Ada Gertrude Paterson

Class of 1906

This biography is based on secondary source material listed in the bibliography. Much of the information in these sources comes from newspaper articles obtained from PapersPast. This biography was constructed by Michaela Selway.

Early Life, Family and Education

Ada Gertrude Paterson was born as the third of three children and only daughter to Margaret Smith Ayton and James Paterson on 6 June 1880 in Caversham, Dunedin. Her older sister, Elizabeth Smith, was born in 1875, her older brother, James Ayton, was born in 1878, and her younger brother, Thomas Oliver, was born two years later in 1882. James, Ada’s father, worked as a librarian at the Dunedin Athenaeum and Mechanic’s Institute. (1)

Like many girls based in Dunedin, Ada attended Otago Girls’ High School. She performed well in her studies and graduated as Dux in 1898. (1) Little is known of her time at Otago Medical School, but she presumably attended Medical Intermediate there, since she was also Dunedin-based and completed this in one year. She must have performed well throughout all her five years at Medical School as she completed the five-year course without any repeats or delays, allowing her to graduate early in 1906. She applied for registration on March 7 1906. (7) After graduation, Ada went straight to Ireland, where she undertook postgraduate studies at Dublin University, graduating in 1908. (1) (2) It is unknown what this postgraduate study entailed.

Working Life

After finishing her postgraduate studies in Dublin, Ada returned to New Zealand. She started her first job in Picton in general practice. (1) (2) She only held the position for four years, but during this time, she became well-integrated in the community. Her farewell party was ‘one of the most largely-attended and enthusiastic gatherings ever held in Picton’. (1) Those who attended, including members of the Girls’ Friendly Society, various church groups, representatives of the local Māori community, and nurses from the local hospital, called her a ‘“people’s doctor”, kindly, supportive, and ever available to help’. (1)

Following her position in Picton, in 1912, Paterson was appointed as the Medical Inspector of Schools. (2) Her first assignment was in Dunedin, where she was employed as one of New Zealand’s first four women doctors working in the School Medical Service, alongside Dr Margaret McCahon (Edinburgh Medical College for Women (EMCW) graduate), Dr Eleanor McLaglan (University of Otago graduate), and Dr Emma Irwin (EMCW graduate). (6) Her job entailed conducting physical examinations of thousands of schoolchildren each year. (1) Her second position began in 1916 when she was transferred to Wellington. Across these two positions, she developed a concern for girls’ health. She was, in fact, one of the first New Zealand doctors to develop an interest in both the mental and physical health of children. (4) She came to believe that girls were not raised in equal circumstances as their male counterparts, something she argued was pertinent, especially in childhood when they were in the prime of their development. (1)

In 1921, Ada decided to pursue this train of thought further, and she took a year-long sabbatical to investigate work in the field of children’s health in Australia, Britain, and North America. Here, she became interested in intellectually challenged children. When she returned, she promoted classes and schools designed to help these children and ran informal psychological clinics where she examined children displaying behavioural issues. (1)

The Education Department had merged into the Department of Health in 1921, and in 1923, following the retirement of Dr E. H. Wilkins, Ada was appointed as director of the Division of School Hygiene, ‘a position which she filled with distinction up to the time of her death’. (2) (8) This made her one of two women division directors. Her role involved attempting to raise the public perception of school medicine by talking to school boards, service clubs, and women’s organisations. She also acted as a mediator when there was a dispute between a ‘tactless school doctor or nurse’ and parents. She also used these skills of arbitration in industrial conflicts involving women, the most notable of which was the Westfield Freezing Works conflict of 1934. Ada described her work in this area as that of a “fire extinguisher”. (1) In 1924, she also joined the “Committee of Inquiry into Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders in New Zealand”. (1)

Ada’s desire to establish school medical inspections beyond primary schools was set back by the Depression years of the 1930s. Instead, she put her energy into promoting children’s health camps, which were initiated by Elizabeth Gunn (a New Zealand-born medical graduate from the EMCW) in 1919. (4) Due to her experience in mediation, Ada was better suited to directing the volunteers of these camps, so she founded the Wellington Children’s Health Camp Association. This association went on to establish the Raukawa Children’s Health Camp in Otaki in 1932. To achieve this, Ada worked with banks to arrange overdraft allowances and police when the donation tins were stolen, and she was in charge of the recruitment of volunteers. Ruakawa was the first permanent camp and thus became the model for further camps. (1)

Reflecting upon Ada’s work in the health camps at the time of her death in 1937, Dr H. E. Gibbs, the chairman of the Wellington District Children’s Health Camp stated that ‘the present effort of the Health Camp Association originated from a keen realisation of the fact that in the Wellington district many delicate and undernourished children had no opportunity of growing strong without some means of escape to an environment where Nature might exert her healing influence. Thus, the organisation had grown beyond all realisation. Dr Ada Paterson, the first chairman of the association, was mainly responsible for the arrangements which permitted the first children from Wellington to undergo treatment at the Otaki Health Camp’. (5)

Outside of her work for the Health Department, Ada was also an advocate for women and juveniles, often appearing as an official representative at the courts. Her advocacy also extended to committees, and she was one of the first members of the New Zealand University Women’s Federation. (1) (2)

In 1935, she travelled to Geneva to represent New Zealand at the International Labour Organisation conference. Her presentation focused on the value of agricultural foodstuffs in diets. While overseas, she continued to visit child health institutions in Britain and Europe, the most notable of which was the open-air school run in Laysin, Switzerland, by Auguste Rollier. (1)

In 1936, upon returning from her travels to New Zealand, Ada was diagnosed with cancer. She had a mastectomy but tragically died on 26 August 1937 in Wellington. The Evening Post, which reported on her funeral, mentioned that the Minister of Health (the Hon. P Fraser), the Director General of Health (Dr M. H. Watt), the Director-General of the Mental Hospitals Department (Dr T. Gray), the Director of Education (Mr T. N. Lambourne) and two representatives of the Health Department (Dr T. R. Ritchie and Dr F. S. Maclean) were her pall-bearers. (3)

‘Her wise and sympathetic handling of many problems of childhood earned her the esteem and affection of many generations of school children and their parents, as well as the confidence of the educational authorities … Her unusual intellectual capacity, wise, and sympathetic knowledge of humanity, and her clarity of judgement all combined to make her an outstanding personality’. (2)

Bibliography

1. Margaret Tennant. ‘Paterson, Ada Gertrude’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1996. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand,
   https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/3p13/paterson-ada-gertrude (accessed 6 March 2024)
2. ‘Dr Ada Paterson’, Obituary, Evening Post, 27 August 1937.
3. ‘Late Dr. Paterson. Largely-Attended Funeral’, Evening Post, 2 September 1937.
4. Amanda Kennedy, ‘Ada Paterson (1880-1937)’, The Northern Cemetery. Dunedin’s Buried History, Southern Heritage Trust, last updated 2022,
   https://www.northerncemetery.org.nz/biography/?id=43 (accessed 8 April 2024).
5. ‘Dr Ada Paterson. Interest in Health Camps’, Evening Post, 15 September 1937.
6. Jane Tolerton, Make her praises heard afar: New Zealand women overseas in World War One, Booklovers Books, 2017, p.150.
7. ‘Register of Medical Practitioners’, The New Zealand Gazette, January 9 1913.
8. Hester Maclean, Nursing in New Zealand: History and Reminiscences, Tolan Printing Company, 1932, p.96.