The continuing adventures of my honorary aunt Joan ‘The Bone’ Byrne, who left Australia with us in 1967 and went on her own journey while we remained in Hong Kong. Political turmoil meant Joan couldn’t follow her dream and travel to China. But in London she was just in time to meet the woman who inspired that dream. And she was extraordinary.
Joan was keeping a promise to her grandfather, WJ Byrne, when she landed in London in December 1969 – to finally meet his youngest brother Viv, last seen as a four-year-old, weeping on a railway platform in Bristol.
But she was also keeping a promise to herself – to catch up with his cousin Lucretia, known to all as Louie, whose adventures as a doctor in China had set Joan’s feet on their own journey.
Joan and her older cousin Jack, my father, shared a love of stories, and the best stories were told by Joan’s grandfather WJ. Of all the many children in the household, it was Jack and Joan who would sit with him, enthralled, in the setting sun on the front step of the farmhouse at Burrangong in New South Wales as he read aloud to them the letters from his faraway relatives.
Louie’s exotically stamped letters were the ones they loved the most. Lucretia Helena Hastings Billsland Byrne was born in Dublin in 1896 and was one of the first women to graduate in medicine from Trinity College.
Her studies coincided with the unsettled period of World War I and also unrest in Ireland. Before setting out for her morning lectures, Louie said she would look out the window to see which flag was being flown that day so she would know what colour to wear.
Further uncertainty struck close to home in 1916 when Louie’s father, Dr William Henry Byrne died suddenly, leaving the previously comfortable family destitute.
“From letters she wrote to my grandfather it seems Louie bore much of the family responsibility at this time,” Joan said. “In one she says, ‘I don’t know if I shall be able to continue but all the doctors have promised to do their best to get me reduced fees.’”
Soon after she qualified as a doctor, Louie headed east and in 1927 she published a paper on a ‘case of puerperal tetanus’ in the China Medical Journal. She was working as a medical missionary superintendent at the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society in Tangkou, Fujian until she was evacuated in 1936 ahead of the Japanese invasion of China.
She arrived in India in 1937 to continue her work, travelling via California and London which must have been an arduous journey in those days. By 1950 she was back in China.
“It was always a great thrill to get her letters,” Joan said. “Of course we were fascinated by the stamps but I was also thrilled by the stories of her life in China, which sounded hard.
“The people are busy here now getting in the rice harvest. It is the second crop and then the sweet potato crop. Wheat is grown as well, more now than it used to be – and plenty of vegetables, some Chinese and also cabbage, cauliflowers, spinach and some root vegetables. Celery grows well. We never see sheep but plenty of goats and pigs and water buffalo… No horses, only those brought by the soldiers as they pass through and they are generally mountain ponies or mules. There is a good deal of fruit grown so we do not fare badly.
– Louie Byrne, from a letter to her ‘dear cousin Willie’ dated November 8, 1950, CMS Hospital via Foochow, Fukien, China.
“We were told at one time they were experiencing drought in China and had to eat rats. Whether this was true or not, I don’t know – we were often told about starving children in China as an admonishment not to waste good food.
“In one of her letters from 1950 she assured us that the food supply was good. It’s amusing, after my own – much later – Asian experience, that she put such an emphasis on English style food.”
In the same letter Louie mentioned soldiers passing through. Mao’s Communist Party had completed the Long March by then and taken over government in China.
“Family stories tell of Louie’s Chinese co-workers risking their lives to help her escape from China and for the rest of her life she was vigilant about not relating anything which might be used to endanger her Chinese contacts,” Joan said.
“Through her letters, Louie was an important part in the lives of her Australian family. She experienced first-hand major international events of the 20th century – the Irish Rebellion, two world wars, the rise of communism in China, the struggle for Indian Independence, and also the changing nature of British society as residents of its former colonies claimed British residency.
“She kept us in touch with a world far removed from our isolated existence. The absence of materialism in her life and her dedication to the well-being of society regardless of race or position in society were living examples for us.”
In 1969 when Joan finally met the woman who had been such an influence on her, Louie was bedridden following a stroke.
“She could only communicate with guttural sounds or by writing notes, often with someone supporting her hand. But she did communicate to me that she knew who I was. She wrote down the names of my nine siblings and asked me about my experiences in Hong Kong and India.”
According to Irish Women in Medicine c.1889s-1920s by Laura Kelly, women like Louie were encouraged to take their skills to India, China and other countries and work among the poor due to “the growing fears that the medical marketplace was becoming overcrowded”.
Joan said she sometimes wonders whether it was a religious conviction that led Louie into missionary service; a commitment to human values; or whether it was an accepted and available role for an educated single woman of her time.
“Maybe it was all three,” Joan said. “She was nominally Church of Ireland Anglican but wasn’t fussy where she worshipped on Sundays, foregoing her usual church in winter for the cosier premises of the Plymouth Brethren.
“It seems that she did not preach religious beliefs but rather showed her philosophical values through her actions without traces of racism or desire for material gain.”
Joan was still in London when Louie died in October 1970 and attended her funeral. “An interesting practice was that relatives were lined up in order of family closeness to follow the cortege from the church. I was relative number six,” Joan said.
“The wake was also quite different from the Irish Australian wake I was used to. It was held in the lounge room of a missionary society member where we drank tea from delicate porcelain cups. I did so want something alcoholic.”
© Maria Spackman 2018
The latest in a series of articles about my extraordinary honorary aunt, Joan Byrne who left Australia with us in 1967 and travelled alone around Asia before heading to Europe via the trans-Siberian railway. You can read more of the adventures of My Extraordinary Aunt here:
My Extraordinary Aunt: Taking the long way to London – before she joined us in Hong Kong, Joan travelled alone through Asia.
My Extraordinary Aunt: In the shadow of Lion Rock – Joan arrived in Hong Kong in May 1967, where working conditions were about to lead to one of the most turbulent times in its history.
My Extraordinary Aunt: College Days in 1960s Hong Kong – When the school year began in September 1967 Joan started teaching at Wellington College to earn enough money for the next stage of her journey.
My Extraordinary Aunt: The adventure continues – In 1969 Joan left Hong Kong for Japan, before heading for the USSR and the Trans-Siberian railway.
My Extraordinary Aunt: London and a promise kept – Joan fulfils the promise, made as a three-year-old to her grandfather, to meet his youngest brother in his last days.
My Extraordinary Aunt: Joan dives in – working girl blues in swinging sixties London.
With grateful thanks to Joan Byrne and Penny Hunter for their careful preservation and generous sharing of the letters and photographs of their own extraordinary aunt.
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