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PHEGAN, HILDA ELSIE (BIDDY): see TUXWORTH, HILDA ELSIE (BIDDY)
PHILLIPPS, HELEN also MILNER (1918–1973), medical practitioner, was born at St John’s Wood, London,
England, on 19 August 1918, the daughter of Royal Cecil Phillipps and his wife Ellen Hillman, nee Robinson.
Her parents were Australians who had been living in England while her father saw service during the First World
War. The family returned home in 1920 and Helen was educated by correspondence until she was 13 when she
became a boarder at Frensham School in Mittagong, New South Wales.
In 1936, she enrolled at the University of Sydney intending to study Science. The following year she transferred
to Medicine and graduated Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery in 1941 with a Distinction in Preventive
Medicine. During her undergraduate years, she had earned her blue for hockey and was active in other student
activities. The next four years were spent in Melbourne as a Resident Medical Officer, first at the Children’s
Hospital and then the Queen Victoria Hospital. From 1945 until 1949, she gained additional experience in a variety
of general practices as a locum.
On 29 June 1942, she married Thomas Milner, a master mariner, and in what would have been an unusual
situation at the time, between 1949 and 1954 they were both employed in their respective professions by the
Gilbert and Ellice Islands administration.
In 1954 she accepted an appointment with the Commonwealth Department of Health as a medical officer
charged with the task of establishing a school medical service in the Northern Territory and began work on
25 October, for many years the only member of her unit. She was gazetted Medical Inspector of School Children
on 14 July 1960. She was the first female medical practitioner in the Northern Territory but the position was
part of the temporary establishment of the Commonwealth Public Service and it was not until July 1968, after a
12 months’ ‘probation’, that she was finally appointed as a permanent officer. She received promotion to Medical
Officer Class Two in October 1971.
Phillipps was granted a World Health Organisation Fellowship in 1970 and studied developmental paediatrics
in England and Europe, becoming one of the very few doctors in Australia to specialise in this field. Preventive
medicine was always her special interest. As a member of the Child Welfare Council, she was influential in the
development of policies to improve the condition of all children. She was responsible for the introduction of
vaccines for diseases such as poliomyelitis and rubella. A particular interest was children with hearing difficulties,
particularly Aborigines. With assistance from the Commonwealth Acoustic Laboratory, she established a system
of audiometric screening that extended to the remotest areas. Intent always on giving all Territory children, no
matter how remote or handicapped, the best possible opportunities, she was also involved in the foundation of the
Specific Learning Difficulties Association and educational facilities for slow learners and a sheltered workshop
were established under her auspices.
She also had a number of community interests, being an active member of the Quota Club in Darwin, for which
she served a term as President. She was also a member of the Graduates Association in its drive to have tertiary
education facilities established in the Northern Territory.
Her colleagues held her in high esteem and she was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE)
in June 1968. But her years of ‘dedication, drive and inexhaustible patience’ took their toll and she died of cancer
on 14 May 1973 at the age of 54, after years of ill health. She had resigned only two weeks earlier but in a letter
acknowledging her resignation the Commonwealth Director of Health confirmed that ‘for many years you carried
on the struggle on your own and it is only recently that your planning has borne fruit.’ There were many epitaphs,
not least the statement that the School Medical Service ‘which you have truly pioneered, will remain a tribute to
your endeavours.’
Phillipps had no children but was survived by her husband.
The Medical Journal of Australia, vol 2, 1974; Northern Territory News, 15 May 1973; Commonwealth Government Gazette, no 31, 24 July
1960; Commonwealth Department of Health files.
HELEN J WILSON, Vol 2.
PHILLIPS, JESSIE SINCLAIR: see LITCHFIELD, JESSIE SINCLAIR
PHILLIPS, ROY REID (1892–1922), bookkeeper, journalist, schoolteacher and poet, was born on 29 October
at Hay, New South Wales. He was the youngest child of John Phillips, civil servant, and Jeannie, nee Reid.
John Phillips was of English descent, and both his father and grandfather were emancipist landholders in the
Wellington district of New South Wales, while Jeannie, of Scottish ancestry, was born in Melbourne, the daughter
of well-educated Melbourne booksellers. Jeannie’s parents instilled into her a deep love of literature, and she in
turn passed this on to her children. They all recorded their feelings in prose and poetry in autograph and notebooks.
Roy’s older brother, Boyne Samuel, had died at the age of seven and a half months due to an epidemic caused by
the insanitary conditions existing in Sydney in 1882. Phillips’s older sister, Jessie Sinclair (Litchfield), was born
in 1883 in Ashfield, Sydney, while his younger sister, Nancy Wood, was born at Hillston in central New South
Wales in 1885.
Phillips’s parents could possibly have decided to move out into the country to ensure the survival of their
children, although the decision may have been a necessary one because of the deepening depression at the time.
From Hillston the family moved to Deniliquin in 1888 and then to Hay where Phillips was born. By 1895, the family
had moved back to Sydney where Jessie was attending the Neutral Bay School; it is possible that Roy Phillips
attended his first school there also.