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.

Women, past and present

Recently I saw advertised in the Herbert River Express that local woman Kerry Russo, who is the Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning with James Cook University's College of Business, Law and Governance, gave a talk at a public event. If I recall correctly, part of her talk was about local women having to, or choosing to, pursue careers outside of the local community. Unbeknown to the wider community there are a surprising number of local women who, at this present moment, commute to other cities or towns or out to mining sites in order to hold down a job. They do this for a range of reasons. To pursue their hard earned careers and/or to support their families are two primary reasons. Meanwhile they are still, daughters, wives and mothers and still endeavour to be part of and active in their local community. It is a juggling act. It requires determination, persistence, commitment and grit. I am in awe of my fellow women as I am sure their families are.

As I have researched and read our local history over the years I have often felt in awe of the women of the past that I have encountered. Many of the facilities we take for granted today, schools, churches, hospitals and hotels for example, would not have been built if it had not been for their efforts and generosity. Their lives with errant drunkard husbands, with the absence of the finer things of life, far from home and family, living daily with the dangers of childbirth and disease and the menace of a strange environment and animals, their lives tells a tale of unimaginable hardship and sheer  bravery.

Take Maria Ferrero, who, fired by determination to have her children educated in a Catholic school by religious Sisters, rode tirelessly on horseback from door to door in the lower Halifax area seeking donations for a convent building fund. As a result of her and her community’s determination the Halifax Convent School, with boarding facilities for boys, opened on July 3 1927.  In a time of poor roads, unbridged rivers and creeks and most farming families still using horse drawn vehicles school attendance could be spasmodic. The boarding school offered a chance of reliable school attendance. 

Angelina Borello (nee Ruffinengo) came to Australia as a single woman at the age of 21. She already had brothers in the Herbert River district who were cutting cane.  A respected midwife, she conducted a maternity hospital at Lannercost from 1927 until 1937, and is said to have delivered thousands of babies. She offered an accessible, safer and more comfortable alternative than home birth. While she was very talented there were deliveries when complications arose. Imagine her anxiety as she awaited the arrival of Dr. Morrissey and his expert help. But to reach her was no easy matter, especially in the wet season. Just past Erba’s store in Trebonne there was a persistent boggy patch in the road. Whenever he was called by Mrs Borello, her sons, Joe and Ernie, would have to go down to the store to lift his car through the bog. The reverse would have to happen for his journey back to Ingham! Further to the comfort and help she gave to mothers and their babies she was generous in other ways. We learn from Parish records that it was only through her generous donation of land in 1933 that the Church of Our Lady of Pompeii could be built at Lannercost. Like the country schools, bush churches were vital to the life of farming people in the days when going into Ingham town could be a rare event. The country schools and churches were easier to reach and around them developed a sense of community. The school could be a dance hall of a weekend and fund raising for church or school gave families reason to gather at each other’s homes for euchre or florin evenings.

The bravery of women, single, alone or widowed with children who arrived in the Herbert River district in the 1870s when the district was being opened up to European settlement is mind boggling. By the time the Mackenzie family established the Gairloch mill and plantation in 1872 it consisted of father William Mackenzie, a retired Presbyterian Minister, and five siblings and the partner of one of those children. Isabella Mackenzie was unmarried when she arrived in the district. Then Sligo, later Ingham, was no more than a camping ground and potential husbands while more numerous than eligible woman were still thin on the ground. Her sights settled on one William Stewart who had been engaged by the family to manage Gairloch. Apparently she married him “much to the astonishment of every one, and it did not result in a happy life for her.” An episode that happened to him is worth digressing for, for it gives you an idea of what sort of man she had to contend with. He was ‘fishing’ in the river one day, not with a fishing line, but with dynamite. He held the charge too long and it blew his right hand clean off.  Two days passed before a doctor could be got from Townsville to attend to the wound. Luckily the stump didn’t go gangrenous, but healed and from then on he wore a hook attached to it. We don’t know much of Isabella Stewart’s life with the foolhardy William, apart from that one quoted record of community dismay and his illfated fishing expedition, but we do know that when she arrived in the Herbert River district she was accompanied by another Isabella, the plucky widow Isabella Campbell with children in the folds of her skirt and a head full of hearty Scottish recipes. She may have had a better eye for good husband material for she quickly settled on George Wickham. He had a property called Cowden which he had selected in 1872. The landing for river vessels on his property was known as Wickham’s Landing. There he and his new wife, Isabella opened a hotel in 1875 called the Planter’s Retreat. Situated conveniently half way between Gairloch and the Camping Reserve it became an alternative venue to the family home for weddings. It was renowned for its pure liquor and good Scottish cooking.

Death was a constant companion to everyday pioneering life. Childbirth was a risky business that Mrs Borello helped to make less risky in the early twentieth century. But maternity and infant mortality in the first days of European settlement were tragically high. When Mrs Skinner’s baby took sick with diphtheria she and her husband set off with the baby from Halifax in a desperate effort to seek medical help in Ingham. Unfortunately as they stopped to rest the tired horse under the shade of mango trees the baby died in his mother’s arms. With death so common, there was little help or sympathy for the grief of those who lost a loved one. Laudanum and sleep were the stock panacea for the first days of grief. The depth of Mrs. Skinner’s grief can only be imagined but her son recalled that it took a long, long time for her to find some peace and recalled that poignant evening when she went for a walk to the gate and looking up at the starry sky she found peace as last and was able to move on from the loss of her baby.

Sources:

Douglass, William A. From Italy to Ingham: Italians in North Queensland. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1995.
Recipes of  Yesteryear. Halifax: Herbert River Museum Gallery Inc. 1992.
Skinner, F. Memories of Early Halifax. January, 1979. 
Vidonja Balanzategui, Bianka. Portrait of a Parish: A History of Saint Patrick's Church and Parish Ingham 1864-1996. Ingham: St Patrick's Parish, 1998.

Vidonja Balanzategui, Bianka. Herbert River Story. Ingham: Hinchinbrook Shire Council, 2011.

Planters' Retreat Hotel, 1876. Source: Hinchinbrook Shire Library Photograph Collection.

Gairloch Plantation House, 187? Source: Hinchinbrook Shire Library Photograph Collection

Tennis Party at Gairloch Plantation House, 1875. Source: Hinchinbrook Shire Library Photograph Collection