The Intrepid Midwife - Lady’s Nurse Louisa Anderssen/Anderson

Nurse Louisa Anderssen/Anderson in her later years, still caring for young children. Photo source: Hinchinbrook Shire Library Photograph Collection.

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By Dr Bianka Vidonja Balanzategui

Records of midwives in the 1800s are scant and birthing children was considered women’s business, so you would be forgiven if you didn’t know of local midwife Louisa Anderssen/Anderson (née Buchanan).  

According to the available resources, her parents were John William or William John Buchanan and Susan/Susanah O’Neill. John was born in Carlton, Jamaica, on a sugar plantation, while Susan was born in Ireland. John studied medicine but did not complete his studies, however he knew enough to offer valuable assistance to doctors. Allegedly, he migrated to Australia because of ill health, where he took up work clearing ‘Bushfield’, F C Gardener’s holding and possibly worked as a sugar boiler.  

Louisa was possibly born in Clermont in 1862. When the family moved to the Herbert area, Louisa and her siblings, Mary, Bella and Florence, attended Mrs Millar’s Lower Herbert Provisional School. 

There was a sizable community of Scandinavians in the region and Louisa and Florence both married Scandinavians. Louisa was 17 when she married 37 year old Christian Anderssen (Anderson) on 23 May 1879 in Cardwell. He was a blacksmith employed at the Bemerside Plantation.  

Christian then conducted a blacksmithing business at Wickham’s Landing on the Herbert River; before then working for M. Connors in Ingham until 1886, when the family relocated to ‘Homebush’, a property in Cordelia belonging to fellow Scandinavian, William Johnson (formerly Wilhelm Sorensen). It is possible an accident shoeing a horse, which left Christian an invalid, may have precipitated that move.

To support her family, Louisa turned to midwifery, calling herself a lady’s nurse. She delivered Finlay Skinner in 1897, and his son 25 years later. Finlay recalled that she was a self-taught midwife and came to the profession after her husband’s alleged accident. Lady’s nurses assisted expectant mothers in their homes or conducted small lying-in hospitals. They often did not have formal training but assumed the title of Nurse.

Travelling on horseback, responding to assistance at any hour, she was known to have swum a river to attend to an isolated woman in labour. Finlay remembered that her services were in great demand and that she was very highly regarded.

Of Louisa’s and Christian’s seven children, all but one predeceased her and four died under heartbreaking circumstances. One toddler of snake bite and another from convulsions after eating soap. Kenneth Christian (5) and Emelia Mary (10) and two other unrelated children, Charlotte Carr (7) and Evaline Faithfull (10), drowned in the Herbert River during a school lunch break. At the time of their latter children’s deaths, Louisa was caring for a critically ill child, and Christian had had a stroke and was in hospital.  

Emelia and Kenneth were buried at ‘Homebush’. Their graves are now under cane. After her husband’s death, Louisa continued to live at ‘Homebush’. She outlived her husband by 40 years, passing away on 14 November 1948 at the age of 84, at the Eventide Home in Charters Towers and is buried in the Halifax cemetery.  

Hers could be described as a tragic life. But her indomitable spirit, life-giving profession and dedication to her family enabled her to rise above and stoically endure those losses.

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