Edith Hughes-Jones
Born10 March 1905
Tungamah
Died15 April 1976
Prahran
NationalityAustralian
Occupationnurse
Known forcharitable works

Edith Hughes-Jones (1905 – 1976) was an Australian nurse and hospital proprietor. She took a leading role in creating memorials to the Australian nurses of World War Two.

Life

Hughes-Jones was born in 1905 in Tungamah.[1] Her parents were Agnes Edith (born Hardy) and her husband Rev. William Thomas Jones. Her father was Methodist minister and she had an elder brother William Eric Archer Hughes-Jones who became a leading surgeon.[2]

She became a nurse and a matron and she was able to find funds to buy the Windarra hospital where she had worked. That hospital had been started by Florence MacDowell. She then started the Windermere Hospital in 1938 where she was the owner and the matron.[3]

Edith Hughes-Jones on the 11th anniversary of the sinking of the Centaur in 1954 laying a wreath on the Edith Cavell memorial in Melbourne

In 1943 AHS Centaur was sunk by a Japanese submarine. It was a hospital ship and over 260 lives were lost including eleven nurses. Australia was outraged and Hughes-Jones established the Centaur War Nurses' Memorial Trust and she became its honorary secretary.[4] One of the nurses killed had been a deputy matron to Hughes-Jones.[5] Ellen Savage was the only surviving nurse from the Centaur.

Hughes-Jones had started to raise money for a nurses' memorial[5] and she supported nurses Betty Jeffrey and Vivian Bullwinkel, who had been prisoners of war, as they visited every sizable hospital in Victoria to raise money that created the Australian Nurses Memorial Centre. She is noted as a founder together with Wilma Oram and Annie M. Sage.[6]

Death and legacy

Hughes-Jones died 1976 in the Melbourne suburb of Prahran.[1] Her Windermere Hospital created a charitable foundation in the 1970s. The hospital was sold in 1998 but the foundation survives and it gives grants to "continue Edith Hughes-Jones legacy".[3]

References

  1. 1 2 Williams, Jennifer, "Edith Hughes-Jones (1905–1976)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, retrieved 2023-11-01
  2. ↑ "Hughes-Jones, William Eric Archer (1902 - 1976)". livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk. Retrieved 2023-11-01.
  3. 1 2 "Windermere – About Us". Retrieved 2023-11-01.
  4. ↑ "Centaur Scholar". Age. 1954-12-08. Retrieved 2023-11-01.
  5. 1 2 Publications, A. C. N. (2021-02-15). "Remembering the fallen of the Bangka Island Massacre". Australian College of Nursing. Retrieved 2023-11-01.
  6. ↑ "About | ANMC". Retrieved 2023-11-01.
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