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The Dictionary of Sydney
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The New Hospital for Women and Children, 11 Lan...

The New Hospital for Women and Children, 11 Lansdowne Street, Surry Hills c1922

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Biffin, Harriett Eliza Rachel Forster Hospital

Subjects

Hospitals

Organisation

Rachel Forster Hospital

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Surry Hills

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State Library of New South Wales

Rachel Forster Hospital

The Rachel Forster Hospital has provided services to women since 1922 including training for female doctors, and later nurses. Until the 1960s its staff were almost exclusively female. It became a public hospital in 1930 and developed into a centre for innovation in the treatment of breast cancer and orthopaedic surgery before closing in 2000.

Biffin, Harriett Eliza

Harriett Biffin was a pioneer Sydney woman doctor. One of the second group of women to graduate in medicine at the University of Sydney in 1898, she was the first to establish a women’s joint medical practice in Sydney and a suburban general medical practice, and founded both The Medical Women’s Society of New South Wales and the Rachel Forster Hospital with Dr Lucy Edith Gullett.

Hospitals

Rachel Forster Hospital

Women's hospital established in 1922 in Surry Hills by Lucy Gullett and Harriet Biffin before moving to Redfern. It was named for Lady Forster, the wife of the Governor General.

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Surry Hills

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Inner-city suburb located immediately to the south east of the central business district. After explosive growth in the second half of the nineteenth century it came to be seen as a slum, then experienced gentrification from the late 1960s.