Introduction

FOR MANY WESTERN AUSTRALIANS King Edward Memorial Hospital for Women is a very special place. Established in 1916, 'King Eddies' has played a critical role in the history and development of women's and infants' health in Western Australia. Since its humble beginnings as a 20-bed hospital housed in the former Government Industrial School, it has been the birthplace of over 300 000 babies.

 However, for some time it has been acknowledged that the needs of Western Australian women and their babies have surpassed the hospital's current location. It was of little surprise to many involved in women's health when the then-Premier of Western Australia, Mark McGowan, announced in 2019 that the government planned to close KEMH, redevelop the site, and construct a new women's hospital at a different location.

Almost instantly anxious queries began appearing on social media pages and online news forums. What would become of the Memorial Garden, and the many babies' ashes interred there?

When I first heard the Premier's announcement, I wondered the same thing.

The Memorial Garden is situated on a small pocket of land facing onto Railway Road, somewhat fittingly tucked next to the first hospital building now known as Harvey House. A quiet haven from the busyness that has become Subiaco in the twenty-first century, the Memorial Garden is the resting place of tens of thousands of miscarried babies’ ashes.

Because, despite the plethora of medical advancements that have made pregnancy and childbirth far safer for many women today, miscarriage and perinatal loss have remained all-too common events in Western Australian women’s lives. Despite the improved knowledge of the spread and treatment of infectious diseases, the now-routine expectation of antenatal care and the marked drop in maternal and neonatal death rates in the twentieth century, miscarriage and perinatal death are still all-too-common events.

King Eddie's occupies a very significant place in my own family. Three of my five babies were born there. The first, a boy, was stillborn at King Eddies in 2003; although his ashes are not interred in the Memorial Garden, I was aware of its existence, having walked past it every time I attended the hospital's antenatal clinic. 

My husband and I were fortunate to experience highly skilled and thoughtful care after our son was stillborn, but once we left the hospital it was a different story. We were shocked to realise two things: firstly, that miscarriage and stillbirth seemed to be far more common than we had thought, and yet, despite this, it remained a topic that was rarely spoken about.

I spent the next five years trying to understand why, undertaking a doctorate through the School of History at the University of Western Australia. My thesis - 'Birth Pains: Changing Understandings of Miscarriage, Stillbirth and Neonatal Death in Australia in the Twentieth Century' - was awarded with Distinction in 2008. It was a hard slog but I felt it was important, particularly after an acquaintance remarked at a party - after asking about my thesis - 'well, you're a party killer, aren't you!'

Through my doctoral research, I became convinced that the Memorial Garden occupies a particularly significant space in Western Australian history and deserves to be understood as such.

The Memorial Garden has been a labour of love for a number of staff at the hospital, working alongside members of the Rotary Club of Matilda Bay. It was borne out of the burgeoning field of research into grief and loss, as well as the wider cultural change towards women's health. It remains a visible symbol of the suite of changes that transformed the ways in which bereaved families are supported at KEMH.

In 2022, I was awarded a grant by the Western Australian History Foundation to write a short history of the Garden and interview a number of individuals who have had significant involvement in the Garden over the past three decades. 

Many other individuals work behind the scenes in keeping the Memorial Garden maintained, and the Memorial Garden Committee, alongside the Rotary Club of Matilda Bay, have long acted to preserve and promote the Memorial Garden's cultural and social value.

I hope you enjoy this short history of such a significant part of Western Australian history, and welcome comments and additions to littlebotanicadesign at gmail.com

 

- Susannah Thompson