Hospital Is Memorial

To Pioneer

Missionary’S Wife

npHE late Mrs. Helena Goldie, who -*■ accompanied her husband, the Rev.

John F. Goldjie, to Roviana, New Georgia, BSIP, 50 years ago and was then the first and only white woman in that part of the Protectorate, has her memorial in the Helena Goldie Hospital which was opened some months ago by WPHC, Mr. R. C. S.

Stanley, who was accompanied by Mrs.

Stanley and members of his staff.

The Hospital block comprises four Euro pean buildings and three native buildings, built on a point of land which receives most of the cool breezes. The native buildings are for the dresser boys, for the relatives of the patients, and for a native nurse who is a widow with three small girls.

The medical superintendent, Dr. G. E.

Hoult, is also a qualified dentist, so that a feature of the hospital is a dental surgery, as well as an operating theatre and a dispensary.

About 2,000 natives, all dressed in white, attended the official opening. Steady rain did not deter them from completing their programme of songs, dances and drill.

They danced until it was almost dark, after which there was “Lotu,” with the High Commissioner taking the scripture reading.

The late Mrs. Goldie did valuable work among the native women of the Western Solomons in the first quarter of this century. The new hospital is a fitting memorial to her labours but it is the second to bear her name—the original Helena Goldie Hospital, built before World War 11, was destroyed with all the other buildings of the Methodist Mission during 1942-5, The task of rebuilding the hospital has been slow, but in the meantime much good work has been done by Dr. Hoult and the nursing sisters and native “doctor boys’' associated with the mission.

When Mr. Goldie first arrived in BSI in 1902, to be followed the next year by his bride, he considiered that the natives were being wiped out by dirt and disease.

The re-opening of the Helena Goldie Hospital 50 years after Mrs. Goldie’s arrival in BSI emphasises the great change that has taken place and the consider able amount of medical work done by the wives of missionaries, many of whom

have been qualified nurses.

A.J.S.