Moonee Ponds Midwife - Mary Ann Scharness

Dominey's Hall, Mt Alexander Rd, Moonee Ponds, once the home 

of the Scharness family in 1893. Photo: M Kenny, 2017.

"A heavy knocking awoke Mary Anne Scharness.   It was the cold, early hours of a Saturday in late June 1919.  Although she may not have expected such a call it would not have been an unusual intrusion because Mrs Scharness was a midwife and used to responding to the midnight bell.   This wakeup call however was different.   On her doorstep was a distressed, confused, angry and embarrassed man.  He lived with his wife and children, five minutes’ walk from Nurse’s private hospital and they probably knew each other by sight.   Out tumbled a story that even Nurse Scharness with all her experience had not yet encountered.   His wife had woken him very ill at 2am and told him that she was about to become a mother.   His initial reaction was disbelief for he did not know she was pregnant.   When the reality sunk through he summoned a neighbor then went seeking professional help from the local midwife.   This might not seem a particularly unusual story however the husband in this case was a returned soldier who had disembarked in Melbourne only some four months before.   He had served overseas for three and a half years and during that time his wife had received his allotment of four shillings a day.   The family were just re-establishing itself and only the week before the birth had welcomed home the second of his brothers who had also been with the AIF.  The mother to be was brought to Nurse Scharness’ Lorne St hospital, local doctor Dr Newing  summoned and eventually a male infant born".

While women relied heavily on the service of their local midwives, following that profession was not without risk of prosecution and financial penalties.  As more and more regulation was placed on the midwives themselves and their private hospitals, more scrutiny was placed on their activities.   Not that the government should not have interested itself in the safety of expectant mothers, but sometimes the prosecutions around the Essendon district seemed to be more to do with malicious intent that the safety of mothers and babies.  It should be noted that at the same time obstetricians were not scrutinised to the same degree. 

Mary Ann Scharness fell foul of the law on more than one occasion, but she remained a Registered Midwife until her death in 1931, having commenced perhaps in the 1890s.

Marilyn Kenny has taken a detailed look at the regulation of midwives and their hospitals and the changing situation as the laws developed to try to protect infant lives from baby farmers, to ensure good standards of training and hygiene and so on.   If you have an interest in this subject, you will be rewarded by perusing Marilyn's story about the Moonee Ponds midwife, Mary Ann Scharness. 

Midwives of Essendon and Flemington update 2019

Lucy Knight, in nurse's uniform with Una Knight, in front of St Mary's,

Lake Bolac, circa 1910 State Library of Victoria Collection, H2002.18/61.

I have updated the list of midwives who operated in Essendon, Ascot Vale, Moonee Ponds, Flemington and Kensington, from certificates sighted over a period of years.  The list will tell you the years and suburbs they worked in, and the names of the doctors they worked with. 

You can find the list of Midwives and also an updated list of Doctors on the Time Travellers website.

Midwives and Doctors of Essendon and Flemington - Index

Nurses and midwives in training, circa 1880-1890.  Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria, H2005.34/100. 

Two indexes have been added to the Time Travellers of Essendon and Flemington website - Midwives of Essendon and Flemington and Doctors of Essendon and Flemington.  The names have been extracted from Victorian births records over a period of years, and of course is incomplete.

One of the early Registrars in Flemington was Dr Joseph Paterson.   Despite the regulations requiring the registrar to record the names of accouchers  or midwives, who attended births, Paterson failed to carry out his duty and neglected to record any women who attended births, even if there was no doctor present.   The "No Medical Attendant" listings in the Doctors' Index are due to Paterson recording this instead of recording who *did* attend the birth.   Likewise, it is notable that of all the births he attended himself, no women attendants were recorded.  Whether there were any at all will remain a mystery. 

Paterson was not only a misogynist, but he took his fee for a duty only partially performed.  He may not have been a particularly competent doctor, either.

In 1861 he was called to attend Agnes Dick who claimed to have taken strychnine. A neighbour, Mrs Kelleher, who was noted around the district as a nurse and midwife, was the first person called. Mrs Kelleher sent for Dr Paterson.  The symptoms Agnes displayed were pain in her bowels, back and limbs, and she also fitted just before Dr Paterson arrived.   Mrs Kelleher may have told Paterson that she agreed with Agnes that she had taken strychnine.  Paterson however decided Agnes was suffering from 'mental excitement', a well-known medical phenomenon of the time.  He gave her "something in a tablespoon" and left.  He returned an hour and a half later, just before Agnes died.

Paterson appeared at the inquest and stood by his initial diagnosis of "mental excitement", and fellow doctor John Dunbar Tweeddale backed him up. The inquest jury was not so sure and requested examination by the Government analytical chemist, Dr John Madacam, who duly reported strychnine in the contents of the stomach.

Paterson's reputation didn't seem to suffer from this misdiagnosis, and he was shortly after appointed the first Health Officer of the new District Borough of Essendon and Flemington.  More details about this case appear in my book Murder and Misfortune on the Mount Alexander Road.