medical school washed its hands of us. We were thrown out into a hard, cold, postwar world equipped with a medical education that was largely theoretical, since little opportunity had been given for practical clinical work.” (1, p.157) The women graduates of 1923 and 24 had the added difficulty of male students returning to medical studies after active service in World War I, which had double or more than double the number of men graduating. Hospitals around the country were not prepared to cope with the increase in the number of junior house officers, and this meant that women medical graduates were not always able to get house jobs. “Some married and were lost to medicine either temporarily or permanently, and some were absorbed by the School Medical Service or other state services. More than a few tackled general practice at a time when this demanded not only physical stamina but enough initiative to cope single-handedly with emergencies – medical, surgical or obstetrical.” (1, p.157)
It was about this time that Caroline discovered that she had otosclerosis (an inherited type of progressive deafness caused by an abnormal growth within the middle ear – her mother also had the condition). At that time, it was considered untreatable. This immediately put some medical specialities, such as paediatrics, beyond her reach. She recalled her grandmother, both a Presbyterian and strict Sabbatarian with a warm personality, who read to her at night the Bible story about the healing of the man blind from birth. Caroline wrote “We read the same story over and over, until the idea of blindness and the idea of healing came to be associated in my infant mind.” (1, p.157) Her mother, who had been a theatre sister for Sir Lindo Ferguson, then New Zealand’s first and only eye specialist, had often described eye surgery to her, including descriptions of extracting cataracts. She made a decision to train in ophthalmology and, after a year as a house surgeon at Invercargill Hospital, was able to train at Moorfields Hospital, London. She describes this as a milestone in her life. (1, p.158)
The original hospital was called “Curing Diseases of the Eye and Ear” and dated from 1805; it changed its name to The London Ophthalmic Infirmary when a new hospital was built in 1922 at Lower Moorfields close to what is now Liverpool Street station. It was there in 1924 that Caroline arrived to find a “delightfully informal atmosphere. Eminent consultants rubbed shoulders with junior staff, research workers and students.” Professor Ida Man was appointed to the consulting staff in 1925 – the first woman to hold such a position and “one of the world’s most distinguished ophthalmologists”. (1, p.158)
While at Moorfield’s, she made friends with a doctor on leave from India, who persuaded her “that India was just the place for anyone interested in ophthalmology.” Caroline then spent three or four years working at a variety of hospitals in the Punjab, including a year as relieving professor of ophthalmology at the Lady Hardinge College for Women in Delhi. Caroline recalls: “If India did not teach me as much about eye diseases as I had hoped for – for the common eye disease of a poverty-stricken tropical country are not those that one meets in prosperous New Zealand – it opened my eyes to the problems of the underprivileged world, a valuable corrective lesson for one brought up in the relative affluence and security of New Zealand.” (1, p.158)
Family reasons called her back to New Zealand in 1930. She moved to Christchurch that same year and joined Dr Stevenson’s practice. She was appointed to Christchurch Hospital as an honorary eye specialist in 1932, and she remained there for the rest of her career. She was the first woman ophthalmic surgeon in New Zealand. (2, p.49) Health services in the 1920s and 30s were not publicly funded, and inpatients paid for their hospital treatment: nine shillings a day for adults, six shillings and six pence a day for children. Medical staff were honorary appointees. Payment of hospital staff was first discussed in 1940, and eventually, a stipendiary for staff came into being. In 1941, social security became law under the Labour government, and Christchurch Hospital became free for both inpatients and outpatients. This, of course, greatly increased the number of patients. (2, p.50)
Later, Dr Roy Holmes assisted her at surgery. As Holmes related, ‘The first thing she did was remove her hearing aid, so as not to hear any stupid remarks while operating. Her tremor was frightening, as if the Graefe knife were aiming for the patient’s ear. But she glided it to the limbus, as her tremor somehow diminished.’ (2, p.48)
During World War II, the junior doctors left to join the armed services. Dr Harry Jenner Wales (an assistant ophthalmologist prior to his overseas training) and Stenhouse looked after the department during World War II. There were difficulties getting new equipment and batteries: at one stage, they were reduced to one ophthalmoscope, which was “kept for ward rounds and referred to as the ophthalmoscope. For the rest of the time, we relied on some cheap, old ones, …and rigged up by the electrician to transformers anchored in the darkroom wall. I felt in imminent danger of being electrocuted whenever I used them.” (1, p.159)
Caroline Stenhouse was an ophthalmic consultant to the New Zealand Army from 1939 to 1945. In 1946, Caroline was a foundation member of the Ophthalmological Society of New Zealand. Again from Holmes: ‘The Society’s problem was, as a woman, what to do with her when the Society’s formal annual dinner was held at a gentlemen’s club? At Christchurch a sherry gathering was arranged at the Queen’s Club, which was pretty musty. So the wives had to parade there, while their husbands ate and drank up large a few blocks away.’ (2, p.50) Dr Caroline Stenhouse was elected an honorary life member of the society in 1974.
By the end of the war, there were sufficient women doctors in Christchurch to form a local branch of the New Zealand Medical Women’s Association. The focus moved to the problems of the community – child welfare, education, women at home and at work, and family planning. (1, p.159)
In 1948, she spent ten months in Scotland studying improvements in eye treatments and, on her return, noted that “London was a shock to me”, adding “that there is not a street, even in the residential suburbs which does not still show signs of damage.” (3)
Caroline retired in 1960 but kept as busy as ever. She learned Japanese, became a keen theology student and learned Scottish dancing. (4)
“My medical career has given me all that I ever hoped for and more. It was often hard work, and my personal life had sometimes to be sacrificed, but I know that I am still held in affectionate regard by some former patients and by my medical colleagues.” (1, p.159)
Dr Caroline Stenhouse died in Christchurch on the 16th March 1988 at the age of eighty-eight. (4)
Contents
Bibliography
- Caroline Stenhouse – personal biography in “Women Physicians of the World”, edited by Hellstedt (1978) and reprinted with the permission of the publishers Hemisphere Publishing Corporation, NY.
- Hadden, Bruce, Eye Surgeons and Surgery In New Zealand, Wairau Press, Auckland, 2012.
- Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25701, 13 January 1949, p.2. (Accessed: Paperspast)
- ‘Caroline Stenhouse’, New Zealand Medical Journal Obituaries, 25 May 1988, p.280.
