Changing the name of the Lady Cilento hospital ‘political nonsense’
FOR generations of Queensland women, Lady Cilento was the go-to authority on raising children and those who know and revere her say our children’s hospital name should not be changed, writes Kylie Lang
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FOR generations of Queensland women, Lady Cilento was the go-to authority on raising children.
Her advice columns ran in The Courier-Mail for more than 50 years, bringing the trailblazing doctor into the homes of millions of families.
Paula Kemp typed much of “Lady C’s” work, including the manuscript for her final book, My Life, published just before her death in 1987.
The long-serving secretary, now 92, is outraged at the State Government bid to change the name of the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital, and she’s not alone.
Fellow residents of The Village retirement complex in Yeronga, in Brisbane’s south, share her disgust.
“I am appalled,” says Kemp, who describes her boss as “kind, extremely intelligent and ahead of her time”.
“Children were her life; she was so invested in their well-being. I can’t think of a better person to name a children’s hospital after.” Kemp, who has a daughter and two grandchildren who are doctors, describes the Government’s stated motivations for a rebrand to Queensland Children’s Hospital as “ridiculous”.
“They say parents are confused about whether it’s public or private and the name is stopping the hospital from getting international recognition – what rubbish!
“Does anyone question the Princess Alexandra Hospital?”
Kemp’s neighbour Dianne Murison, 73, is furious that two men – Health Minister Steven Miles and Dr Ben Whitehead, chairman of the Medical Staff Association – dare to question the recognition of “one of the most highly regarded females in our history”.
“I looked for her Medical Mother column every week in The Courier-Mail,” Murison (pictured above left, with Kemp right) says.
“She was a saviour to so many women, and the excuses these men are using are pathetic and disrespectful to Lady Cilento.
“An LNP premier (Campbell Newman) might have named the hospital, but it’s not as if he called it after himself – he chose a woman who richly deserves the honour.”
Phyllis Dorothy McGlew was the only female to graduate with a medical degree from the University of Adelaide in 1919, and continued to break new ground throughout her life.
After marrying fellow doctor Raphael Cilento in 1920, she worked with him around the world before settling in Brisbane in 1928.
One of Australia’s first “working mothers”, she became an early and outspoken advocate of family planning and the power of vitamins, including vitamin E to treat cardiovascular disease and C to combat AIDS.
“The medical establishment didn’t agree with a lot of what she did, yet she was ahead of her time,” Kemp says. “It was Raphael who was knighted (by King George V in 1935 for his contributions to tropical medicine), but she was equally a leader in her field.”
Lady Cilento specialised in women’s and children’s health in her general practice surgery, attached to the family home in Annerley and later Toowong.
She worked well into her 80s, partly because “she couldn’t bear to turn people away”, says Kemp, who has kept newspaper clippings and memorabilia from her 16 years with the woman for whom a royal title mattered little.
“Lady C had the most wonderful sense of humour and it didn’t worry her in the least where you came from – she treated everyone the same.
“It was one of the reasons people loved her, including Sean Connery, who remained very friendly with her after his divorce from Diane (in 1973).”
Actor Diane was one of Sir and Lady Cilento’s six children (four became doctors) and the first wife of the Scottish heart-throb best known for his role as James Bond (both pictured below).
“One time I telephoned Lady C but a deep voice answered and said, ‘She’s not here; it’s Sean’. He always visited her and once when she flew to Dublin, he met her at the plane in a limousine. He took her to glamorous parties, yet she was the celebrity everyone wanted to meet,” says Kemp, with a laugh.
Among her keepsakes is a card handed out at Lady Cilento’s funeral service at St Thomas’ Anglican Church in Toowong
31 years ago.
It reads: “You are held in high esteem by all sections of the citizens of the State of Queensland … for your prolific and constructive contributions of sound advice, organisational skill and activities, lecturings and writings in the medical realm and within almost every area of our community life. You freely presented your gainful life as a public benefit to the uplift of many persons … and your good name
is a praiseworthy by-word in most households.”
Kemp shakes her head as she ponders the potential stripping of Lady Cilento’s name from Queensland’s largest children’s hospital.
“It is political nonsense, and Lady C deserves so much better.”
kylie.lang@news.com.au
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