Bettina Matraves Collier

This biography has been compiled in 2024 (100 years since Bettina’s entry into medical school) by her great niece Emeritus Professor Sue Pullon, with warm and generous assistance from Bettina’s daughters – Margaret Ritchie, Janet Hamilton and Mary Bliss. There has been a wealth of material to draw on – books, memoirs, photographs, family histories and archival material – as noted in the bibliography. Direct quotes and factual material are referenced. Thanks are due to Alan Roddick and the Hocken Library for permission to reproduce material from Charles Brasch’s literary estate. There is far more that could be said and written about Bettina than what is possible to include.

Sue has chosen here to emphasise not only aspects of Bettina’s medical career, and the influences on it, but also to show how her medical education and philosophy contributed to so many aspects of her rich and long life in serving others as a wonderful parent, supporter, carer, teacher, communicator, mentor and diagnostic advisor.

1929 Graduate

Early background

Bettina Matraves Collier was born on 20th November 1906 in Dunedin New Zealand, the second child of Annie Matraves (nee Jackson) and Edward Ernest Collier. (1)

(Edward) Ernest Collier grew up in Reading, in the United Kingdom, a son of a prominent local family who had made their name in establishing and growing a large and successful brickworks as S&E Collier Ltd. Ernest trained in law. He was said to have first noticed his future wife Annie Jackson as she walked through the streets in a ‘school crocodile’. Smitten, he set about family introductions.

The hard working and prosperous Jackson family lived in nearby Newbury, building up a chain of Jacksons’ department stores. After finishing school, Annie apparently attended the Slade School of Art in London, where she developed her considerable talent and lifelong love of painting. Ernest and Annie eventually married in 1900. Ernest was an asthmatic, and they determined to leave the smog of England for better climes.

They eventually arrived in Dunedin, and lived for a time in Cargill’s Castle, a draughty uncomfortable abode perched above the suburb of St Clair, but with superb views over the beach and beyond. An added attraction was the stunning walk along the cliff tops to Tunnel Beach, rich with interesting natural features. Ernest and Annie’s first child Prudence (Pruie) was born while they lived there in 1904. (2)

Ernest initially worked as a law clerk for lawyer T. K. Sidey, to meet the re-training requirements for a UK-trained lawyer to be able to practice in New Zealand. The two men subsequently became partners as the law firm Sidey & Collier. As Ernest walked down the hill each day from the Castle to catch the tram, he noted the sheltered area along Cliffs Road, and took advantage of a land subdivision, purchasing a half-acre section and having a new house built below Cliffs Rd in 1905. There he and Annie set about establishing a large garden filled with collected plants, many of them New Zealand natives. Edward, Annie and baby Pruie were able to move in by the time Bettina was born in 1906. Their son Hilary was born in 1909.

From her earliest years Bettina was an enquiring and able child, often being read to by her father, and taken on walks to explore the nearby beaches and coves. She excelled at High Street School, gaining a Merit prize in her final year before being admitted to Otago Girls High School (OGHS) in 1919. (3)

She attended OGHS from 1919 – 1923. In the days when prizes and exam successes were reported in the newspapers, she featured almost every year, passing successive exams and writing winning essays as well as being also involved in drama. (4) As she got older, she would often undertake ‘nature’ expeditions with her younger brother Hilary, as well as his friends. Among these boys was a young diffident Charles (Charlie) Brasch, who was to play an important and enduring role in Bettina’s later life and, as revealed in the appendix of this biography, she in his. (5)

The Collier family were committed members of the Dunedin Field Club. They also went on expeditions with various members of the extended Hallenstein, Fels and de Beer families. Conversations about natural history, gardens, literature, philosophy and fossil-hunting abounded. Annie Collier often painted – being “particularly interested in depicting New Zealand’s flowers artistically while retaining botanic accuracy.” (6) “When Annie was absorbed in a picture, Bettina would cook – in a house with no maids it was accepted that the mother and daughters would do the housework.” (7)

Dora de Beer was Bettina’s particular friend; it was an intellectually stimulating world for them both. Bettina found learning exciting, collecting, naming and growing plants, repairing and making books, exploring the outdoors and learning all she could about nature including the theory of evolution.

Bettina was Dux of OGHS in 1923, winning the Board of Governors’ Gold Medal and coming 6th in New Zealand in the Junior University Scholarships. (8)

University and early medical career

It is not entirely clear why Bettina chose to study medicine, but perhaps growing up during World War I (when doctors were in short supply in New Zealand) was an influence. To study medicine she had to take additional physics and maths; at the time not taught to a sufficient level at OGHS. She was coached in Latin (also a pre-requisite for medicine) by the then headmistress, Miss M. King, who provided Bettina much encouragement.

In a letter dated 25th July 1988, Bettina wrote:

When I applied for entrance to the Medical Course in 1923, encouraged by winning a Junior University Scholarship, … it did not occur to me that my sex might tell against me. I cannot think of any of our professors or lecturers throughout the course who showed any difference in the treatment of the male and female students… We were accepted as medical students and treated as such. (9)

Her father Ernest did not entirely approve of Bettina studying medicine, and although quite prepared to have Bettina continue to live comfortably at home, he refused to pay her university fees. “He did not want his daughter exposed to the immodest things doctors had to deal with. An arts degree, or even botany would have been acceptable.” (10) Undeterred, Bettina enrolled, keeping bees and selling the honey to pay her medical school fees. She passed her exams every year, winning successive scholarships and working as an anatomy tutor. (11)

Bettina’s 1988 letter of recollections continued,

Our first year Medical Prelim classes were shared with other faculties and the 2nd and 3rd years Anatomy and Physiology under Prof Gowland and Prof Malcolm were still conducted in the buildings of the main university, and we shared the Student Union in close touch with Science and Arts students. In 1926 the new Medical School in King St was opened, and it was there that I lectured to Massage students on Anatomy for the next two years, a class of some twenty students…

As we worked for our 2nd Professional and began our clinical experience in the hospital across the road the women students of all three final years shared a small common room just around the corner on the left from the King St entrance to the Old Medical School. Thus we came to mix with those girls in the years ahead of us or immediately behind us as the 2nd and 3rd years were now doing Anatomy and Physiology in the new Medical School. This was good from my point of view as I was a shy girl and lived at home up the hill in St Clair and so did not share the life of St Margaret’s or the friendships developed in digs…

I think there were never more than six of us though some dropped back a year perhaps more than once and others joined us from above when they had to repeat a year. When we finally qualified, I think there were 30 men and 6 women though the numbers of men carrying onto graduation had dropped much more steeply than the women since enrolment. (12)

Bettina took a course in geology alongside her medical studies, and still found time to go on expeditions and long tramps into the mountains. As reported in an article about achievements recorded in the visitors’ book at Howden Hut in Fiordland, ‘In1927… Prudence, Bettina and H. Z. Collier, all of Dunedin, spent Christmas Day at the hut’. (13) Daughter Margaret recalls,

They would have used the steamer to travel up Lake Wakatipu from Kingston to Kinloch. With no bridge at the head of the Lake, Kinloch was an isolated, not very productive farm at that time. The Colliers became friends with the family there and hired horses to reach the river they had chosen for their tramp. They carried heavy swags. Their food was rice and jam. Their tent was a length of canvas over a rope supported on sticks that they carried in their hands as they walked. They slept in wool blankets. Their boots were heavy leather with metal studs and their coats, and sou’westers, were made from oiled chapara. The girls wore short skirts. (14)

After graduating in 1929, Bettina’s name was added to the Medical Register of the Dominion of New Zealand in 1930. She became a house surgeon in Wellington 1930 – 1931. It must have been a tough transition into work; on more than one occasion she was called upon to testify in court about a death. (15)

After nearly two years in Wellington, Bettina was keen to further her medical studies and gain a postgraduate qualification, which could only be done by travelling to Britain. She returned to Dunedin briefly before setting off via Wellington, then Sydney, to embark in February 1932 on ‘the Barrabool’ – a cheap uncomfortable steamer. The fare from Dunedin to London was 39 pounds, plus an extra 12 pounds for a four-berth rather than an eight-berth cabin. (16)

She travelled on the same ship as Charles Brasch, who did not enjoy spending time with their fellow passengers but wrote “To Bettina however each of them was an individual, and every individual human being called out her wonderfully responsive care and love.” (17)

“In the UK Bettina had trouble getting the first job she wanted- at the Royal London Hospital, because she was female.” (18) After some months she was appointed to the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow , only to find herself in the infamous ‘Gorbels’ slums of Glasgow – where the work was challenging and poorly paid. (19) There Bettina encountered poverty and hardship well beyond anything she had seen in New Zealand. Margaret and Janet recall,

She admired the camaraderie of the high-spirited children of the Scottish slums. The children would bring each other in for her to attend to. A child who had slipped while climbing a Victorian wrought iron fence … did not even cry when she cleaned his arm and sewed up the huge wound [without anaesthetic]. (20)

Bettina eventually secured what she thought might be a more attractive job in Taunton, Devon, but found the superintendent arrogant and snobbish. “Bettina did not like the Taunton Hospital where the staff bowed and scraped to the patrons; fussed over the wealthy hypochondriac patients and the truly sick poor [who were ‘charity’ patients] were given scant attention.” (21)

However, it was not all work, and Bettina enjoyed visits to friends and relatives as well as the active NZ University-expat community in Britain. She attended especially arranged dinners in London several times. (22)

She also went on postgraduate training courses in neurology in Queen Square, London and was eventually offered further clinical posts there as a result, but after two years in the UK, Bettina returned to New Zealand. She embarked at short notice on the steamship ‘Ruahine’ in November 1932 after her mother Annie was reported as seriously ill. On the boat, Bettina met engineer Archie Hamilton, a New Zealander who had been road building in Kurdistan, becoming engaged to him before they disembarked. Four months later they were married in Dunedin on 7 April 1934. (23)

Marriage, children and World War II

Bettina returned to Britain as a bride, her mother’s health having improved. Known ever after as Mrs A.M. Hamilton, she initially became an Army wife, and had the first of her seven children (Mary Rose, born 5 June 1935) in England, not long before she and Archie were posted to Cairo, where her second child William Donald (Bill) was born on 1 August 1936. (24) “Bettina was a Memsahib in the Army camp with house and cook boys and a nursemaid. She had fancy clothes for the numerous social engagements. The family were moved to Haifa for a short period but then returned to the UK with war imminent.” (25)

Life in pre-war Britain could not have been more different. Archie now worked for the War Department and was often away, promoting his Callendar-Hamilton pre-made, easy-to-erect bridge for Army use, leaving Bettina to run the household with little help and no modern conveniences. Her third child James (Jimmy) was born on 9 April 1938 in Woking, Surrey. He lived only 6 days after developing pyloric stenosis and dying from anaesthesia for attempted surgery. Bettina’s grief was compounded by a serious episode of septicaemia after she tore her finger on a rose bush, predating antibiotics. Janet recalls, “The loss of Jimmy was greater than words can say. They rapidly looked around for a place to call home and bought one that would do temporarily at Badgers Mount near Sevenoaks in Kent [called Oaklea after Archie’s childhood home in Waimate, New Zealand]. Another son Robert Milne was born the following year (15 March 1939).” (26)

Bettina’s old friend Charles Brasch, living in London, visited at times, and his memoirs and journals provide a valuable insight into this period of Bettina’s life. He credited Bettina with considerable mental and physical fortitude as war loomed, although she probably had little choice,

…Insecurity was affecting all of us. No, not all… [Some] were so deeply rooted in life that it would bear them on through almost any imaginable upheaval… Bettina Hamilton was one of these. She now had three children, born in five years, who commanded her whole life. I was appalled that she had to spend so much of her time in kitchen and laundry, but in everything she did her love was at work, and the children were always with her or near her. (27)

Britain entered World War II on 1 September 1939. Archie was busier than ever working with the Army as a civilian consultant engineer. Transport was difficult and even basic food increasingly difficult to obtain. Bettina developed a large vegetable garden and kept chickens, caring for the children as well as providing ‘in kind’ medical advice to many of her neighbours.

In Kent the family were right in the flight path of enemy bombers heading for London; during the Blitz the Battle of Britain literally raged above them. Many nights were spent with the children in an underground air-raid shelter – cold, damp and frightening.

Bettina was now pregnant again, and Archie was being called to India for war work. The family were in Newbury in October 1940, hoping to take a ship from Liverpool back to New Zealand that would then take Archie on to India. Charlie Brasch came to visit,

She came here from Badgers Mount nearly a fortnight ago: continual air battles there: German planes turned back by the London AA barrage were met by British fighters; many bombs fell quite near, they slept in the trench & had meals beside it, ready to dive in. Bettina got here looking worn out. (28)

But departure it was not to be. At the last minute, with Archie already aboard, the captain refused to take women and children, saying it would be too dangerous. Archie persuaded the pilot boat to return him to shore. Having hastily found a boarding house for Bettina and the children, he then had to leave again for India. Bettina’s difficulties were considerable and her pregnancy far advanced. Charles Brasch, in making a visit to Southport to support her, found,

Bettina has no help at all & is busy without rest from morning to night when she goes very early to bed The children are good & play by themselves… I have learned here the importance of leaving young children alone to discover things for themselves & invent their own play. These children seem never to be bored or at a loss when by themselves, & so they will be resourceful, I expect, all their lives. (29)

Margaret Ann was born on the 20th of March 1941, fortunately an easy birth and a healthy daughter. Four months later Bettina was able to return with the children to Oaklea, and as far as possible, settle back into the life and community she had there. The summer of 1941 saw Bettina regain her strength, and often take the children out walking, sometimes taking the hungry chickens to glean grain from nearby fields.

Archie returned safely from India in 1942, and as well as continuing to work as a consulting engineer with the Army, was commandeered into the Home Guard. Their home gradually became a repository for ever-increasing numbers of guns and live ammunition, both inside and out; Bettina becoming increasingly unhappy. Despite all this, and the by now severe food shortages in Britain, Bettina had another daughter Janet Marion Isobel (16 August 1943). Food parcels arrived intermittently from her family back in New Zealand, along with the sad news that her mother Annie had died.

Bettina took the children to Scotland later in 1944. ‘But she found Rosyth Docks were being bombed just across the Firth of Forth which seemed just as dangerous as being in Kent. So back they went to Oaklea and there they stayed, using air raid shelters and dugouts’. (30)

In his memoirs, son Robert refers to an old letter from his mother,

for those first weeks of doodle bugs before we went to Scotland, sleeping Dad, Mary and Bill in Uncle Herbert’s [dugout], you and Margaret in the one by the shed at the back and me and baby Janet at its mouth ready to move in with you if need be (31)

1944 had seen renewed bombing over much of Britain, with Kent again severely affected. Charles Brasch, visiting Bettina and Archie at Oaklea, recalled,

An air raid…the whole angry sky was on fire … The children were brought downstairs & put in a wooden shelter in the dining room; …there were reddish bursts of light where bombs exploded, & we heard several come down & ducked into the back doorway where we felt cold waves of air from the blast…Bettina was very quiet & calm, but I could feel that she was strained & flushed. (32)

The post-war years

World War II was at last over the following year, but in post-war Britain, life was still difficult. Severe food rationing was made just manageable by Bettina’s continued successful vegetable gardening, preserving and jam making, her chickens, her bee keeping and their frugal often self-sufficient life.

Even though Archie was working as a prestigious consulting engineer, he in fact earned little and the family were financially poor. During and immediately following the war – it was tough times. Bettina got the small, universal, child support payment from the State and used it for buying shoes for the children. Most of the children’s clothes were hand- me-downs, altered and mended. Partly this was due to the wartime shortage of fabric. Bettina altered, patched and darned children’s and adults’ clothes. (33)

Their last child, Alexander (Lecko) was born in 1948. Being younger than the others, he was a great joy to Bettina as the older children went off to high school. She took him to the local school on a bike (she did not drive), realising he needed more contact with other children.

The war had made home schooling a necessity for the older children at times, and Bettina carried this on, ultimately preparing them for high school. She taught them unaided by any sort of teacher training and although there was a basic supplied curriculum, it would have been her own considerable knowledge of literature, poetry, maths, science and biology that she brought to their education.

From the earliest ages, Bettina would help the children build models, treehouses, and sleep-outs, and this, augmented by engineering and electrical experimentation at home by Archie, provided endless fascination and occupation.

By today’s standards, it was a remarkable ‘free enquiry’ approach to child-rearing in general and education in particular. Both Bettina and Archie placed great value on excellent education and wide-ranging intellectual endeavour. Above all, the children were encouraged to take responsibility for their own actions. Bettina’s oldest daughter Mary, is recorded in her brother Bill’s biography as noting,

When [Bill] was quite young, he had been happily climbing a tree in the garden, getting close to the top. But looking down he got scared and couldn’t see how he could get down. He shouted to his mother [Bettina] to come and help him. His mother heard him and came, but then just sat down quietly at the foot of the tree, knitting, waiting for Bill to come down. After some time (hours!) he was able to overcome his fear and bring himself down. (34)

Accidents were often treated in a similar way. Robert recalls,

We were each encouraged to have our own gardens, and one day I was digging in mine for worms and Janet was collecting them up. She reached over for one as my fork came down and went right through the palm of her hand. I clasped the wound and rushed her back to the house, but my mother [Bettina] took it all quite calmly, saying that there were no broken bones and it would all heal up all right despite the prong of the fork having gone right through to the other side of the hand. (35)

Eldest daughter Mary recalls,

[Bettina] kept all her surgical instruments and regularly sewed up us when needed, along with injured animals: chickens and cats. She even amputated a cat’s tail when it had developed cancer in it, while I held a sieve filled with cotton wool impregnated with ether over its nose. (36)

Sometimes however, things went rather too far, and if it were not for Bettina’s medical experience and quick thinking, 12-year-old Bill would certainly have lost his life when he literally blew himself up. Mixing chemicals from his father’s shed – red phosphorous, aluminium powder and sodium chlorate (weedkiller) packed in an old brass cartridge – the self-detonating combination ripped a hole in his chest and badly injured his hand. Robert described watching his mother’s immediate actions,

…she (Bettina) laid him out full length on the floor with more foamy blood coming from his mouth. His breathing was gurgling and bubbling and growing fainter. Dad picked up the telephone “Phone Farnborough hospital ask for Dr Copson” said my mother. She rushed off upstairs to get her medical things and moments later was applying bandage after bandage all tightly applied until his [bleeding] hand looked like a football…my mother took the phone “his lungs are badly punctured, and he is losing a lot of blood from his lungs and his hand. Please have plenty of blood ready and oxygen.” (37)

After surgery and weeks in hospital, Bill recovered, but lost part of two fingers and had to wear a plate sewn into his rugby jersey to protect the place where pieces of brass remained in his chest. That he was allowed, indeed encouraged to return to the rugby field was remarkable, but just as important was the application of new plastic surgery techniques that had been developed during the war. With great care, pioneering plastic surgeons were able to rebuild Bill a reasonably functional hand, so critical to his later career.

Bettina’s children in the world

Tragedy struck for Bettina and Archie in 1967. Their beloved youngest son Lecko was only a few weeks into his first year of engineering at the University of Aberdeen when, roped-up with his university club companion, they fell and died climbing on the high and windy granite cliffs of Longhaven, Aberdeenshire.

Daughter Margaret recalls, “this was devastating for Bettina. She took some small comfort from the poem Charles Brasch wrote [In One Dance – for John Alexander Hamilton 1948-67].” (38) She was a pragmatist and knew that death could not be reversed. “He [Lecko] had been a gift and left treasured memories…” (39) Janet, Lecko’s closest sibling, adds, “These things can’t be coped with in any meaningful sense; there is just plodding on, bearing the everlasting burden of his absence.” (40)

Bettina had good reason to be proud of all her children. Both Mary and Janet did medicine, and unlike Bettina, were able to have fulfilling medical careers as well as families.

Inquiry-based learning was still the modus operandi at Oaklea, as Mary recalled when she was studying medicine in the 1950s. ECGs for diagnosing heart problems were being developed. [Archie] was very interested in this; “He used to connect us up with dinner forks soaked in salt solution on our wrists to enable us to watch our heart rhythms on a discarded TV screen, to our great excitement.” (41)

Mary (1935 – present) became a consultant geriatrician, working at St Bartholomew’s and Hackney Hospitals, London for many years. Her ongoing research led to the development of alternating pressure mattresses – designed to prevent bedsores in disabled and frail patients – still in use in Britain and elsewhere today. Her older son William Bliss is a paediatric orthopaedic surgeon.

Janet (1943 – present) has been a much-loved general practitioner in Hampshire, UK for most of her medical career. Two of her three sons (Richard and Gordon Hamilton) studied medicine – Gordon working in biotech, and Richard awarded a degree in medicine posthumously, after losing his life in a kayaking accident.

Margaret (1941 – present) became a pasture scientist, studying first in Reading, United Kingdom. She moved permanently to New Zealand in 1964 to undertake her PhD in agricultural science at Massey University. She has been able to fit her varied career, including a stint in Bhutan and later studies in anthropology and ethno-biology, around children and grandchildren. Margaret’s daughter Elizabeth Ritchie is a general surgeon in Hawkes Bay.

Meanwhile Robert (1939-2019), after becoming a mining engineer and having extraordinary adventures travelling the world, also settled in New Zealand. Among many other high-risk projects, he was a surveyor on the Manapouri Hydro Scheme in New Zealand in 1964 in charge of finding the route for the Wilmot Pass Road between Lake Manapouri and Doubtful Sound. (42) There he miraculously survived a near-drowning to successfully accomplish the project, later working in Sarawak where he married and had his family. He went on to complete many other successful engineering endeavours in Malaysia and elsewhere. (43)

When Margaret and Robert respectively moved to New Zealand, Bettina was sad but pleased even though it was a long way away – it was “her home and her place” after all. Margaret recalls, “…although [Bettina’s] much-loved parents and brother died in the 1940s, her sister [Pruie] lived in [Timaru] New Zealand with her husband and three boys. One of these [David Anderson] also became a doctor specialising in psychiatry.” (44)

Bettina and Archie’s eldest son Bill (1936-2000) became one of the pre-eminent evolutionary biologists of the twentieth century. In his original studies of the inheritance of altruism, a problem that had worried Charles Darwin, Bill was the first to establish the concept behind The Selfish Gene, described in Richard Dawkin’s famous book of the same name. (45) As not only a biologist but also a gifted mathematician, Bill was able to demonstrate mathematical proof of his ground-breaking concepts. He was the winner of numerous honours, prizes and medals and became the Royal Society Professor of Theoretical Biology at New College, Oxford.

As Dawkins, in giving a eulogy for Bill at his memorial service at New College Oxford 1 July 2000, described,

The two towering achievements for which Hamilton is best known were the genetic theory of kinship and the parasite theory of sex…[but] his absent-mindedness was legendary. His duties [as Professor] at Oxford required him to give only one undergraduate lecture per year, and he usually forgot to give that. (46)

Bettina had recognised Bill’s extraordinary single-mindedness and obsession with the natural world from a young age. She took him as a small boy to see Darwin’s house and encouraged him to roam the countryside collecting butterflies, playing a major role in fostering his knowledge, educating his mind, and supporting his spirit of endless enquiry. She was quietly thrilled and hugely satisfied when Bill worked out Hamilton’s Rule (as the formula k>1/r) and became internationally recognised in his field of evolution. (47)

Later life

Very much in the spirit of altruistic kinship made famous by Bill, Bettina was also intensely interested in her wider family, including the many relatives in New Zealand. She was a marvellous and gifted correspondent, a consummate family communicator who kept up numerous connections with several generations of descendants.

She cared little for ‘society’, rarely travelling beyond her immediate neighbourhood, but welcoming all who came to visit and stay. Bill’s biographer Ullica Segerstrale later wrote,

One of the most striking features about her…was her extreme modesty when it came to herself. Bettina was seemingly oblivious to fashion, typically wearing the same dress continuously. It was as if she actively wanted to indicate that these things were not important. (48)

Bettina’s influence extended via visits from and letters to her grandchildren, her cousins, her great nieces and nephews and many more. Bettina encouraged ambitious careers, but above all, wide-ranging education and continued curiosity. Her medical legacy through her descendants is impressive; all three of Bettina’s daughters have children who have studied and practiced medicine, giving some weight to the theory of maternal influence on education. Two of Bettina’s nephews and four great nieces and nephews have also followed in her medical footsteps.

Bettina continued to care for family and community all her life. “After her children left home, Bettina became the local health advisor and diagnostician. Badgers Mount people and friends came visiting with their health problems.”(49)

Bettina’s husband Archie, to whom she was devoted for over 40 years, died in 1974. Even after that major loss, Bettina still went beyond the call of duty to provide for numerous neighbours through terminal illness, dementia and other misfortunes. She had many visits from younger family members, including many from New Zealand relatives, often having them to stay despite her husband’s and later her childrens’ concern that she was wearing herself out.

Bettina continued to help those who came to her, as well as keeping up her large and productive garden, right up until a few weeks before she died in 1996. At age 89, faced with a bowel obstruction secondary to cancer, she refused all surgery, and died peacefully in the home she had lived in for over fifty years.

Reflecting on Bettina’s life

Although Bettina gave up practicing medicine when she married, she did not cease to be a doctor, and since her family never exhausted her gift of love and compassion, she naturally came to doctor and to mother a succession of the poor, the sick, the elderly who lived nearby, and to delight in their children – all children flocked to her. (50)

Bettina Collier lived an extraordinary life, shaped by some of the most tumultuous events of the twentieth century. She was the product of a time of unprecedented flowering of intellectual excitement and discovery, particularly for women, and particularly in New Zealand, (51) but at the same time, was constrained by the mores of a deeply gendered society, particularly when it came to combining (or not) a family with a medical career.

Not a risktaker by nature herself, she tolerated and indeed often condoned the endless adventure-seeking that her husband and all her sons seemed to live by. When their extreme curiosity and subsequent actions ended in repeated near-death experiences or indeed major tragedy, she grieved and endured with extraordinary strength and equanimity.

That she was a gifted, beautiful and able young woman was beyond doubt. That she entirely gave up a promising career in medicine and innovation to devote herself to her husband and children might be hard to understand from a modern perspective. But she was deeply influenced by the natural world, the ‘natural order of things’, and even before the war, once married, determined to have as many children as possible. She also saw raising those children well as fundamental to her values; a belief that was to be tested to the limit in wartime England, drawing heavily on her many practical and domestic skills. As Bettina herself wrote in her letter of recollections in later life,

I was married four years after qualifying and gave up all thoughts of a medical career until the youngest of the children I hoped to have should be of school age. Seven children, a World War, and 20 years later, the advances in medicine are so terrific that I made no attempt to return to my profession. Besides, teenage children need as much or more attention as pre-school ones! (52)

Author’s note

Back here in New Zealand, when my own father was doing his best to discourage me from doing medicine in the early 1970s, he received a stern note from Aunt Bettina, who wrote in firm support of my intention. My father’s objections were not heard again. Later however, when my father was enthusiastically encouraging one of my brothers to apply for medical school, Aunt Bettina wrote again, saying in effect that “in our family the girls do medicine, but really, it’s better if boys do engineering.”

Sue Pullon, 2024

Appendix:

Excerpt from ‘Lines from Black Head’ 1957 by Charles Brasch, dedicated to Bettina Hamilton:

Between the Castle and the Head
Our beat was then, and you seemed bred
To bare height, wind-stream, ocean waste,
Knew every secretive plant that laced
The strong grass, nest of every bird,
And the sea’s lightest riddling word;
The breath of the wide day was yours,
And you had knowledge of the laws
That link the soul to every cell
Of being; all things wished you well.

Bibliography

1. Births, Deaths, and Marriages [NZ] Online 1906: https://www.bdmonline.dia.govt.nz/
2. Ritchie M., interview by Sue Pullon with Margaret Ritchie 23.7.2024
3. Otago Daily Times (ODT), “School Prize Lists,” Issue 17562, 1 March 1919, p.5. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers; Otago Girls’ High School (OGHS) Archives. Admissions register, Entry 31.1.19.
4. Evening Star, “Navy League Essays,” Issue 17836, 6 December 1921, p.8. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers; OGHS Magazine Vol XIII, December 1922.
5. Brasch, C. “Lines from Black Head,” in The Estate, Collected Poems 1957. In: Roddick, A (ed). Collected Poems Charles Brasch. Oxford University Press, 1984. p. 55.
6. Brasch, C. Indirections. A memoir 1909 – 1947. Oxford University Press, 1980; Hamilton J., personal communication, 2024.
7. Ritchie, M., personal communication 2024.
8. Otago Daily Times (ODT) “School Break-Ups,” Issue 19045, 15 December 1923, p.15; Otago Daily Times, “University Examinations,” Issue 19072, 18 January 1924, p.4. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers;  Otago Girls’ High School (OGHS) Archives. Dux Board 1923.
9. Hamilton, J. “Letter written by my mother Bettina, recalling her time as a medical student and doctor,” dated 25 July 1988.
10. Ritchie, M., personal communication, 2024.
11. Evening Star, “University Examinations,” Issue 18815, 13 Dec 1924; Evening Star, “Medical Examinations,” Issue 19736, 10 December 1927, p.22; Otago Daily Times, “Examination Results,” Issue 1977, 20 December 1926, p.3; https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers.
12. Hamilton, J., 25 July 1988.
13. Southland Times, “Homer Hut Some Records of Achievements,” Issue 22282, 24.3.1934, p.11. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers.
14. Ritchie, M., personal communication 2024.
15. The Dominion, “Medical Registration,” Volume 23, Issue 144, 14 March 1930, p.10; The Dominion, “Young Man’s Death,” Volume 24, Issue 286, 29 August 1931, p.5. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers.
16. Evening Star, “Personal,” Issue 21024, 11 February 1932, p.9. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers; Brasch, 1980, p.189.
17. Brasch, 1980, p.189.
18. Hamilton, J., personal communication, 2024.
19. Evening Star, “Personal,” Issue 21142, 30 June 1932, p.9. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers.
20. Ritchie, M., personal communication, 2024; Hamilton, J., personal communication, 2024.
21. Ritchie, M., personal communication 2024.
22. Christchurch Star N.Z., “Graduates,” Issue 649, 30 December 1932, p.8. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers.
23. Christchurch Star, “Weddings,” Issue 20275, 9 April 1934, p.9.
24. Ritchie, M., personal communication, 2024.
25. Ritchie, M., personal communication, 2024.
26. Hamilton, J., personal communication, 2024.
27. Brasch, 1980, p. 341.
28. Brasch C, “Journals 1938-1945,” transcribed by Margaret Scott. Otago University Press, Dunedin 2013, p. 181.
29. Brasch, 2013, p. 202.
30. Ritchie, M., personal communication, 2024.
31. Hamilton RM., RMH Life Stories – the memoirs of Robert Milne Hamilton Part One – from Birth to Graduation as a Mining Engineer. Robert Hamilton and Janet Hamilton UK, 2017.
32. Brasch, 2013, p. 455.
33. Ritchie, M., personal communication, 2024.
34. Segerstrale, U., Nature’s Oracle: The Life and Work of W.D. Hamilton. Oxford University Press, 2013. p. 383.
35. Hamilton, RM., 2017, p.68.
36. Bliss, M., personal communication, 2024.
37. Hamilton, RM., 2017, p. 132.
38. Brasch, C., “In One Dance – for John Alexander Hamilton 1948-67”, in Not Far Off, Collected Poems (to Bettina Hamilton). In: Roddick, A (ed). Collected Poems Charles Brasch. Oxford University Press, 1984. p. 153.
39. Ritchie, M., personal communication, 2024.
40. Hamilton, J., personal communication, 2024.
41. Stace, M. “Archie and Bettina (nee Collier) Hamilton – As seen by Charles Brasch.” Unpublished notes 2014.
42. Hamilton RM., RMH Life Stories – the memoirs of Robert Milne Hamilton Part Two – narrative of a mining engineer. Janet Hamilton and the estate of Robert Hamilton, 2019, pp. 48-97.
43. Hamilton RM. RMH Life Stories, 2019.
44. Ritchie, M., personal communication, 2024.
45. Bliss, M., “The life and times of Bill Hamilton,” Address to the Shoreham Historical Society, 17 February 2012.
46. Dawkins R., “Eulogy for W.D Hamilton given at New College Oxford 1 July 2000”. Reprinted In: Menon, L (ed). A Devil’s Chaplain – Selected Essays by Richard Dawkins. Weidenfeld & Nicolson London 2003.
47. Hamilton W.D., “The genetical evolution of social behaviour,” Journal of Theoretical Biology, 1964: 7; 1-16. Reprinted in Hamilton, W.D., Narrow Roads of Gene Land – The collected papers of W.D. Hamilton. Volume 1 – Evolution of Social behaviour. WH Freeman at MacMillan Press Ltd, Basingstoke UK 1996.
48. Segerstrale, 2013, p. 10.
49. Ritchie, M., personal communication 2024.
50. Brasch, 1980, pp. 250-2.
51. Brookes B & Page D. (eds) Communities of Women. Historical Perspectives. University of Otago Press 2002. p. 11.
52. Hamilton, J., 25 July 1988.