Phoebe Chapple

Phoebe Chapple MM (31 March 1879 – 24 March 1967) was a South Australian doctor, decorated for her heroic service at the front during World War I.

Phoebe was born in Adelaide, South Australia, the youngest daughter of Frederic Chapple and his wife Elizabeth Sarah Chapple, née Hunter (c. 1845 – 19 October 1930), who left England in 1876 to take up the position of headmaster of Prince Alfred College, a prestigious Methodist school for boys in the inner eastern suburbs of the city.

Phoebe may have received her early education at home, as her name does not appear in newspapers until 1891, from when she was a conspicuously successful student at the Advanced School for Girls, a radical new institution founded by the South Australian government to prepare able girls for entry to the University of Adelaide. She matriculated in 1895 and commenced the Bachelor of Science course in 1896, and was conferred with her BSc in 1898. She went on to study Medicine, and qualified MB and BS in 1904. She served at the Adelaide Hospital as house surgeon in 1905 then in 1906 and 1907 worked with the Sydney Medical Mission, a service founded by Dame Emma Dixson and run by women for women of the poorer areas of the city. She returned to Adelaide late in 1907 and set up in practice at 28 North Terrace, where she still had a practice in 1917. She also had some kind of arrangement with Prince Alfred College. She entered into commercial arrangements with several Friendly Societies: the Victoria Tent of the I. O. Rechabites, and The Federal Benefit Society of South Australia; She conducted first aid courses in conjunction with the Y.W.C.A. and St. John Ambulance Brigade

Phoebe Chapple did a great deal of work of a charitable nature without charge. From around 1910 she was acting as honorary surgeon, later honorary superintendent at the Salvation Army's maternity hospital in Carrington Street then that organization's McBride Maternity Hospital from 1914. Situated in Briar Avenue, Medindie, the building previously known as "The Briars" was built for G. C. Hawker and named for donor Robert J. McBride. She was to work for that hospital until 1929.

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