Clara Winifred Howie

MBE Mbe may refer to: * Mbé, a town in the Republic of the Congo * Mbe Mountains Community Forest, in Nigeria * Mbe language, a language of Nigeria * Mbe' language, language of Cameroon * ''mbe'', ISO 639 code for the extinct Molala language Molal ...

(27 June 1881 – 13 August 1960) was an Australian nurse and administrator. Also known as Winifred Howie, in 1937 she was the acting President of the

Australasian Trained Nurses' Association The Australasian Trained Nurses' Association was an association formed in 1899 to register nurses who had been trained in Australia. History Susan McGahey was a co-founder of the Australasian Trained Nurses' Association (ATNA) in December 1899 ...

before leading the South Australian branch until 1941.

Life

Howie was born in 1881 in Adelaide's seaside suburb of Glenelg. Her eldest brother was the artist

L. H. Howie Laurence Hotham Howie (22 August 1876 – 18 October 1963) was a South Australian sculptor painter and art teacher. History Laurence was born in Norwood, South Australia the eldest of five children of George Cullen Howie and his wife Clara Jane ...

. Her parents were Clara Jane (born Hotham) and her husband George Cullen Howie who had emigrated from Scotland. Her father died in 1883 and his mother took the children to stay with her father, the Rev. John Hotham, in

Port Elliot Port Elliot is a town in South Australia toward the eastern end of the south coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula. It is situated on the sheltered Horseshoe Bay, a small bay off the much larger Encounter Bay. Pullen Island lies outside the mouth of t ...

, where she ran a small private schoolDavid Dolan
'Howie, Laurence Hotham (1876–1963)'
''Australian Dictionary of Biography'', National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1983, accessed online 7 February 2015 in the winter and in the summer they took in boarders. After training she began working for the

District Trained Nursing Society The Royal District Nursing Service (RDNS) is a not-for-profit community health and care provider with headquarters in Keswick, a suburb of Adelaide, South Australia. It was established in 1894 in South Australia as the District Trained Nursing ...

(DTNS) in 1911 and they sent her as the first nurse to attend people living at Hergott Springs in the following year. She was over 350 miles from Adelaide and he closest doctor was 150 miles away. She lived at the pub learned to ride a camel as her patients were Indian and Afghan cameleers. In 1919 she opened a new branch of the District Trained Nursing Society at Goolwa. In 1919 she was the assistant superintendent of nurses for the DTNS in Adelaide. She became the superintendent in 1926, sending her nurses into the bush to care for Aboriginal families if they could or would not attend the nursing stations. She was a member of the

from 1924 and in 1937 she was briefly the acting president. The DTNS became the "District and Bush Nursing Society of S.A. Inc" in 1937 and she led the South Australian branch of the ATNA from 1937 to 1941. In 1948 she became a

Member of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(MBE) and retired due to poor health in 1949. Howie died in 1960 at her house in the Adelaide suburb of Forestville. She was cremated.

References

External links

Biography at ADB
{{DEFAULTSORT:Howie, Clara Winifred 1881 births 1960 deaths People from Adelaide Australian nurses Australian women nurses