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Spare
a thought for Sarah Skinner. On
Saturday, May 13, 1854, in a miner’s tent in Ballarat, Sarah gave birth to a
healthy baby. She was attended by
her neighbour, Jane Julian, who two weeks later testified at the inquest into
Sarah’s death that she was ‘not a regular midwife but (had) attended a few
females in their confinement.” On
the day after the birth, Sarah was doing well, but that night was “seized
with cold shivering”. Her
husband, William sent for Dr William Wills (father of the doomed explorer of
Burke and Wills fame).
Dr
Wills said Sarah’s fever was caused by her milk coming in.
Over the next week, Sarah continued to ail.
Puerperal peritonitis was diagnosed and the standard treatment ordered:
turpentine enemas and turpentine injections into the abdomen, opium
every two hours and blistering of the bowel and abdomen, followed
by an application of mercury to the open wounds.
Sarah’s
baby began suffering bowel complaints and bloody stools and died by the end of
the first week. A distraught
William Skinner fetched another doctor, Dr Stewart, who considered the
baby’s illness to have been ‘caused by the mother’s milk’.
Dr Steward examined the deteriorating Sarah and thought he continued
her treatments, claimed “it was beyond human skill to save her life”.
He spared Sarah the usual complementary treatment of leeching the
abdomen, although leeches were abundantly available from the many pharmacists
on the Ballarat goldfields. For
almost two weeks, Sarah suffered severe pain, copious perspiration and
constant vomiting. Her tongue was
dry and brown, her pulse weak and her skin clammy.
At
Sarah’s inquest, the coroner pronounced that she had died from natural
causes, though the jury added, “We
consider that if a little more attention had … been paid to the deceased by
the medical man, her days might have been prolonged”.
The
now-widowed William Skinner was, in a way, one of the lucky ones.
Although his wife’s body was a bruised and bloody pulp by the itme
the indifferent doctors had finished “ attending, at least he secured the
services of medical men.
Although
it might not have given any comfort to the soul of William Skinner, at least
his wife’s name has been preserved in the official documents so that later
historians can resurrect the story of this otherwise invisible woman.
