Mabel Brookes

Dame Mabel Brookes, DBE (15 June 1890 – 30 April 1975) was an Australian community worker, activist, socialite, writer, memoirist and humanitarian.

Born as Mabel Balcombe Emmerton in Raveloe, South Yarra, Victoria in 1890, her best-known service was as president of the Queen Victoria Hospital from 1923–1970, where she presided over the addition of three new wings within ten years.

After being withdrawn from kindergarten by her mother in order to avoid 'developing a bad accent', Mabel described her childhood as a lonely one. Educated by her father and a series of governesses, very early on she developed a fascination with St. Helena's Isle and her own family's history with Napoleon whilst he was in exile.

When Mabel was 14, a young man allegedly told her mother that Mabel was 'dull, plain and reads too much', prompting a dramatic change in her parents' approach to her upbringing. After being presented at the Edwardian court in London, at 18 Mabel was engaged to Norman Brookes, a tennis player, who was the first Australian to win Wimbledon. They married in St Paul's Anglican Cathedral, Melbourne, on 19 April 1911. In 1914, with a baby daughter, she accompanied Brookes on his tennis trips to Europe and the USA. Whilst in the USA Norman Brookes and Tony Wilding won the Davis Cup, which Mabel supposedly used as a rose bowl.

During World War I, in 1915, she joined her husband in Cairo where he was working as commissioner for the Australian Branch of the British Red Cross. Along with other officer's wives she tended to sick and wounded servicemen, as well as assisting in the establishment of a rest home for nurses. Her experiences in Egypt left a deep impression on her, inspiring her war novels Broken Idols (Melville and Mullin, 1917) and Old Desires (Australasian Authors Agency, 1922) which were largely set in Egypt, and sparking a lifelong engagement on matters of public health.

On her husband's posting to Mesopotamia, she returned to Melbourne in 1917. In 1918 she served on the committee of the Royal Children's Hospital, then became president of the Children's Frankston Orthopaedic Hospital, the Anglican Babies' Home and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. She was an original member and a divisional officer of the Girl Guides' Association executive committee, foundation president of the Institute of Almoners and of the Animal Welfare League. She was also a member of the Australian Red Cross Society's federal executive and president of the Ladies' Swimming Association.

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