This biography has been compiled by Cindy Farquhar and edited by Daniel Beaumont. Grateful thanks to the many friends and colleagues of Margaret who provided this information.
Class of 1943
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Early Life and Career
Dr Margaret Neave spent almost thirty years of her life working with disadvantaged children, saving countless lives in New Zealand, Tokelau, Samoa, Papua New Guinea, and Vietnam. Margaret was born in Wellington in 1920. Her mother had trained as a nurse and her father was a barrister, though he died of typhoid fever when she was two years of age. She grew up in an extended family and maintained contact with them all her life.
She was dux of Marsden School in 1937, and her first career choice was to be a nurse. Science was taught from the schools’ inception, but when she decided she would rather become a doctor, the school had to make special arrangements for her to take the science subjects necessary before graduation. (1) Margaret’s cohort included other determined women who went on to study medicine in Otago, such as Elsie Gibbons (1941), Joan Walton (1943), Diana Mason (1945) Shirley Tonkin (1945) and Zoe During (1948).
After graduating from Otago University in 1943 and working in Wellington and Hutt hospitals, Margaret studied paediatrics in Britain. She worked for her mentor George Davidson at Newcastle General Hospital, passed her fellowship exams (MRCP) and then returned to New Zealand in the mid-1950s.
Hospitals were still reluctant to appoint women as specialists when Neave returned, so she instead procured a job in the Health Department in Wellington. She became an enthusiastic member of the East Cape Māori and Pacific health survey team, led by Dr Ian Prior. This work later extended to include Tokelau in 1963 as part of the medical team led by Dr Randall Elliot. (1)
In 1965 Neave volunteered to work in village clinics in Samoa with Volunteer Service Abroad (VSA). Margaret worked alongside Dr Kome Kuresa developing hospital and community child health services within village clinics throughout Western Samoa. She extended the paediatric service at Apia Hospital to a full maternal and child health programme, working closely with local doctors, nurses and midwives – a progressive and holistic approach for the time.
Tony Browne, a fellow volunteer, later claimed that Neave “was held up as the model of what [Volunteer Service Abroad] could do.” (2) Margaret and Tony would later cross paths 20 years later in Vanuatu.
Work in Vietnam
In 1968 Margaret joined a Save the Children Fund group in Vietnam and in February 1969, in the midst of the Vietnam War, became the paediatrician with the New Zealand surgical team based at the Qui Nhon hospital. She oversaw the establishment of two baby clinics: one in Qui Nhon, the other in northern Binh Dinh. (1)
Margaret treated typhoid, polio, diphtheria, gastroenteritis, pneumonia, skin diseases, and malnutrition. Though Neave had encountered poverty in patients in her previous voluntary work, on top of this she now faced the tragedies of war on civilians.
Until 1975 Neave worked at the Qui Nhon Provincial Hospital as part of the New Zealand Surgical Team, working alongside New Zealand civilian surgeons, including Dr Al Grant, Dr David Morris, and Dr Bill Sugrue. (3)
She established a close friendship with David, who arrived a month after Margaret. He recorded several memories he had of his time in Vietnam with Margaret, which paint a rich picture of their lives in Qui Nhon. On Sundays, the team would go to the beach by the leprosarium near Qui Nhon, and Margaret would always be the first in the water.
On one occasion, Margaret met with some of the Korean medical staff from the South Cross military division and took them for a picnic with her team to the beach. She needed to make arrangements with the nuns running the Leprosarium as it was off limits to military personnel. They proceeded to have an enjoyable afternoon, the New Zealanders being gently mocked for having such a surplus population of sheep. (4)
Al Grant remembers that Margaret would routinely cross the frontlines if she needed to get somewhere for her patients. According to David Morris, she “worked incessantly. And everywhere. She went up [to work] into the communist occupied An Lao valley in north Binh Dinh Province. Every Tuesday the USAID security would phone to say the roads were unsafe. At midday Margaret would go.” (4)
The Viet Cong would allow Margaret through to carry out immunisations and care for mothers and newborn children in occupied areas. Bill Sugrue recalls going with Neave to do tracheostomies on children with diphtheria, describing her as an extraordinary woman. (3)
David Morris remembers:
“We would hear Margaret drive into the Kiwi Village (where the NZST were staying) after the 6pm curfew. The American security had already phoned to ask where on earth she was. As surgeon on call I would wait for Margaret’s call, and yes the infant with diphtheria could hardly breathe and needed an emergency tracheostomy. At one time in Ward 1 was a small child with persistent vomiting and without any diagnostic aids Margaret diagnosed pyloric stenosis, a rare condition. Surgery was needed. Margaret was correct and the definitive operation was done.” (4)
With her fellow New Zealanders, Neave evacuated Vietnam in March 1975, days before the North Vietnamese occupied Qui Nhon. Before the evacuation, a staff member of the local New Zealand-financed paediatric ward (a memorial to Walter Nash) removed and hid the ward’s brass plaque. (4) Little did she know but would encounter this plaque nearly twenty years later, on her return to Vietnam…
Papua New Guinea, Hong Kong, and Vanuatu
Margaret made it home safely, but before the year was up she had taken a job in a hospital in Garoka, in Western Papua New Guinea. Neave spent four years working in Papua New Guinea, often working long into the night to help impoverished children in her charge – she estimated one in 10 babies died in their first year there.
Margaret’s paediatric ward worked with extremely limited resources, forcing her to improvise when it came to certain medical practices. For instance, she hung a lightbulb and reflective tin can over a wooden crib to serve as an incubator. She encouraged mothers who wanted advice from traditional healers to bring a healer to the hospital, rather than bring the child to the healer. (1)
Between 1979 and 1985 Margaret worked in Laos and Hong Kong with South Vietnamese refugees. When she returned to New Zealand, she joined a free clinic in Wellington. In 1988, she spent a year as a VSA volunteer in Pentecost Island in Vanuatu, during a malaria outbreak. While there, she observed traditional midwifery practices, such as cutting umbilical cords with sharpened bamboo. (1)
When Margaret first arrived in Vanuatu as a volunteer doctor with VSA she was welcomed by Tony Browne (now the NZ High Commissioner but previously the student volunteer with VSA who Margaret had met in Samoa in 1965) with a small reception. (2) Tony gave prospective guests a brief rundown of her career. Both the President and the Prime Minister turned up to meet her. Tony bought a kerosene powered fridge and had it sent to her for her stay. She replied with a brief note that started “Surely you’ve got something better to do with your money than waste it on an old spinster”. (2) Over the next two years, Margaret’s life-saving work became widely respected throughout Vanuatu.
Return to Vietnam
In 1990, Margaret returned to Vietnam with the VSA and Dennis and Xuan Montgomery, Lien Morris (David’s wife and previously head theatre nurse at Qui Nhon Provincial Hospital), and the Frontline team who were making a documentary. (4)
During her return visit, the Chief of Qui Nhon province hospital presented Margaret the plaque memorialising Walter Nash that had been hidden fifteen years earlier. (4) Margaret continued to provide generous support to the hospital for the remainder of her life. David Morris recalls another reunion that year:
“One of the NZ VSA volunteers told me there was a young man who wanted to meet with one of the doctors from NZ who had saved his life. He was now a teacher in the Highlands now visiting Qui Nhon. He came to meet me with his wife and child. He showed me his operation scar on his abdomen, and his hospital notes. There was Margaret’s and my handwriting.” (4)
Margaret worked with the VSA in Vietnam to assess the possibility of resuming volunteer service in Qui Nhon. She met with the Peoples’ Committee and Red Cross in Binh Dinh Province, and again with the People’s Committee in Phu Cat. They identified potential volunteer assignments in Cat Hai Commune, a poor coastal community. Margaret advised on public health and midwifery, and drew on her experience from her earlier years working in that region of central Vietnam. (4)
Chris Hawley , who helped establish the VSA presence in Qui Nhon in 1990, recalled a moving incident with Margaret:
“We were staying in a modest government guesthouse in Qui Nhon, and held morning meetings in the city, followed by the Vietnamese siesta after lunch, and further work in the afternoon. One day, I recall coming downstairs into the lobby of the guest house after the siesta, to find Margaret talking with an elderly Vietnamese lady, stooped, with a walking stick and conical hat, accompanied by a young man who was interpreting for her with Margaret. The old lady handed Margaret a large bunch of bananas. She said, ‘during the war I was very ill in hospital and you saved my life with your care and kindness. I am very poor, but heard you were back and wanted to come and see you to thank you for saving my life’. Margaret of course, took very little credit for this in her modest down to earth way. It was for me, a beautiful moving moment, and insight into the impact Margaret had on people in war in Vietnam.” (5)
Retirement
Margaret retired in 1990 in Wellington, surrounded by a close community of friends. She continued to carry out voluntary work, this time in her local parish, and took a continuing interest in the welfare of Vietnamese immigrants.
New Zealand, the UK and Vietnam all approached her to offer formal honours for her years of service. Under Jim Bolger in the early nineties, the government offered her a Damehood, which she declined. Tony writes:
“I have a copy of an article in the Evening Post in which the government responded to criticism that in one honour’s list no woman had been made a Dame while four men had knighthoods. Don McKinnon explained that they had had an excellent candidate, but she had refused to accept the honour.” (2)
Margaret died in Wellington in 2007 after a brief illness.
Diana Dekker, who wrote her obituary for the New Zealand Medical Journal, wrote:
“With her familiar stance of crossed arms, one arm of her glasses thoughtfully between her teeth, she wasn’t someone to be argued with. She’d seen everything an impoverished life could throw at a child.” (1)
After her death her legacy has continued. The Margaret Neave Trust was set up in 2007 and provided financial support to charities helping children in New Zealand and abroad, and continues to operate to this day under the Nikau Foundation. (6) Marsden School, her secondary school in Wellington has a display at the school honouring her.
Asked once why she had devoted so much of her life to helping people in dire circumstances, she responded “it has been so very interesting seeing what the human race can do.” (6)
Bibliography
- Diane Dekker, “Obituary: Margaret Neave” The New Zealand Medical Journal, 120, no. 1251, 2007.
- Tony Browne, personal correspondence.
- Bill Sugrue, personal correspondence.
- David Morris, personal correspondence.
- Chris Hawley, personal correspondence.
- “Margaret Neave Fund,” Nikau Foundation. https://www.nikaufoundation.nz/stories-giving-library/margaret-neave-fund.
- “Margaret Isobel Erskine Neave,” Royal College of Physicians, https://history.rcp.ac.uk/inspiring-physicians/margaret-isobel-erskine-neave.
