18 Facts About Victoria Coffey

Victoria Coffey was an Irish medical doctor and paediatrician.

Victoria Coffey was one of the first people to research sudden infant death syndrome and one of the first females to undertake significant research into congenital abnormalities.

Victoria Coffey became the first female president of the Irish Paediatric Association, the paediatric section of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland, the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland Post-graduate Association, and the Irish American Pediatric Association.

Victoria Philomena Dorothy Coffey was born on 16 September 1911 at 108 Brunswick Street in Dublin, Ireland.

Victoria Coffey played the piano and cello, and trained as a singer under instruction from Vincent O'Brien.

Victoria Coffey described her as "a no-nonsense person but with quite a wicked sense of humour".

Victoria Coffey developed strong qualities of leadership, responsibility, and pugnacious personality by working with men such as Tom Lane, Henry Stokes and Oliver St John Gogarty at Meath Hospital, the cradle of the Dublin School of Medicine, where she was a student and house officer.

At St Kevin's Hospital, Victoria Coffey became interested in the neglected field of congenital birth defects and began a publishing career.

Victoria Coffey was motivated to learn about the health of babies and young children, and focused on paediatrics.

Victoria Coffey's research mainly focused on children born with congenital and metabolic diseases, and was completed with the help of the Medical Research Council, Trinity College Dublin and Professor Jessop of Meath Hospital.

Victoria Coffey then began to research sudden infant death syndrome, and was one of the first women to study it.

In 1954, Victoria Coffey gave a paper on this topic at the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland.

Victoria Coffey published her findings in the Irish Journal of Medical Science between 1955 and 1959.

Victoria Coffey published internationally and maintained her research output for several years after her retirement.

Victoria Coffey founded the Faculty of Paediatrics at the RCPI in 1981 and was the first female president of the Irish Paediatric Society.

Victoria Coffey lived on Cowper Road in Rathmines, a suburb of Dublin, with her parents before their deaths, and remained there until her own death.

Victoria Coffey died at 87 on 15 June 1999 in St James's Hospital, where she had worked most of her life.

On International Women's Day in 2018, Victoria Coffey was honoured for her outstanding contribution to medicine and was chosen to be part of "Women on Walls", an arts project hosted by RCSI in partnership with Accenture, with her portrait displayed in the RCSI's principal boardroom.