Quick Facts
Biography
Sidney Elisabeth Croskery (26 January 1901 – 1990) was an Irish medical doctor, traveller and writer who spent almost twenty-seven years treating illnesses, mainly blindness, in Arabia.
Life
Sidney Elisabeth Croskery was born in Gortgranagh, Killinure, County Tyrone. Her parents were Derry-born James Croskery, an ordained Minister of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, and Mildred Jane Croskery (née Wallace), a medical doctor who had qualified in Edinburgh, though she did not practise.
When she was three years old her father died suddenly (of a duodenal ulcer) and the family had to leave their country house ("Mountjoy") and move to Belfast. She and her elder sister Lilian were educated there and at Princess Gardens School in Edinburgh, where following their mother's example, they went on to study medicine.
From 1927 to 1939 Sidney joined her sister working as a GP in Tunbridge Wells. During this time she became a member of the Society of Friends because she was a pacifist.
In 1939 a fellow-doctor working in Sana'a, in the Yemen, Eleanor Petrie, asked her to take her place for nine months or so while she was on leave. Sidney, glad of a change of scene, accepted the invitation. However, due to the outbreak of war, she was not allowed to return home until April 1945. After the war she returned to Aden to continue her medical work, but, due to a serious attack on a colleague, felt compelled to resign her position. Over the following years, until she left Aden in 1967, she worked in different parts of Arabia, concentrating on the treatment and prevention of blindness. Even after her "official" retirement she spent four gruelling winters touring the wilder parts of the Yemen, treating and operating on trachoma sufferers.
After she finally did retire Sidney returned to live in Belfast, where her married sister and family still resided, to be joined later by Lilian.