Gwen Fleming

Dr. Gwen Fleming FRACP
Born	Mary Gwenyth Lusby (1916-06-09)9 June 1916 Taree, New South Wales, Australia
Died	18 January 2011(2011-01-18) (aged 94)
Nationality	Australia
Education	University of Sydney (1939)
Years active	1939–1994
Known for	First female major in the RAAMC; one of the first Australian woman thoracic physicians
Medical career
Profession	Medical doctor
Field	Thoracic medicine
Institutions	St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney
Military career
Allegiance	Australia
Service/branch	Royal Australian Army Medical Corps
Years of service	1939–1945
Rank	Major
Unit	Yaralla Military Hospital
Commands held	Officer Commanding the Medical Company

Mary Gwenyth "Gwen" Fleming (née Lusby), FRACP, (9 June 1916 – 18 January 2011)^[1] was an Australian medical doctor who specialised in thoracic medicine and served in the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps during the Second World War.

Early life and education[]

Mary Gwenyth Lusby was born in Taree in 1916, the third of six children of John and Caroline Lusby.^[2] Her maternal grandmother, Caroline Fitzhenry, had been a pioneer of health care in the Clarence River district of northern NSW, and founded the Bilongil Private Hospital at Casino, and the St Rock's Hospital at Ballina.^[3] Through the Fitzhenrys, Gwen was a cousin of the film star Errol Flynn.^[4]

Gwen's father John Lusby was a school principal and classics master in country NSW, and so the family moved around the state until his eventual teaching appointment in Sydney.^[5][6] He insisted on his daughters acquiring a high education.^[6] Gwen achieved her NSW Leaving Certificate at St George Girls High School, Kogarah in 1932 and her Baccalaureate in 1933.^[7]

She graduated as MBBS from the University of Sydney in 1939 and was among the first group of women medical graduates to pass through the University and Sancta Sophia College.^[8][6]

Military service[]

After graduation, she was appointed as a resident medical officer at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, Newcastle, until she enlisted for war service.^[9]

Gwen joined the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps (RAAMC) and, along with Captain Helen Braye, was appointed to the staff of the 113th Australian General Hospital at Concord in Feb 1942, where Captains Margery Scott-Young and were already serving as the only female doctors.^[10] In May 1942, The Daily Telegraph reported that "for the first time in the history of Australia, women doctors have been enlisted in the AIF", and that Gwen was one of six serving at Concord.^[11]

Initially a Captain, Gwen was later promoted to the rank of Major.^[12] Although she specialised in thoracic medicine, she oversaw all medical procedures at the hospital as Officer Commanding the Medical Company.^[8][12] As the first female major in the RAAMC, she said that her colleagues "called me 'sir' during the war".^[8]

Gwen’s siblings were heavily involved in the War. Her elder brother Jack Lusby, a well known cartoonist and short story writer, fought with the RAAF in the Mediterranean Theatre; and brother , was a Scientific Liaison Officer in Washington (a radio physicist, he worked with Robert J. Oppenheimer, the atomic bomb scientist).^[13][14] Younger sister Judith (Lusby) Follett worked in naval intelligence, and youngest brother Robert Lusby died a prisoner of the Japanese on the Burma Railway.^[14] While her brother suffered through his imprisonment, Gwen was responsible for the treatment of Japanese Prisoners of War at Concord.^[6] In 1945, at the conclusion of the war, she became one of the first women granted membership of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP).^[8]

Later career[]

During the War, Gwen met , a surgeon with the Royal Australian Air Force. The couple were married in 1946, and, after demobilisation, relocated to Oxford, in the United Kingdom, where Justin had been awarded a Nuffield Fellowship. While her husband studied for his Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons, Gwen became the breadwinner, working as a thoracic physician at Brentwood Hospital in Essex.^[15]

The Flemings returned to Australia in 1950 and settled in Wollstonecraft, a suburb of Sydney. Gwen's career was interrupted by caring for their six children, but in 1973 she was nevertheless appointed Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. Her husband established a career as a pioneer vascular surgeon and founded the Australian Association of Surgeons, but his shock death of a heart attack in 1974 brought Gwen back into medical practice.^[16] She took up a post at a cancer clinic on Macquarie Street while also teaching at St Vincent's Hospital.

She retired at 77 years old and died in 2011. After Fleming's death, Marie Bashir, then Governor of New South Wales, described her as "an outstanding Australian woman who was an inspiration to so many who had the privilege of meeting her – both within the medical profession and beyond".^[8]

References[]