Over 40,000 Londoners died in the bombing ‘blitz’ of World War II. Australian physiotherapist Barbara Thomas, aged 32, was amongst the first and her tragic death prematurely curtailed a remarkable career.
Barbara Mortimer Thomas was the daughter of Nehemiah James Thomas and Jane Emily Nora Clapcott. She was born in 1908, the same year the electric tramline reached her home of Chatswood, a Northern suburb of Sydney, Australia. It was a place of dairy farms, orchards and factories, and likely an idyllic environment for a child to grow up in.
Barbara Thomas School Photo
Barbara attended the Presbyterian Ladies’ College nearby at Pymble from 1919 to 1924. She excelled at school; becoming a prefect, the Dux, and member of the Athletics, Netball and Hockey Clubs.
Barbara graduated in Arts at Sydney University and was in her second year of medical training in 1930 when she was selected to represent Australia for an International hockey tour of South Africa, Europe and Great Britain. At the conclusion of the tour Barbara opted to remain in London and enter St Thomas Hospital as a massage (physiotherapy) student.
Barbara graduated in 1933 as head of the list for anatomy and seventh in aggregate across England. She was invited to join the staff of St Thomas’ hospital in the physiotherapeutic department. With her interest in exercise she quickly jumped at the chance to join the head of department, Minnie Randell, in an innovative pre-natal exercise and education project that lead to the birth of women’s health physiotherapy. Barbara lectured and demonstrated the work, and collaborated with Randell to write the book, “Training for Motherhood”.
“She had a radiant and sunny disposition, and a sense of humour, which was useful to her as a teacher” (Kelly, 1955)
In 1937 Barbara returned to Sydney for a six months, during which she gave her services voluntarily to the Department of Public Health and produced a sound film for the department with Mollie Moslie, a Sydney masseuse who had also trained at St Thomas’s. On her return to England Barbara was a demonstrator in another film titled “Training for Childbirth and After” using the exercises illustrated in the book. Barbara’s physical skills are evident in the film and her movements have been contemporaneously described as “beautiful, flawless demonstrations”(Hoffman, 2016). The author reports being “..amazed by the soft, calm, relaxing and feminine atmosphere and how the familiar [Pilates-type] exercises were taught and performed so accurately and harmoniously”.
An invitation was received to take the pre-natal training concept to America, but it was not to occur. On 10 September 1940 Barbara was killed during the first “Battle of Britain” air raids when the St Thomas’ Hospital was bombed by the German Luftwaffe (Deacon, 1966). Four physiotherapists and two nurses were killed when a bomb demolished the three floors of the nurses home at 2.30am (Cockett, 1990).
Five of Barbara’s colleagues were buried in the rubble by the falling masonry and all of them perished at the scene, but Barbara was trapped alive. The following report from the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper relays her harrowing experience,
A steel girder lay across her chest and only her head and shoulders could be seen. The floor supporting her bed appeared likely to collapse at any moment. Rescuers began to build around her a steel scaffolding, which rose 40ft. Others made a hole beneath the bed and cut away its legs.
Thomas stretched our her free arm several times for injections of morphia. A hole was made in a nearby wall so the tea could be given to her. At 6pm she was moved up to the hole in the wall and had been lifted half-way through when a [second] raid began. Minutes away from rescue, Thomas died while doctors waited below to treat her.
Despite being seriously injured and imprisoned in the ruins for sixteen hours, Barbara’s cheerfulness and sense of humour stood her in good stead as she joked with her rescuers (Kelly, 1955). She gave such an example of courage to those in London that her story was specifically told in the 1941 book “Carry on London” by Ritchie Calder.
Barbara Mortimer Thomas is buried in Lambeth Cemetery, London.
Extraordinary in both her short life and her long death Barbara, is recognised in a bronze relief memorial plaque at St Thomas’ Hospital. To honour the four masseuses killed, the Hospital also created an educational bursary for dominion physiotherapists in Barbara’s name. The Australian Physiotherapy Association created a memorial lecture in Barbara’s name. And at her Pymble school, a memorial plaque was placed along the Colonnade.
References:
Cockett, F. (1990). The bombing of St Thomas’s. British Medical Journal, 301(6766), 1464-1466.
Deacon, OW. (1966). Sporting Injuries. Australian Journal of Physiotherapy, 12(1), 7-13.
Evans, EP. (1955). The history of the New South Wales branch of the Australian Physiotherapy Association: formerly the Australasian Massage Association. Australian Journal of Physiotherapy, 1(2), 76-78.
Hoffman, J. (2016). On writing “The Origins of Western Mind-Body Exercise Methods”. On the Pilates Intel website. Accessed online at https://www.pilatesintel.com/2016/05/origins-of-western-mind-body-exercise-methods-jonathan-hoff/ on 6 January 2024.
Kelly, M, (1955). Should arthritic patients become crippled. Australian Journal of Physiotherapy, 1(2), 69-76.
Thank you for this most interesting article. I recall Aura Forster telling me that she was a recipient of the Barbara Mortimer Thomas Bursary which enabled her to work and study at St Thomas’ Hospital after World War 2.