Mary Kirkpatrick, née Magee, ( November 1862 in Belfast – 16 February 1943), was born to a working-class in Bridge End, Ballymacarrett, East Belfast. Kirkpatrick was a pioneer of women's health care, the first trained midwife on the mid north coast of New South Wales, Australia as well as establishing the first private maternity hospital and then went on to establish three more. Kirkpatrick worked with and mentored many of the midwives and nurses who followed her to the coast and is still remembered by the residents of the Macleay Valley for her long service and her commitment to her profession and the women and babies in her care.
Midwife
As a young woman of twenty Kirkpatrick immigrated to New South Wales, Australia with her husband Hugh Kirkpatrick and 11-month-old David in 1884. After separating from Hugh in the late 1890s, as a single mother Kirkpatrick became a midwife working in Armidale an inland town. In the 1900s with David and another son George, she moved to the mid north coast of New South Wales to the Macleay Valley on the mid north coast of NSW, where she would work and live for the rest of her life. Kirkpatrick would eventually become one of the most well-known midwives in the Macleay Valley caring for the health of women and babies for more than 30 years. However, it was her Northern Irish origins and her fierce determination to succeed in her community that would begin in Northern Ireland and stay with her as she carved out a career for herself and her family in the Macleay Valley of New South Wales. Kirkpatrick established four private maternity hospitals in Kempsey. She trained in midwifery in 1902 at the Home Training and Lying in Hospital in Sydney under the renowned midwife and lecturer Louisa Ardill and her staff. She was the first trained midwife in Kempsey and her first private hospital was established in River Street West Kempsey in 1904. Her next private maternity she named The Poplars and it was also in River Street. She moved to Marsh Street, West Kempsey to open Hollywood her third private maternity hospital. She advertised Hollywood firstly in 1913. She resigned from Hollywood in 1915 with Martha Norman taking over its management. Her youngest son George was killed during the German attack on Lagincourt, France in April 1917 and Mary did not return to midwifery until 1922. In the intervening years she turned to raising funds for the 'boys coming home'. She worked with the Red Cross and took part in many community events. Her grief, like that of many other mothers drove her to support the war effort but in particular the wounded men who returned some of whom she nursed in her own home. When Kirkpatrick returned to midwifery in 1922 she established her fourth private maternity hospital that she named Down after County Down in Northern Ireland. She remained working as a midwife until the later 1937 working for other midwives when she become too ill to do it on her own. Mary Kirkpatrick died 16 February 1943.
Northern Ireland origins
Kirkpatrick ancestors were disaffected Protestants who had wanted England to provide more support against Catholicism. But this was not to be. Catholicism flourished and the Ulster Plantationists who had arrived with the Conquest in the 1600s, now found themselves in an increasingly strife-torn and economically depressed Northern Ireland.
The irony for the Ulster Magees and Kirkpatrick's was that like other Protestant families they considered themselves landed gentry, although many were desperately poor.
Kirkpatrick was ten years old in 1872 when the first nationalist parade, led by Joseph Biggar, was held in Belfast. That same night Protestants from Sandy Row clashed bitterly with Catholics from streets near Great Victoria Street Railway Station, the General Hospital full of the injured and maimed. That bitter conflict raged for days with increasingly violent attacks on nearby churches and houses. But of course, it is difficult to find a time in Ireland, in Belfast, when there were no political troubles or religious conflicts. It is difficult to find a time when the Irish did not leave Ireland as Mary did, to put those conflicts behind them. To leave behind the awful tensions, the bitter divisions as Catholic and Protestant alike turned on one another in the same streets in which their children walked to school, and in the same houses and churches in which they were baptised, where they were married and where now they too often mourned.