Hilda Clark (doctor)

Hilda Clark (12 January 1881 – 24 February 1955) was a British physician and humanitarian aid worker.[1] She was an expert in pulmonary care and a leader in hospitals for refugees in France during World War I. After the war she was active in international organizations for peace as well as in providing for refugees of other wars, including the Spanish Civil War and World War II.[2]

Early life

Clark was born 12 January 1881 at Green Bank, Street, Somerset and was the youngest child of the Quaker shoe manufacturer William Stephens Clark and the social reformer Helen Priestman Bright Clark.[3][4] The Clark family of Street were Quakers of shoe-making fame as C. and J. Clark Ltd. Manufacturer of boots, shoes & sheepskin rugs. She was the sister of Alice Clark, the feminist and historian and the niece of Annie Clark, one the first pioneering women to formally train in medicine in Britain. Her mother and great-aunts helped to found a number of women's rights organizations in the 1860s.[3]

As a child, she was involved in athletics and gymnastics. She had a Quaker education at Brighthelmston, at Birkdale in Southport, Lancashire, about 1896–7, and The Mount, in York, from about 1897 to 1900, before studying medicine at Birmingham University and the Royal Free Hospital, London where she graduated M.B. and B.S. in 1908.[3]

Medicine

Clark specialised in the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis. She was instrumental in administering the TB vaccine, tuberculin, developed by Dr W. Camac-Wilkinson.[5] She opened and ran two tuberculin dispensaries, the first at her home town of Street in Somerset, the second, by appointment as Medical Officer of the Portsmouth Municipal Tuberculin Dispensary in 1911.[6][7] In 1910 she successfully treated her sister, Alice Clark, a suffragist who was suffering from tuberculosis.[8] Clark gave a paper on "Tuberculosis Statistics: Some Difficulties in the Presentation of Facts bearing on the Tuberculosis Problem in a Suitable Form for Statistical Purposes", later published in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 1914.[9]

During WW1 she was engaged in providing medical relief work in France, Austria and the Soviet Union.[10] She founded Friends' War Victim Relief with fellow Quaker Edmund Harvey and was medical organiser of the first Friends' War Victim Relief team in France, of which Edith Pye was a member.[11] There, at Châlons, she established a Maternité hospital for refugee women, which opened in December 1914.[12]

Humanitarian Work

Clark reported in 1919 on behalf of the Save the Children Fund about the dire condition of children's health in Austria during that country's famine years and proposed cheap dietary solutions to rectify the deficiencies.[13] She organised a scheme to buy cows from the Netherlands and Switzerland and fodder from Croatia and Czechoslovakia in order to produce much needed milk for children.[11] During a visit to Hungary with Dr Hector Munro and Mr Buxton in August 1919, they sent a telegram to the Under-Secretary of Foreign Affairs in London, seeking urgent medical supplies for the hospitals of Budapest.[14]

During the 1920s Hilda was an active member of a number of humanitarian organisations including the League of Nations, the Women's Peace Crusade (of which she was secretary), the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the International Commission for the Assistance of Child Refugees as well as Quaker campaigns such as the Friends' Service Council. She also worked for the relief of refugees in the Spanish Civil War and World War II.[3] After her work with refugees in various European countries she became a noted speaker about international affairs on behalf of the League of Nations and other international bodies. Clark was Chairman of the Anti-Opium Committee of the Women's International League which advocated state control of 'dangerous drugs'.[15]

Later life and death

Her home in London was bombed in 1940 and she moved to Kent, where she was active in the Soldiers, Sailors and Airmens Families Association. She became disabled as a result of Parkinson's disease and returned to Street in 1952, where she died unmarried at her home on 24 February 1955 and was buried at the Street Quaker burial ground[3][16] under the same headstone as Edith Pye.

Publications

  • The Dispensary Treatment of Pulmonary Tuberculosis. London, Bailliere & Co. 1915
  • Pye, Edith Mary (ed) War and its Aftermath. Letters from Hilda Clark from France, Austria and the Near East 1914-1924. London, Friends Book House, 1956
  • The Armaments Industry: a study of the report of the Royal Commission on the Manufacture of and Trade in Arms and Munitions of War and of the Evidence published in the Minutes of the Commission during 1936. London, Women’s Peace Crusade 1937

References

  1. ↑ "Hilda Clark papers". Library of the Society of Friends Catalogue. Quakers. 1908–1950.
  2. ↑ Quaker Strongrooms (3 July 2012). "World War I and its aftermath: cataloguing the papers of Hilda Clark (1881-1955)". Library of the Society of Friends. Quaker Strongrooms.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 "Clark, Hilda (1881–1955), a physician and humanitarian aid worker, | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-38518.
  4. ↑ "Alfred Gillett Trust". Retrieved 1 Feb 2018.
  5. ↑ W Camac Wilkinson. The Principles of Immunisation in Tuberculosis. 1926
  6. ↑ "Appointments". Public Health. 24: 288. 1910–1911. Retrieved 3 February 2018.
  7. ↑ National Conference on the Prevention of Destitution (1911: London); London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (1911). Report of the proceedings of the public health section [of the National Conference...], held at the Caxton Hall, Westminster, on May 30th and 31st, and June 1st and 2nd, 1911 [electronic resource]. London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. London : P.S. King & Son. p. 89.
  8. ↑ Holton, Sandra Stanley (1996). Suffrage Days: Stories from the Women's Suffrage Movement. London: Routledge. p. 171. ISBN 9780415109413. Retrieved 3 February 2018.
  9. ↑ Clark, Hilda (1914). "Tuberculosis Statistics: Some Difficulties in the Presentation of Facts bearing on the Tuberculosis Problem in a Suitable Form for Statistical Purposes". Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine (Section of Epidemiology and State Medicine): 55-80. Retrieved 3 February 2018.
  10. ↑ SALLY., WHITE, (2018). ORDINARY HEROES : the story of volunteers in the first world war. [S.l.]: AMBERLEY PUBLISHING. ISBN 9781445676661. OCLC 992546015.
  11. 1 2 Uglow, J. The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography. p. 134.
  12. ↑ Storr, Katherine (2009). Excluded from the Record: Women, refugees, and Relief, 1914-1929. Peter Lang. pp. 140–143. ISBN 9783039118557. Retrieved 3 February 2018.
  13. ↑ "Save the Children Fund". The Times. 12 May 1920. Retrieved 1 Feb 2018.
  14. ↑ "Serious Food Situation in Hungary - Request for medical stores". Manchester Guardian. 11 August 1919. Retrieved 3 February 2018.
  15. ↑ "Dangerous Drugs - Conference appeal for state control". The Times. 14 Nov 1929. Retrieved 1 Feb 2018.
  16. ↑ "A history of Quakers in Street". Street Quaker Meeting, 36 High Street, Street, Somerset BA16 0EQ. Retrieved 2018-02-01.
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