This article analyses labour responses to state and federal economic policies during the 1919-20 influenza outbreak in New South Wales (NSW). Given the health risks and pressures placed on businesses and employees by pandemic measures, it asks whether and to what extent organised labour movements resisted state and federal impositions, and what consequences this had for subsequent government-worker relations. Drawing on Hansard, ministerial communications, Australian newspapers, and union publications, it finds that economic pressures generated by government pandemic responses led to previously unexamined 'Epidemic Wages'protests and served to exacerbate 1919s'largest industrial action, the Federated Seamens'Union Strike. Connecting NSWs'1919 strike surge to pandemic pressures highlights influenzas'contribution to the radicalisation of Australian workers' movements and long-term shifts in NSW wage bargaining policy.
Air Vice-Marshal Sir Philip Clermont Livingston (1893-1982) was a Canadian-born British-trained ophthalmologist who made a significant contribution to aviation ophthalmology in Great Britain and in Australia. After joining the Royal Air Force Medical Branch in 1919, he combined clinical expertise and research with personal flying experience to challenge rigid visual requirements. His research into the efects of glare, night vision, defective ocular motility, depth perception, and the efects of hypoxia informed RAF and RAAF policy during World War II, leading to safer flying standards. Rising to director-general of RAF Medical Services, Livingston also advanced womens' roles in military medicine and oversaw medical support during the Berlin and Korean airlifts. Despite his influence, little has been written about him. This paper examines his contributions to aviation ophthalmology and his influence on setting ocular standards for pilots during WWII in the RAF and RAAF.
With expansion of public health into colonies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, health education was of critical importance. This article explores the Netherlands East Indies colonial publisher Balai Pustaka and its support of public health efforts during the Dutch colonial period and the Japanese occupation. Pocketbooks, magazines, almanacs, and other books indicate the importance of local language and Malay publications in public health campaigns. Beyond carefully designed educational tracts, from the 1930s, advertisements for medical products appeared in Balai Pustaka publications following familiar themes but created anew each time in the appropriate language. During the Japanese occupation, public health initiatives and publishing changed, reflecting new contexts and the growing importance of Malay/ Indonesian language, but the government publisher continued playing important roles.
This study reveals the experiences of a group of registered nurses who chose to work with people with intellectual disability. The nurses trainedfor the Mental Retardation Certificate in several large residential institutions for people with intellectual disability in New South Wales between 1969 and 1985. Their training instilled a holistic approach to nursing that led to specialist nursing registration and a distinct professional identity at the time. The nurses shared stories about their education and training, and their deep involvement in the day-to-day lives of the people in their care. The oral history interviews collected support the contention that these nurses tooka holistic approach to practice with the aim of providing an enhanced experience of life for people with intellectual disability living in large residential institutions. Even though the places where people with intellectual disability now live have changed, as has nursing education, the relationship-centred approach of nurses who completed the Mental Retardation Certificate remains relevant to contemporary holistic nursing practice.
Sydney Chalmers Allen was the medical offi cer at New Plymouth Prison during the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s, at a time when the institution was largely set aside for men convicted of having sex with boys and other men. This article examines Allens'approach to the sexual lives of the men under his care. Allen admired the work of well-known English doctor Havelock Ellis, and he put a selection of Elliss'ideas to work at New Plymouth. The article works through some of the philosophical similarities and differences between the two men, and explores how Elliss'ideas were taken up and adapted in New Zealand. The article brings together biography, medical practice, and penological trends in the wider history of homosexuality, and it shows the significance of Allens'work at a time when the segregation of homosexual offenders was rare in the international context.
Infection prevention and control (IPC) programs were first introduced into some Australian hospitals during the 1960s-70s, in response to rising hospital-acquired infection and antibiotic resistance rates. There is little published information about their origins. This paper aims to address this by describing the findings of a qualitative study, comprising interviews with twentythree purposively sampled healthcare professionals who were involved in IPC-related roles during the 1960s-90s. Findings were supplemented by selected publications, and themes identified using reflexive thematic analysis. Most early infection control professionals (ICPs) were experienced senior nurses, appointed and/or supported by medical microbiologists. During the 1980s, when hospital accreditation required hospitals to appoint an ICP, administrators often hired inexperienced nurses. Their roles were poorly defined, and they relied on informal networks for support. The trajectory of routine hospital IPC in Australia has been reactive and complicated by interprofessional tensions and competing models of care.
Mass immigration driven by the discovery of gold in colonial Victoria in the mid to late nineteenth century gave rise to growth in regional areas which was accompanied by the building of institutions of social control. Focusing on the gaol and asylum opened in the newly-emerged town of Beechworth, this paper exposes the complexities of staffi ng these institutions, which were established not only to control 'deviant'populations, but to also reform, care for, and cure those incarcerated. Diffi culties with recruiting and retaining an appropriately demeanoured and skilled workforce, combined with a contemporary understanding of the importance of prisoner and patient labour on reformation and cure, could lead to those incarcerated adopting the role of employee. Studies exploring the boundaries between those admitted to and those staffing institutions provide deeper insight into workforce complexities in this time period, and broaden our understanding of contemporary approaches to the reform of criminals and treatment of the mentally unwell.
During the nineteenth century, the Asylums for the Destitute and Aged in NSW grew in size and number to meet the needs of an ageing population, particularly those who through chronic debility were unable to work, were impoverished, and lacked family support. of untrained staff , and regulations that were often enforced in an arbitrary manner meant that life in the asylums could be unpleasant. This study examines newspaper reports of suicidal behaviour in inmates of these asylums in the nineteenth century. Most reports were of older males and occurred between 1887 and 1899. While physical and mental health issues were frequent, problems with complying with asylum referred older people charged with attempted suicide to an asylum, particularly those without finances and unable to work due to ill health. Thus, the Asylums for the Destitute and Aged were implicated in both contributing to suicidal behaviour and as a solution.
The 28th M & amacr;ori Battalion served with the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force (2NZEF) in the Middle East and Italy during the Second World War. A distinctive unit organised along tribal lines and under M & amacr;ori command, the battalion had a celebrated record of service. They also had one of the highest casualty rates in the 2NZEF, yet little is known about the impact of war on their hauora (wellbeing) after they returned home. This article provides an initial sketch of M & amacr;ori servicemens'lived experiences of medical rehabilitation using hospital registers, military personnel files, offi cial data, death records, inquest files, and memoirs, concentrating on M & amacr;ori returned veterans who died prior to 1950. When combined, these sources provide an insight into M & amacr;ori health during and immediately after the war, and also illuminate the reasons men were repatriated, the nature of their wounds, and how they encountered medical care on their return.
This article examines how powerful and regulatory emotions shaped the emergence and enforcement of new hygienic norms during infectious disease outbreaks in late-nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century Sydney. In a period of physical and epistemic transformation, emotionally charged public communication produced both interventionist and internalised forms of action. Such communication made particular behaviours feel appropriate or inappropriate based on learned understandings. Hygienic rules and knowledge were thus underwritten by an emotional regime. Shifting norms around tuberculosis and plague were not only protective but also productive, determining who could access the rights of the state and who was subject to its coercive power. Emotions, mobilised through the regulation of bodily practices such as spitting and grooming, enabled the diffusion of public health governance across bodies and communities, but they also made that power unstable.
Abstract: Over the past decade, the history of reproduction has become its own distinctive category of historiography, with the establishment of dedicated conferences and research groups. This paper aims to explore the rise of this new field of scholarship, which has its origins in the emergence of feminist and women's history in the late 1970s. Tracing key moments in the historiography, the authors consider current developments and directions in the field, which continue to be motivated by feminist and decolonial activism on reproductive matters. Examining these new subjects of scholarship, the authors discuss the strengths of the field and consider its potential future pathways for research.
In 1990 the New Zealand parliament passed an Act which allowed midwives to set up in private practice independently. It also introduced direct-entry midwifery training (with no requirement for midwives to train as nurses first). This 'autonomy' was celebrated by midwifery leaders locally and internationally, imbued with an ideology that viewed childbirth as a normal life event and that resisted the modern medicalisation of childbirth. This paper argues that while the system that evolved in New Zealand, guided by the newly formed New Zealand College of Midwives, suited some women, others-including certain ethnic and socioeconomic groups along with some rural women-were poorly served, which was reflected in birth outcomes. It expands on the research from my recent history of maternity services, setting New Zealand within a broader context and addressing the lack of political will to alter a system which did not appear to be in the best interests of all mothers and their babies but rather disadvantaged some groups.
This article explores the activism of the Womens' Right to Choose Group, the fi rst Irish group to campaign in favour of abortion. In the three years of its existence, group members focused their campaign on two key which provided counselling to women facing crisis pregnancies and referred those who required abortions to service providers in Britain, and a direct-action campaign to bring attention to the abortion issue. Ultimately, the organisation wound up in 1983 with the defeat of the Anti-Amendment campaign and the introduction of the eighth amendment in Ireland by popular vote. Using oral history interviews with original members, archival sources, and print publications, this article explores the personal experiences of the female activists involved, the transnational elements of Irish pro-choice activism, the challenges of abortion rights work in the context of 1980s Ireland, and activists ' feelings regarding the legacy of their work.
Between the 1960s and 1980s, a wave of abortion law reforms swept through various Western nations. The reforms aimed to clarify extant laws, protect doctors from criminal prosecution, and curtail the toll of backstreet abortions on womens'bodies and lives. They emerged out of a series of conflicts and compromises evident in the design and implementation of new abortion laws which, on the one hand, expanded the parameters for legal abortion, but on the other, criminalised abortions that did not fall within them. Despite divergent historical, political, and medical contexts, a transnational comparative analysis of abortion law reform efforts in Britain, Canada, and Spain in this period highlights the conflicts and compromises each experienced, the similarities and dissimilarities in legislation, and the impact of that legislation on medical professionals, abortion providers, and women seeking legal abortion services.
In May 1983 women from across Scotland came together in Edinburgh for the Scottish Womens'Health Fair (SWHF). Organised by and for 'ordinary'women, the SWHF offered a substantive two-and-a-half day programme-including information sessions, film screenings, workshops, and information stall-that attracted over two thousand attendees. A diverse group of organisers, presenters, and attendees at the SWHF applied concepts of holistic and social health as they discussed a wide range of topics, from women suffering from depression to damp housing and cervical smears. The women who organised the SWHF reflected on this event as a pivotal moment for them personally, and for the womens'health movement in Scotland more broadly. The success of the SWHF was achieved in the face of political and professional controversies that placed Scottish womens'health activists in opposition with the Scottish Home and Health Department and the World Health Organisation European Region. Within the context of these controversies, this article situates the SWHF as a strategic showcase of the strength of the womens'health movement in Scotland and the wider public support of womens'health praxis and ideas.
