Retirement of Sister Josephine

Sister Josephine Crawford retired from her role as archivist at the Mater Heritage and Archives Centre after 20 years of service with the centre. Sr Josephine has shared a long history with the Mater that extends over 60 years back to 1946.

Born in 1922, Sr Josephine grew up in Gympie. After her first profession as a Sister of Mercy, she came to Mater in 1946 to undertake nurse training. Known as Sr Bernard Mary, she worked as a theatre nurse in Mater Private Hospital during the 1950s. She studied for a year in Sydney for her midwifery qualifications and returned to Mater in 1961 as one of the first staff in the Mater Mothers’ Hospital.

Sr Josephine transferred back to the Mater Private Hospital in 1973 and became its Administrator in 1980. Over the seven years she performed the role of administrator, Sr Josephine oversaw great change in the management of the hospital, and for the first time the Mater Private Hospital achieved accreditation with the Australian Council of Health Care Standards.

She retired from the Private Hospital in 1987 and for the next 20 years worked as the Mater Archivist after Pat Maguire, the Mater Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at the time, asked Sr Josephine to establish hospital archives.

She sat in a small office with a desk in the Medical School, and set to work on the three filing cabinets containing correspondence, photographs and newspaper clippings, as well as many dusty boxes containing annual reports and other publications. Once the archives were established and became known, other items started to come out of the woodwork—over the years the Sisters and hospital staff had collected ‘items of interest’—and these poured in.

In 1993, the new Mater Private Hospital was completed and space became available in one of the old wards. The space had great historical significance as it was used as part of the convent when the hospital was first built in 1910. It was converted into a ward in 1927 when the new convent was built.

The transfer to the new Private Hospital was a hectic time for Sr Josephine, as she gathered as many heritage items as she could before they disappeared. Shelves and display cases were built and finally the Mater Archives and Heritage Centre was formally opened in 1995 where it currently resides on level three of Aubigny Place.

The Archives and Heritage Centre displays the development of the Mater Hospitals from the first hospital in 1906 to the seven hospitals that make up Mater Health Services today. Photos depict the buildings, Sisters of Mercy, doctors and nurses who have worked at Mater for the past 100 years.

In 2007, upon Sr Josephine’s retirement, Jackie Chamberlin commenced as Archives Coordinator—the first lay person in the role.