Laura Forster

Laura Elizabeth Forster (1858–1917) was an Australian medical doctor, surgeon and nurse noted for her service in France, Belgium, Turkey and Russia during World War I.

Forster was born in the Sydney suburb of Ryde in 1858 to William Forster (1818-1882), a landowner, poet, politician and Premier of New South Wales during 1859–1860, and his wife Eliza Jane Wall (1828-1862). Laura was the fifth of six children to William and Eliza Forster. Eliza Wall Forster died in 1862 and William married Maud Julia Edwards (1846-1893). With Maud, William had five children, including three sons who were killed in World War I while with the Australian Imperial Force. Shortly after William Forster's death in 1882, Laura accompanied her stepmother and half sister, Enid, to England. Maud eventually married John Burn Murdoch, of Edinburgh, and a captain in the Royal Engineers. Laura remained in England. On Nov. 1, 1887, she entered Bern University in Switzerland, as a medical student. She graduated in 1894 and was certified to practice medicine in the United Kingdom the following year. At Bern University she studied 12 semesters at the Pathological Institute researching muscle spindle fibers.

Forster graduated from the University of Sydney, Women's College, in about 1879. After completing dual training as both a doctor and a nurse, Forster settled in England and practiced medicine in Oxford. She was also licensed by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Glasgow; Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh; and Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh. In 1900 she was appointed medical officer of the Cutler Boulter Dispensary in Oxford. In 1912, at the outbreak of the First Balkan War, she travelled to Epirus to work as a nurse because women were not permitted to work as physicians at the front. In September 1914 during World War I she began working for the British Red Cross at Belgian Field Hospital in Antwerp. She was the first Australian female doctor to travel to Belgium to assist in the wartime medical effort, at a time women doctors were not allowed to enlist in the Allied Medical Corps. When Belgium was evacuated following devastating bombing by German aircraft, she went to France, where she assisted Belgians who had been wounded in the German bombardment. She then relocated to Russia and volunteered in the surgical department of Petrograd's largest hospital for several months before being employed by a hospital unit financed by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, which funded its operations for the wounded and refugees with donations from Britain's wealthy establishment. She was the first female English/Australian doctor to work in Petrograd.

From there, she travelled with the Russian Red Cross to the Caucasus, where she performed surgical duties, and directed a hospital in Erzurum for a time before returning to Russia. She was then placed in charge of a hospital in Zalishchyky, Galicia.

At Zalishchyky, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies operated the Millicent Fawcett Hospital Units, named for the famed suffragette in England. The Zalishchyky unit was one of five hospitals in the Galicia region. The doctor and nursing staff treated thousands of civilian refugees for typhoid, scarlet fever, ddysentery and for farming accidents involving heavy equipment. In addition to civilians, the staff treated wounded Russian soldiers return from the front just 30 miles way.

At 58 year old, the 20-hour days, constant bombardment and huge influx of the sick and wounded took a toll on Forster as she often looked exhausted and thin. She died on 11 February 1917 in Zalishchyky, from heart failure following a week-long illness with influenza. She was buried in Zalishchyky with Russian rites, which included burial in an open coffin and Russian Orthodox Church icons. Nurses from the hospital that Forster ran placed a homemade Union Jack flag over her body.