Vera Ellis-Crowther
New Zealand nurse and midwife
Vera Jane Ellis-Crowther (née Hodgson; 27 August 1897 – 6 July 1983) was a Liverpool-born New Zealand nurse and midwife. An early advocate for the use of anaesthetic during childbirth, Ellis-Crowther operated the Waitemata Obstetric Hospital in Glen Eden, West Auckland from 1945 to 1954. Later in life, Ellis-Crowther became an advocate for home birthing, delivering over 1,000 home birth babies in New Zealand.
Biography
Ellis-Crowther was born as Vera Jane Hodgson in Liverpool, England, on 27 August 1897. In 1924, Ellis-Crowther immigrated to New Zealand with her husband. Her husband had trained as a chemist, but when they arrived in New Zealand they worked on farms in Te Aroha, and later bought a 300-acre sharemilking farm at Maramarua. Her husband died in a truck accident in 1932, leading Ellis-Crowther to buy an orchard in Glen Eden, West Auckland. She retrained as a nurse and midwife at St Helens Hospital. While working at Huia Obstetric Hospital, Ellis-Crowther was inspired to move to Rawene, to work with a doctor who gave a talk on the use of Nembutal, an anaesthetic used in childbirth.
In 1938, Ellis-Crowther wrote an article in feminist magazine Woman To-day, arguing that the use of pain relief during childbirth was a human right.
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This entry incorporates text from “Vera Ellis-Crowther” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.