Baby Health Centres in Victoria

It is 100 years since the Baby Health Care movement began in Victoria in June 1917 when Dr Isabella Younger Ross opened a centre in Richmond. Dr Younger Ross had studied medicine at Melbourne University and Glasgow University. She then worked at the Queen's Hospital for Children in London and this encouraged her interest in child welfare. This interest was reinforced by later study in Chicago.  The child health experts emphasised the importance of teaching women hygiene, nutrition etc with the ultimate aim of lowering the child mortality rates.

Dr Younger Ross was helped in her endeavours by Mrs J.J. Hemphill and Mrs W. Ramsay and they then went on to open centres in other areas. The Victorian Baby Health Centres Association was established in 1918 and the numbers of centres increased in the 1920s.  Isabella Younger was born in Warnambool in 1887 and married John Ross in April 1916. She died in July 1956. You can read Dr Younger Ross' biography on the Australian Dictionary of Biography here.

I came across, purely by chance, the digitised reports of the Victorian Baby Health Centres Association from 1918 onwards on the Queen Elizabeth Centre website   http://www.qec.org.au/professionals/corporate-documents

1918 Annual report

This is from the first Annual report and shows the progress made in establishing the centres in the first year. It was written by Ethel M. Hemphill (the Mrs J.J. Hemphill referred to above. Ethel Mary Hemphill, nee Scott, married James Johnson Hemphill in 1907 and died in 1939, aged 64)

From the second report lists of the Centres appear, as well as opening hours, the names of the Nursing Sisters in charge and the names of women on the local committees, so this gives us some indication as to when Centres were opened in each area. The Shire of Berwick and Shire of Canbourne were both relatively late in establishing Centres, later than many areas much further from Melbourne.  The first mention of  local towns I could find in the 1935/36 Annual report when both Garfield and Bunyip are listed. Garfield was open Fridays 10.30am to 12 noon and 12.30pm to 1.30pm; Bunyip was open Fridays 2.00pm to 4.30pm. I presume that there must have been local agitation to have these Centres opened in what were by no means the biggest towns in the Shire.

Office bearers of the Bunyip and Garfield branches from the 1936/37 report

In 1937/38 Annual report the Lang Lang, Emerald and Pakenham have Centres opened. The report has statistics for Pakenham (or Pakenham East as it was called) - 39 individual babies were treated, plus 13 children over 2 with a total visit of 300 babies and 48 children.  

Office bearers at Emerald from the 1937/38 report

It wasn't until the 1938/39 Annual report that the Shire of Cranbourne presented a report - they had Centres at Lang Lang and Pearcedale. The statistics for Lang Lang were 29 individual babies were treated, plus 21 children over 2 with a total visit of 354 babies and 68 children. Tynong Centre was listed in the 1942/43 report.

Tynong Office bearers from the 1943/44 report

In the 1944/45 report the Shire of Berwick could present statistics for seven towns - Berwick, Beaconsfield Upper, Bunyip, Garfield, Nar Nar Goon, Pakenham East and Tynong - as Berwick, Beaconsfield Upper and Nar Nar Goon had not been listed before we can assume that these Centres were established  during that time. The Berwick statistics were 41 individual babies were treated, plus 45 children over 2 with a total visit of 464 babies and 226 children - so there was clearly a need for this type of establishment in the town. Gembrook and Officer in the Shire of Berwick had Centres established in the 1945/46 year and the Shire of Cranbourne established a third Centre in the Shire at Cranbourne. In that year  Cranbourne saw 19 individual babies treated, plus 8 children over 2 with a total visit of 82 babies and 25 children. 

Koo Wee Rup was established in 1946/47 It is interesting to look at the statistics for that year for Cranbourne and Koo Wee Rup - they both had about the same number of individual babies treated (40 for Cranbourne and 42 for Koo Wee Rup) and yet Cranbourne's total baby attendance was 586 and Koo Wee Rup's was 276 - so Cranbourne mothers had an average of 14 visits per baby compared to Koo Wee Rup's 6 per baby - it's hard to know why - were Cranbourne babies more sickly or  did more of the mothers live in the town and not on farms and it was easier to attend or did the Infant Welfare Centre Sister encourage more visits - hard to know.  

Tooradin was established in 1947/48 and there were no other  local Centres established up to 1950, which is where we will finish. These reports are a fabulous resource tracing the history of the Infant Welfare Centres in Victoria and for local and family historians includes lots of names of the local Committee members, mainly women so it may help you discover the role your female relatives played in the town where they lived.  You can find the reports at   http://www.qec.org.au/professionals/corporate-documents