Dr Charles Clubbe – An Early Paediatrician
(The photo above is of a Doctor - not Dr Clubbe - examining children at SDN Paddington in 1962.)
Dr Charles Clubbe was one of several doctors instrumental in the founding of Sydney Day Nurseries. He had a life-long interest in paediatrics.
The founding of the Sydney Day Nursery Association (SDN) in 1905 was truly remarkable, especially considering it went against the grain of the times.
For example, in the previous decade the NSW government decided against instituting public kindergartens for budgetary and ideological reasons.
Another example is the position of women at the time many of whom were simply excluded from professions. This being the case, the women founders of SDN relied on many sympathetic professional men to assist with the foundation and administration of the organisation before the times caught up with them.
One of these sympathetic men was Dr Charles Clubbe. He was a witness at the Royal Commission on the Decline of the Birth-Rate and on the Mortality of Infants in New South Wales in 1904. Dr Clubbe told the Commission that ‘It would be well to establish a creche in connection with all large factories’.
In 1922 Dr Clubbe became the Senior Consulting Honorary Medical Officer of SDN. He quickly took his role public and was featured in a piece titled “Day Nurseries. Many More Needed. Dr Clubbe’s Appeal” in the 1 September 1922 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald.
The article quoted Dr Clubbe’s address at SDN’s 1922 annual general meeting where he lamented the small number of day nurseries in Sydney. These amounted to SDN’s centres at Woolloomooloo, Forest Lodge and Surry Hills. He said many more were needed and compared the number with the 109 day nurseries in New York, 27 in Paris and “20 or more in Berlin”. He also claimed there were 137 throughout England and Wales.
He went on to say that at SDN centres, “cases are turned away every day owing to the inadequate accommodation. It is a disgraceful state of affairs, and we must furnish more such nurseries as near factories and other working places as possible”.
Dr Clubbe was born in Hughenden, Buckinghamshire, England in 1854 and was admitted to the Royal College of Surgeons, England, in 1876. After serving in the Zulu War, he was appointed chief resident medical officer to the (Royal) Manchester Children's Hospital, where his lifelong interest in paediatrics began
He came to Sydney in 1883 because of a ‘chest complaint’ and set up a general practice in Sydney. He became well known for his knowledge and skill in paediatric medicine and his posts included presiding over the board of management of the Royal Alexandra Hospital in 1904-32, chair of the Baby Clinics, Pre-maternity and Home Nursing Board in 1914 and then as president of the Royal Society for the Welfare of Mothers and Babies. He was a major pioneer of baby health centres and the first Tresillian mothercraft homes.
It is recorded that when he died in 1932, still working as Senior Consulting Honorary Medical Officer of SDN, the “committee members stood in silence as Lady MacCallum paid tribute to a life devoted to the care of the nurseries and to the welfare of the community generally”.
