Page 16 - Pharmacy History 23 July 2004

A pioneer military pharmacist
by John Pearn and Radley West
Lieutenant Gwyneth Jane Richardson AAMC – 1917-1995
The first woman pharmacist in the Australian Defence Force
‘Today we are sending you out to battle. Only you are not armed with poison gas and bayonets, but with antiseptic, chloroform and healing hands’. Budd Schulberg in the Writer’s Radio Theater 1941.
Gender equality came late to the professions of military health. By a special Army Order of 17th
October 1939 the British War Office finally allowed women to enlist in the Royal Army Medical Corps.
In Australia, professional women who were graduates in the health professions of medicine, pharmacy, pathology, science and occupational therapy initially served as volunteers or as civilians attached
to military units. The first Australian woman doctor was not commissioned
in the Australian Army Medical Corps (AAMC)* until September 1940 and then with Honorary Rank only. With the exception of a small number of women doctors, other professional women in
the health disciplines – pharmacists, laboratory scientists in pathology, occupational therapists and (apart from
a brief period prior to 15th July 1943) physiotherapists were required to join
the Australian Army Medical Women’s Services, rather than the AAMC. The first of those professional women, each
in her own health discipline, comprised a group of quiet pioneers. We record here
a brief account of Australia’s first military woman pharmacist, Gwyneth Jane Richardson, who after four years service as a civilian and as a non-commissioned officer in the AAMC, was finally commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Corps on 4th August 19441.
Miss Richardson was a dignified and gracious person. She served the AAMC for seven years. Her service marks another pioneering datum in the progression of professional gender equality not only
in the Australian Defence Force but
more broadly in the Australian nation
as a whole. Her record stands beside
that of other ‘firsts’ in what today has
Mrs. Gwyneth Jane Hulsen (1917-1995), formerly Lieutenant Gwyneth Richardson AAMC, the pioneer woman pharmacist of the Australian Army Medical Corps.
evolved to be the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps. Such firsts in the annals of gender equality were quiet pioneers such as Captain Lady MacKenzie (1900- 1972), the first woman doctor to be commissioned (1940) in the AAMC; and Captain Tam Tran RAAMC, the first woman doctor of the Corps to
be decorated (1992) for ‘meritorious achievement in devotion to duty’.
This brief account records the
life of Gwyneth Jane Richardson
whose recruitment, service and final appointment to the AAMC stands as an unobtrusive but nevertheless significant milestone on the road to equality of opportunity, this latter based solely on functionality, ability and service, rather than gender restriction.
Professional life
Gwyneth Jane Richardson was born in Brisbane, the elder of two sisters born
to John and Mary Matilda Richardson. She was educated at Annerley State School and at the Brisbane Girls’ Grammar School. At the completion
of her secondary education, she was apprenticed to her father, the pharmacist John Richardson, at the family pharmacy at Ipswich Road, Annerley. She graduated as a pharmacist in her final examinations in 1940 and was registered with the Pharmacy Board
of Queensland, in Brisbane, on 2nd January 1941 (Registration No 1326). She worked initially for the Army as a civilian pharmacist. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour (7th December 1949), Australia became engulfed in the Pacific War and gender-based restrictions on military recruitment were of necessity abandoned. Gwyneth Richardson enlisted in the Australian Army Medical Women’s Service (AAMWS) on 16th December 1942 and served in uniform for the ensuing five years.2
After demobilisation in 1947, she worked as a pharmacist in Brisbane until 1950 when she emigrated to England. She was first registered in the United Kingdom on the 11th October 1954 and worked in London. In 1959 she married an expatriate German professional man, Heinrich Hulsen, when she was 43
years of age.3 The couple had no children. By the end of 1971 both her husband and her father were dead, the latter on 30th December 1971. Her name remained on the Register until 1974 when she retired and returned to Australia permanently. Until her death on 18th June 1995, she lived at Torbreck, a Brisbane landmark and the second high
16 ■ Pharmacy History Australia
volume 2 ■ no 24 ■ November 2004