The intrepid midwife: Nurse Louisa Anderssen/Anderson

Probably few people know of Nurse Louisa Anderssen/Anderson (née Buchanan). This is not surprising given that records of midwives, either official or personal, in the period that Louisa was practising are scant, and as birthing children was considered women’s business.

Louisa was a local midwife. According to a lengthy obituary published on her death Louisa was the daughter of Dr William John/John William Buchanan and nurse, Susan/Susanah O’Neill. On Louisa’s wedding certificate it is recorded that her father was John Buchanan, farmer.  The obituary records that Buchanan had migrated from Scotland to Australia because of ill health. According to descendants still living in the district, he was born in Carlton, Jamaica where the family had a sugar plantation while Susan was born in Ireland.  John studied medicine but did not complete his studies. However apparently, he knew enough to offer valuable assistance to the doctor on the Herbert.  Louisa was born in the Rockhampton district, possibly in Clermont in 1862.  The family then made the move to the Herbert perhaps because at that time there was an opportunity for small selectors to take up land there. He started out helping to clear F C Gardener’s holding, ‘Bushfield’.  Hopeful selectors would first work for other selectors or planters until they had saved enough money to go out on their own. On Louisa’s death certificate it is recorded that her father was a sugar boiler. Sugar boilers were vital to the processing of sugar from cane and perhaps this role was more suited to his abilities than farming. However, on his own death certificate he was recorded as a labourer.
When Mrs Millar opened the lower Herbert Provisional School in July 1875 Louisa and her siblings, Mary, Bella and Florence all attended. Louisa and Florence then both married Scandinavians.  There was a sizable community of Scandinavians on the Herbert from the earliest days of European settlement. Louisa was 17 years old when she married 37 years old Scandinavian Christian Anderssen (Anderson) on 23 May, 1879 in Cardwell.   He was a blacksmith employed at the Bemerside Plantation. Her profession was domestic duties. Following their marriage he conducted his own business at Wickham’s Landing on the Herbert River in a former Gairloch structure which he had purchased together with fittings and tools. The family then moved to Ingham around 1882 whereupon Christian went into business with M Connors until 1886.  The family then relocated to Cordelia to 'Homebush', the property of William Johnson (Wilhelm Sorensen), a fellow Scandinavian. What may have precipitated that move was an accident shoeing a horse which left Christian an invalid for 17 years.

They would have seven children.   Of the seven children, two would die in infancy and another two by the age of ten. All but one predeceased her.  Four died under heartbreaking circumstances. One of snake bite and another from convulsions after eating soap. Kenneth Christian (5) and daughter Emelia  Mary (10) died under particularly tragic circumstances  — they and two other children drowned in the Herbert River during a school lunch break.  Without refrigerated mortuary facilities bodies had to be buried soon after death, and often on the selectors’ properties. Emelia and Kenneth were buried on Johnson’s property ‘Homebush’.  At the time Louisa was caring for a critically ill child and Christian was in hospital having suffered a stroke. These, of course, were not travails unique to her. The Herbert was a frontier settlement and the dangers of life there were many. Infant and maternal fatality rates were high and work accidents frequent and often fatal because of lack of access to appropriate medical treatment.

Nurse Louisa Anderssen/Anderson. Source: Hinchinbrook Shire Library Photograph Collection.

Forced to support her family after her husband became incapacitated, Louisa acted as midwife for the women on the Herbert.  Trisha Fielding, author of Neither Mischievous nor meddlesome: the remarkable lives of north Queensland’s independent midwives 1890-1940 identifies why women turned to midwifery. A significant reason was a need to earn a living after being widowed. In rural areas, what Fielding calls ‘Granny midwives’ assisted expectant mothers in their homes or conducted small lying-in hospitals. These women often did not have formal training but assumed the title of Nurse.   Louisa delivered Finlay Skinner in 1897, and 25 years later his son.  Skinner recalls that she was a self-taught midwife and came to the profession after her husband’s accident. Like many rural midwives Louisa probably acquired her knowledge through birthing her own children. Though it is suggested she acquired some of her medical knowledge from her mother and father.  She described herself as a lady’s nurse.  She traveled on horseback to attend to isolated women responding to calls for assistance at any hour of day or nights. She was not unknown to swim a river to attend to a woman in labour. Skinner asserts that her services were in great demand and that she was very highly regarded.  After her husband’s death Louisa continued to live at ‘Homebush’. She outlived her husband by 40 years dying on 14 November, 1948 at the age of 84 at the Eventide Home, Charters Towers and is buried in the Halifax cemetery.
Her's in many ways could be described as a tragic life. But her indomitable spirit, life-giving profession and dedication to her family enabled her to rise above and stoically endure those losses.

Sources:

Christopher Hart, family records.
Australia, Electoral Ross, 1903-1980, Division of Herbert 1903, National Library of Australia.

‘Family Notices’,  Northern Miner, 15 November, 1948, p.  2.

Fielding, Trisha.  Neither Mischievous nor meddlesome: the remarkable live of north Queensland’s independent midwives 1890-1940, Townsville, North Queensland History Press, 2019.

Barrie, Douglas R. Minding My Business: The History of Bemerside and the Lower Herbert River District of North Queensland Australia, Douglas R. Barrie, Ingham, 2003.

Carl (Charles) Feldt. Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths, Marriages and Divorces, https://www.familyhistory.bdm.qld.gov.au/, Registration details: 1885/C/251.

Hinchinbrook Cemetery Register of Burials as at 27th April 2018, https://www.hinchinbrook.qld.gov.au/community-environment/cemeteries/deceased-search/

Kemp, A. S. The Kemp report: history of the Herbert, ‘The old pioneers’, Ingham, unpublished manuscript, 1956.  Instalment 2, p. 6.

Skinner, Finlay, Memories of a First World War digger, Nambour, Finlay Skinner, ?1981.

Obituary, Mrs Louisa Anderson, Herbert River Express, 9 December 1948, p. 4.

Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths, Marriages and Divorces, https://www.familyhistory.bdm.qld.gov.au/, Registration details: 1879/C/108.

Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths, Marriages and Divorces, https://www.familyhistory.bdm.qld.gov.au/, Registration details: 1948/C/4709.