16 Facts About Helen Mayo

Helen Mayo returned to Adelaide in 1906, starting a private practice and taking up positions at the Adelaide Children's Hospital and Adelaide Hospital.

In 1914, after unsuccessfully campaigning for the Children's Hospital to treat infants, Helen Mayo co-founded the Mareeba Hospital for infants.

Helen Mayo was heavily involved in the University of Adelaide, serving on the university council from 1914 to 1960 and establishing a women's club and boarding college there.

Helen Mayo died in 1967, with the Medical Journal of Australia attributing the success of South Australia's infant welfare system to her efforts.

Helen Mary Mayo was born in Adelaide, Australia on 1 October 1878.

However, Edward Rennie, then a professor at the University of Adelaide advised Helen's father that she was too young to commence study in Medicine, so in 1896, Mayo enrolled in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Adelaide.

The death of her younger sister Olive at the end of her first year of study meant that Helen Mayo was unable to sit her final exams for that year, and when she repeated her first year in 1897, she failed two of her five subjects.

In 1906, Helen Mayo returned to Adelaide and started a private practice in premises owned by her father on Morphett Street, next to the family home.

In May 1909, Helen Mayo presented a paper to an interstate conference on the subject of infant mortality.

Helen Mayo served as the honorary medical officer of the association until her death in 1967, by which time the organisation gained a training school for maternal nurses and a hospital.

Helen Mayo played a central role in establishing Mareeba Hospital and forming its policy, serving as honorary physician, and as honorary responsible officer from 1921 to 1946.

Helen Mayo retired in 1938 and became an honorary consulting physician at the Children's Hospital, but when the Second World War broke out, she returned to the hospital as senior paediatric adviser, at the same time organising the Red Cross donor transfusion service.

Helen Mayo became the first woman in Australia to be elected to a university council when, in 1914, she was elected to the Council of the University of Adelaide, a position she held for 46 years.

Helen Mayo founded, in 1922, the Adelaide Lyceum Club, and was its inaugural president.

Helen Mayo spearheaded the foundation of the Women Student's Club in 1909, and in 1921 initiated efforts to unify the various student bodies at that University into what would eventually become the Adelaide University Union.

Helen Mayo was posthumously inducted onto the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2001.