Margaret Dorothy "Dot" Edis MBE (April 19, 1890 – August 14, 1981) was an Australian nurse who served in both World Wars. In 1965 she received the Red Cross's

Florence Nightingale medal The Florence Nightingale Medal is an international award presented to those distinguished in nursing and named after British nurse Florence Nightingale. The medal was established in 1912 by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), f ...

Life

Edis was born in

Kyabram Kyabram () is a town in north central Victoria, Australia. Kyabram is located in the centre of a rich irrigation district in the Goulburn River Valley, north of Melbourne. The name of the town is thought to derive from an Aboriginal word Kia ...

in 1890. She completed her initial training as a nurse at the end of 1914 in Kalgoorlie Hospital. In the following August she joined the

Australian Army Nursing Service The Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) was an Australian Army Reserve unit which provided a pool of trained civilian nurses who had volunteered for military service during wartime. The AANS was formed in 1902 by amalgamating the nursing servic ...

as a Staff Nurse before being sent as part of the Australian Imperial Force to an auxiliary hospital in Egypt. By April 1916 she was on the Western Front where she worked at the 2nd Australian Casualty Clearing Station as well as both American and British hospitals caring for the wounded soldiers. She left the Australian Imperial Force in 1919 with the rank of sister, but she continued to care for soldiers who had returned from the war for the next five years. In the 1930s Edis began working for Head Matron Marion Walsh at the

King Edward Memorial Hospital for Women King Edward Memorial Hospital for Women (KEMH) is a hospital located in Subiaco, Western Australia. It is Western Australia's largest maternity hospital and only referral centre for complex pregnancies. It provides pregnancy and neonatal care ...

. She took further training in child care and midwifery. Walsh made her responsible for the post-natal ward and she became so enamoured with a baby, who was under developed, that she adopted Reginald as her own child. In May 1940 she and her nurses of the 2/3rd Australian General Hospital were in Perth awaiting to go abroad. In a group photograph she is seen wearing her medals. In 1948 she became the matron of a nursing home which had been called the "Home of Peace for the Dying and Incurable" when it was established in 1902 in the suburb of Perth called Subiaco. Edis declared the home to be unacceptable and she made an ultimatum to the management. Changes happened and she stayed for another eighteen years. Edis was honoured in 1954 when she was made an MBE and in 1965 she received the Red Cross's

Florence Nightingale Medal The Florence Nightingale Medal is an international award presented to those distinguished in nursing and named after British nurse Florence Nightingale. The medal was established in 1912 by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), f ...

. She died in Subiaco at the Home of Peace in 1981.

References

External links

Biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Edis, Dot 1890 births 1981 deaths People from Victoria (state) Female wartime nurses Australian Members of the Order of the British Empire Florence Nightingale Medal recipients World War I nurses World War II nurses Australian military nurses Australian women nurses Female nurses in World War I Australian women of World War I Women in the Australian military Australian military personnel of World War I