Remembering a Veteran: Dr. Elsie Dalyell OBE, Balkan Front Bacteriologist

Dr. Dalyell Before the War

By James Patton

Elsie Jean Dalyell (1881-1948), a pathologist, was born on 13 December 1881 at Newtown, Sydney, the second daughter of mining engineer James M. Dalyell and Jean, (née McGregor). Elsie was educated at Sydney Girls' High School, after which in 1897 she was hired by the Department of Public Instruction as a pupil-teacher. Sponsored by the Department, she completed the first year in arts and science at the University of Sydney, but had to withdraw in 1905 due to a medical emergency. She recovered and left teaching, transferring to second-year medicine at the Women's College at Sydney, where in 1909 she received a Bachelor of Medicine (M.B.) with first-class honours, and then a Master of Surgery (Ch.M.) in 1910. 

Elsie was one of the first female resident medical officers at Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, then served as a demonstrator in pathology - the first female on the full-time staff of the medical school. In 1912, she won the Beit Fellowship, becoming the first woman to earn this distinction in Australia. With this bursary she was able to study pediatric gastroenteritis at the Lister Institute of Preventative Medicine in London.

She was caught up in the patriotic fervor of 1914 and joined the Lady Wimborne's Serbian Relief Fund unit. She went to Skopje (Uskub) in Macedonia to help with the 1915 typhus and relapsing fever pandemic, which killed an estimated 150,000 people, including about 36% of the treating doctors. 

Skopje at the Time of the Great War

In Skopje, Elsie worked in the fever hospital, more than one mile from the town's main hospital. She wrote of her experience at some length:

Our building was meant for a barracks, but was hastily utilised for a hospital. The dining room is a clean bare cellar with a table and the inevitable packing cases as chairs. My own room (the last doctor in it had typhus) contains my bed, a packing case... my cabin trunk and a canvas chair. We have no sitting-room... I have over one hundred patients who suffer from every imaginable fever – typhus, typhoid, scarlet, diptheria, and a dozen others not yet classified. The suffering of the sick and wounded and the appalling waste of life here are beyond description, but the hospitals are getting typhus under control. 

Four of our staff have typhus and all are recovering, but we are very shorthanded. Our staff consists of two men doctors and myself, and we feel that we need the strength of ten to get through the day's work. For the wards I wear a shapeless bag-like garment devised by myself. It has feet and legs and ties round the neck. Then I have a close white cap, a face mask, rubber gloves and boots. Yesterday I discharged a veteran Servian (Serbian) soldier, the scarred hero of a hundred fights and could find him no clothes but a Servian military coat and a split skirt made in London. He was thankful for even those, and with the addition of a blanket for overcoat set out for his home... The Servian soldiers are simply splendid, fearless and clever, and of fine physique... 

In spite of the fine situation, clear air, brilliant blue skies, with glorious snow-capped mountains in the distance, the terrible problem here is one of sanitation... in this fever-ridden country owing to the lack of sewage systems.... I must run and help look after 104 fresh patients. Some will have to go on the floor. Thank goodness the nurses are trained and skilful, and the orderlies are a credit to their colleges.’

Serbian Soldiers in Skopje

Dalyell was safely back in the U.K., serving at the Addington Park War Hospital, Croydon, when Skopje was overrun by the Bulgarians in October 1915. In 1916 she joined the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service unit at Royaumont, France. Later she was allowed to join the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving in Malta and at Salonika, where she was the bacteriologist with No. 63 General Hospital, situated in the Durband Pass. Press reports claimed that she was the first female to hold such a job.

She served in the British Salonika Force until July 1919, with a secondment in December 1918 to No. 82 General Hospital, attached to the occupation force in Constantinople, where there was a serious epidemic which proved to be of cholera.

No. 63 Hospital on the Salonika Front

In June 1919, in the Birthday Honours, she was appointed to the Order of the British Empire (OBE), the highest honour bestowable (at the time) upon an Australian female. She had also been Mentioned in Dispatches (MiD) twice by FM (then-Gen.) Sir George Milne GCB, GCMG, DSO, KStJ (1866-1948), commander of the British Salonika Force (1916-18), and she was also decorated by the Kingdom of Serbia.

Representing The Lister Institute and the British Food Mission, she went to Vienna in August 1919 to work as a senior researcher on a team studying deficiency diseases in children. She later described this group as "the most scientific infant clinic" with "the most highly trained staff in the world". In 1923 her team published what has been called "the most complete study of human rickets prophylaxis ever undertaken." 

In appearance she was of medium height and heavy build with broad forehead, light blue eyes, 'cream' complexion and 'apricot’ hair. When in Vienna she adopted a mannish style of dress which, with minor seasonal variations, she wore henceforth. She read 'omnivorously' and collected objets d'ar, especially etchings.  All who knew her agreed that she was one of those rare beings whom it was a privilege to know.

In 1923,  at the conclusion of a lecture tour in the U.S., she returned to Australia. Ironically, there was no suitable professional opportunity for her in Sydney. Without personal means, her attempt at private practice in Macquarie Street failed. In January 1924 she signed on as a microbiologist in the Department of Public Health. She wasn’t accorded professional status, and there was little prospect of advancement. Her working  life was circumscribed by  performing endless Wasserman tests for syphilis about which disease, thanks to her war service, she was an acknowledged expert. Between 1925 and 1935 she was on the committee of Sydney’s Rachel Forster Hospital for Women and Children and was partly responsible for founding their venereal diseases clinic, which opened in 1927. 

Rachel Forster Hospital, Sydney 

Due to her declining health, Elsie retired in 1946. She died on 1 November 1948. In recent years, she has been honored by the University of Sydney with the establishment of the Elsie Dalyell Scholars Stream, a university-wide initiative for high-achievers.

Sources: Australian Department of Veteran’s Affairs and The Australian National University’s Australian Dictionary of Biography