be registered in Australia, after being forced to gain her qualifications overseas. She worked for five years at Dr Singleton’s Dispensary in Wellington Street, Collingwood, formed the Victorian Medical Women’s Society, and founded the Queen Victoria Hospital for Women and Children. She is an inspiring example of a woman determined to fight for her rights and overcome all odds in her determination to make available holistic medical service for all women, especially the poor.

Constance (christened Emma Constance), the eldest child of English emigrants, was born in Tasmania. The family moved to Melbourne in 1872. Her mother Betsey, a former governess, educated the children at home, an endeavour supported by her husband, who was keenly interested in botany, zoology and astronomy, inspiring Constance’s taste for science. After attending the Gallery school and a stint as a teacher, Constance wanted to study medicine, but as a woman she was not permitted to enrol in Medicine at an Australian university. In fact, Melbourne University had only accepted women for any courses in 1881, and medicine remained a male bastion, so Constance decided to study overseas, even though she would not be guaranteed that when she returned to Australia she would be accepted into the profession. 

Constance studied at the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia, founded in 1850 as the first medical school for women in the English-speaking world, and worked for six months as resident physician in a hospital for women and children in New York. She then studied for a year at Trinity College at the University of Toronto, where she could gain a British qualification, and was awarded MD ChM with first class honours in 1888. In London she attended lectures at the London School of Medicine for Women, obtained clinical instruction at the Royal Free Hospital, the New Hospital for Women and the Children’s Hospital in Great Ormond Street, and earned her Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries. She was appointed assistant physician to outpatients at the New Hospital for Women in London, established in 1872 to enable poor women to obtain medical help from qualified female practitioners. Here founder Dr Elizabeth Garrett Anderson became her mentor and the experience later inspired her to found a similar hospital in Melbourne.

She returned to Melbourne at the end of 1889, was interviewed by the Medical Board of Registration, and became the first woman doctor to be registered in Australia. Table Talk (14 February 1890, page 4) described her thus:

A comely young lady of trim figure and medium height, with expressive dark eyes and plentiful dark hair, coiled neatly above an intelligent brow - … a bright Australian girl, with mind and manner enlarged and improved by knowledge and travel, with a thorough knowledge of her profession and a determination to do her duty in it cheerfully and earnestly. 

During Constance’s absence the University of Melbourne had opened its medical school to women in 1887 as a result of a campaign by seven determined women, strongly supported by their parents. Among the seven were Constance’s sister Clara, Abbotsford resident Grace Vale, and Annie and Elizabeth O’Hara, whose parents Patrick Kelly O’Hara and Mary Ann Connolly had taught at a number of Collingwood schools. 

Constance joined the staff of the Free Medical Dispensary in Wellington Street Collingwood, which had been established early in 1869 by Dr John Singleton, a notable philanthropist to the Collingwood district (later the Singleton Medical Welfare Centre). The dispensary gave free or low-cost medical attention to the poor, seeing over 16,000 outpatients per year. Dr Singleton supported the employment of medical women and Constance’s sister Clara also worked there in an honorary capacity one day a week, seeing from 60 to 100 patients per day for the next five years. At the same time Constance established her own practice in Collins Street. In 1893 she married David Egryn Jones, whom she and her family had met in 1882 when he was preaching at the Collins Street Independent Church, and who had also studied and practised medicine in Pennsylvania and Canada with Constance He shared her Collins Street rooms as well as continuing with his ministry. They lived in Powlett Street East Melbourne, a short walk to Singleton’s medical dispensary but a socio-economic world away from Collingwood. Her cousin (Emily) Mary Page Stone who graduated as a doctor in 1893 joined the Stone sisters at the Dispensary.

By 1895 Victoria had fourteen qualified women doctors; Constance invited them to a meeting at her home, where Australia’s first association of medical women was formed: the Victorian Medical Women’s Society (VMWS).

Constance appeared in many newspaper articles and reports, almost always referred to as ‘the first lady doctor’ or ‘the pioneer lady physician of Australia’. Some related to Constance’s work at the Dispensary. On one occasion she reported to the police the sad case of an emaciated illegitimate infant apparently suffering from malnourishment and neglect at the hands of a baby-minder. Within days she was performing a post-mortem on the poor little boy and testifying at the inquest. This was widely reported as ‘the first post-mortem made by a lady doctor in the colonies’. On another occasion she was involved with the police in a case of carnal knowledge of a 15-year-old Collingwood girl whom she had found to be ‘enceinte’ as the papers coyly described it.

Early in September 1896 Constance, her sister Clara, and cousin Mary resigned from the Collingwood Dispensary. They were dissatisfied with the way it was being conducted. Dr Singleton had died in 1891 and the management was in the hands of his three sons, who although they claimed considerable medical knowledge and training, were not qualified doctors.

We find patients treated by unqualified men, and then when the cases are serious, they are transferred to us: thus we are voluntarily made guilty of the offence of ‘covering’. We are also made responsible for the treatment of cases when the medicines dispensed are not those prescribed by us.

Champion 26 December 1896, page 2

In the same month Constance again called a meeting in her home, and eleven of Melbourne’s newly graduated women doctors met to discuss a plan to  establish the Victoria  (later Queen Victoria) Hospital. This was to be a hospital for women, run by women, inspired by Elizabeth Blackwell’s New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson’s New Hospital for Women in London.  The Queen’s Shilling Fund, requesting a donation of a shilling from every woman in Victoria, was launched early in 1897. By June it had collected £3162/11/9. More than a quarter of the female population of Victoria had contributed.

As well as her busy professional life, both paid and honorary, Constance became vice-president of the Women’s Franchise League and a well-known speaker on the topic of women’s suffrage. She gave birth to a daughter in 1899.

Constance resigned her position on the honorary medical staff of Queen Victoria Hospital in October 1901 on account of ill-health. Tragically, she had contracted tuberculosis and would die at her sister’s residence, in Alma Road St Kilda, in December 1902, aged 48. She would have been proud to know that her daughter, left motherless before reaching three years of age,  would go on to qualify as a doctor and work at the Queen Victoria Hospital herself.

Murnane, Honourable healers: pioneering women doctors

https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/stone-emma-constance-8676

East Melbourne Historical Society Newsletter

https://www.vic.gov.au/queen-victoria-hospital-founders

https://monashhealth.org/about/our-history/

Trove list ‘Constance Stone’: https://trove.nla.gov.au/list/178106

Table Talk; The Argus; Mercury and Weekly Courier; The Australasian; The Age; Champion; Weekly Times; The Herald; Sydney Morning Herald.

East Melbourne Historical Society Newsletter

Poster 1990s

https://collections.mdhs.unimelb.edu.au/objects/2104/first-women-students-at-the-university-of-melbourne-medical-school