In July 2026, family researcher Juliana Smithells contacted the Online Cenotaph team about her great-great-aunt, Dr Ada McLaren (née Wilkinson). When we met Juliana to discuss sharing Ada’s story in an article, the extent of her research and the remarkable course of Ada’s life soon became clear.

Ada was one of a small number of New Zealand women doctors who served during World War I, including in Serbia. At the time Juliana began her research, Ada did not have an Online Cenotaph record. The database remains a work in progress, and gaps can occur, particularly for New Zealanders who served with overseas organisations or Forces. Juliana’s research enabled us to create a record for Ada and bring greater attention to her story.

This article is an abridged version of Juliana’s biography of Ada and the wider Wilkinson family. The full biography is linked below.

Early life and education

Ada Wilkinson was born in Southbridge, Canterbury, on 9 February 1869. She was the eighth of ten children born to Elizabeth (nee Reeve, 1833–1880) and Thomas Walker Wilkinson (1824–1902), who married in Christchurch, in 1855. The family lived for a time at Southbridge, where Ada and her sister Kate attended private school. They later moved to a farm in Higham, west of Chertsey.

Ada was a high academic achiever from an early age, and prize lists from her time attending Bingslands Side School (later Richmond School) record her receiving first prize for Standard I in 1881.

With no secondary school near the family farm, Ada lived first with her older brothers in Christchurch and later in Dunedin while attending Otago Girls’ High School. Her brothers, James, known as Jim, and Edmund, known as Ted  strongly supported higher education. Both studied science at Canterbury College and later taught at a tertiary level.

When Jim’s ill health forced the family to move back to Christchurch, Ada enrolled at Christchurch Girl’s High School. After completing her secondary education, she began a Bachelor of Arts at Canterbury University. At the time, this was the only degree offered by the college, although students could pursue a strong concentration in the sciences.

Dress Reform

The Wilkinson family’s commitment to education was closely connected with their progressive political views. Ada’s brother Jim and his partner, Kate Walker, were active in the women’s suffrage and dress reform movements.

New Zealand women gained the right to vote in parliamentary elections in 1893, but women continued to face restrictions in many other areas of life. Dress reform advocates argued that heavy and restrictive clothing limited women’s health, movement and participation in public life.

In their 1893 pamphlet, Notes on Dress Reform and What It Implies, Kate and Jim argued that restrictive clothing prevented physically active schoolgirls from developing the strength and freedom enjoyed by boys. ¹

Jim and Kate attracted public attention when they married in Christchurch on 13 January 1894 in what is widely described as New Zealand’s first dress reform wedding.² Juliana and other descendants understand that Ada and her siblings also supported the movement, although little documentary evidence of Ada’s direct involvement survives.

Medical studies in Edinburgh

In the early 1890s, Ada and her older sister Kate each received a bequest from their aunt Eliza Thompson (née Wilkinson), their father’s sister, who lived in Leicestershire, England. Ada had a strong interest in science, but no one in the family had previously trained in medicine, either in New Zealand or overseas. Limited family finances would also have made medical study difficult. The bequest opened new possibilities for Ada and, with encouragement from her family and professors at Canterbury College, she left New Zealand for England in 1891.

In 1896, the University of Edinburgh formally admitted women to its medical school for the first time. Ada began her medical studies there in August or September that year and paid to continue studying during the summer break.

Ada’s letters reveal how difficult life could be in a new country with very little money. On 6 August 1899, she wrote: “It is rough to work hard mentally and to never have enough food. Really it is a wonder I have kept as well as I have.”

Unfortunately, her good health did not last. During 1899, Ada experienced several periods of illness. She wrote that she could not walk for more than 15 minutes without becoming unsteady and described suffering a heart attack lasting about three hours. She attempted to return to her lectures but soon found herself confined to bed again.

Her letters from these years convey the pressure of medical study, her loneliness and her sharp sense of humour:

29 January 1900: “I am writing this in a pathology lecture, for a more slow hopeless man could not exist. He has been known to say “I have already indicated to you” 45 times in one lecture.”

At other times, the strain was more evident:

1900: “The constant hard work, strain and loneliness is telling on me dreadfully now. My face is thin, wrinkled and old looking with just the remains of some prettiness left. If I could only be home for just a week and away from life in lodgings.”

As her final examinations approached in April 1902, Ada wrote that one of her lecturers expected her to pass. She was rather less confident in some of her classmates, remarking that she “would not take a dose of medicine ordered by a single one of them”.

Ada’s fees for the 1896–97 academic year, including summer classes, totalled £141 9s, equivalent to approximately £24,400 or $54,000 NZD in 2026. Although her aunt’s bequest covered much of the cost, Ada lived frugally and earned additional money by tutoring students and assisting in medical laboratories whenever she could.

Life in Edinburgh

Only fragments of Ada’s personal life in Edinburgh survive in her letters, perhaps because most of her attention was devoted to studying and managing her limited funds. She wrote of the loneliness of being far from home and how much she missed being able to escape easily into the countryside.

She also mentioned another New Zealand medical student, Charles Mackie Begg, who later became New Zealand’s most decorated member of the Medical Corps during World War I.³

Although few people are named in Ada’s surviving correspondence, her letters reveal more about her relationship with Thomas Dick McLaren, known as Tom, another Edinburgh medical student. Tom graduated in July 1899, and he and Ada became engaged that year.

Tom then departed for South Africa, where he became district surgeon at Herschel in the Eastern Cape, and later served as a surgeon with the South African Field Force. He told Ada that, once she had graduated and he had secured suitable accommodation, he would arrange for her to join him.

Graduation

On 26 July 1902, Ada graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery. She was one of 147 graduates from several countries, most of whom were men.

Ada wore clothing to the ceremony that her maternal grandmother had sewn for herself many years earlier and later given to Ada. Reflecting on the occasion, Ada wrote:

“...funny that I was capped in our grandmother’s clothes. I am afraid the old lady would have been shocked if she had realised when she worked it.”

By the time she graduated, Ada had distinguished herself across several subjects. Her prizes, reported in the Press, included honours and prizes in botany and zoology, first-class honours and prizes in practical chemistry and botany, third place in practical zoology, and the £50 Arthur Scholarship. She also received recognition in chemistry, history and physics, demonstrating the breadth of her academic achievement

Life after graduation

After graduating, Ada was appointed assistant medical officer at the County Lunatic Asylum at Whitecroft on the Isle of Wight. Following years of financial hardship, she took evident pleasure in the independence and comfort her new profession offered:

 “I must say medicine is not a bad thing after all. Before I went in for it, I could not have earned more than £20 a year at a miserable nursery and now I am getting £150 all found, and I am second in importance here and live in luxury…”

In 1903, Ada travelled to South Africa to join Tom. They married at Herschel on 15 July 1903.

Very little is known about Ada’s life in South Africa. She gave birth to a daughter who did not live long, and she did not work in medicine during this period. Her years there appear to have been lonely and unhappy, and she eventually returned to England alone.

Back in England, Ada held several hospital positions before completing a Diploma in Public Health at the University of Cambridge in 1911. She then undertook advanced study in bacteriology and tropical medicine at the University of Birmingham. This training would become especially important during her wartime service.

Serbia and World War I

When World War I began, women doctors in Scotland offered their medical knowledge and experience to the war effort. Many were also active in the women’s suffrage movement, reflecting the progressive views held by Ada and her family in New Zealand.

These women saw wartime medical service as an opportunity to demonstrate both their competence as doctors and their ability to work in a field still dominated by men. The British Army, however, initially refused to employ women doctors in the Royal Army Medical Corps. When Dr Elsie Inglis offered to organise a women’s medical unit, a War Office official reportedly told her, “My good lady, go home and sit still.”⁴

Inglis refused to be discouraged and helped establish the Scottish Women’s Hospitals for Foreign Service. Its first Serbian unit departed in December 1914. On 23 June 1915, Ada joined the organisation as a surgeon with its Second Serbian Unit.

Conditions in Serbia were extremely difficult. The country was experiencing a severe typhus epidemic, which affected soldiers, civilians and medical workers alike. Ada’s training in public health, bacteriology and tropical medicine would have been particularly valuable in these circumstances.

Later in 1915, Austro-Hungarian, German and Bulgarian forces invaded Serbia. Members of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals had to decide whether to retreat with the Serbian Army or remain with their patients and face capture. Ada and other members of her unit stayed behind.

They were taken prisoner at Vrnjačka Banja and continued working in an occupied hospital while the Austro-Hungarian authorities established their own medical arrangements. In December 1915, the members of the unit were transferred to Hungary and held as military prisoners.

Ada later recalled the hunger they endured:  “there were five months of starvation for us. We had some flour and sugar of our own and we supplemented this with Benger’s Food – I was heartily sick of Benger’s Food when it was all over. The Austrians had bread sent down from Austria, but by the time it reached us it was literally weeks old.”⁵

The unit was released in early 1916. Its members were taken under guard from Vienna to Zürich before being allowed to continue to London.

Ada had travelled to Serbia as a doctor but returned with the experience of treating patients through an epidemic, working under occupation and being held as a prisoner. Her service there marked the beginning of nearly four years of wartime medical work overseas.

Malta and Egypt

By 1916, the British Army faced a serious shortage of doctors and surgeons to treat personnel from campaigns across the different theatres of war. The women doctors whose services it had earlier declined were now called upon to help. Sometimes referred to as the “Lady Doctors”, women from the Scottish Women’s Hospitals were contracted for military medical work in Malta and Egypt.

Ada accepted an initial 12-month contract as a civilian surgeon attached to the Royal Army Medical Corps. She was paid 24 shillings a day, with a gratuity of £60 at the end of her contract. These terms indicate that, although she worked alongside the military medical services, she remained a civilian rather than a commissioned member of the Corps.

Ada sailed from Southampton for Malta aboard the hospital ship Gloucester Castle as a member of the Women’s Medical Unit. From September 1916, she worked in war hospitals operated by the Royal Army Medical Corps and the Malta garrison.

Many of her patients were sick servicemen evacuated from the Salonika campaign in Greece and from the Dardanelles, including Gallipoli. Drawing on her earlier studies in public health, bacteriology and tropical medicine, Ada specialised in infectious diseases, including dysentery and malaria.⁶

Ada remained in Malta until January 1918, when ill health forced her return to England. After recovering, she resumed overseas service in Egypt, where she worked as a civilian surgeon and specialist bacteriologist. She also spent time at the British Hospital in Port Said.

Her contract expired on 1 August 1919. Ada then travelled back to England, arriving on 14 September 1919.

Post-war medical work

In 1920, Ada returned to Cairo and established her own private laboratory. Her letters reveal the unusual detail that the laboratory was housed aboard a barge.

Juliana’s research suggests that the barge may have been the Niagara. During World War I, this vessel had been requisitioned from the Anglo-American Nile Company and used by the medical authorities to transport patients from Kantara to Port Said through the Suez Canal. Although the vessel has not been conclusively identified, its earlier medical use makes it a compelling possibility.

Unfortunately, Ada continued to experience ill health, which forced her to return to England in 1923. There she carried out ultraviolet-ray work in modern laboratories and later practised as a general practitioner.

Ada’s interest in new areas of medicine and her love of learning continued. During the 1920s, she investigated osteopathy and may have travelled to New York to pursue further research. By 1930, the Medical Register recorded her as retired and living in London.

Retirement and later life

In 1934, aged 65, Ada returned to New Zealand for a visit. She spent time with members of her family, particularly her older sister Kate in Christchurch.

Ada and Kate considered sharing a house in their retirement. Both were strong-minded women who had led full lives and shared a passion for education and learning. Family members later wondered whether their strong personalities contributed to their decision that living together would not be successful.

Ada returned to England and settled in Croydon, South London. There she joined a women’s Masonic lodge and undertook voluntary work.

In the early 1940s, Ada often wrote to her relative, Annie Elizabeth Wilkinson. Some of her letters have survived in the family archive, and they reveal Ada’s isolation and anxiety during World War II. Ada wrote that “I feel as if I have no family…no messages come from any of the boys”. When talking of the war, Ada wrote “Don’t think I have any bomb stories. I have known enough to feel terrified.”

By late 1948, severe osteoarthritis had left Ada confined to bed. She could no longer write, although she occasionally dictated letters to her family in New Zealand when someone was available to act as a scribe.

Late in 1948 or early in 1949, Juliana, then only two or three months old, visited Ada in London with her parents. The family returned to New Zealand in January 1949 and did not hear from Ada again. For many years, they believed she had died in 1949.

Juliana’s later research revealed that Ada remained listed in the British Medical Register until 1951. By obtaining her death certificate, she established that Ada had died from a cerebral haemorrhage at 21 Verdayne Gardens, Warlingham, Surrey, on 1 March 1951. She was 82.

Ada was cremated in England. She is also commemorated on the Chertsey School Roll of Honour in Ashburton.

Acknowledgements

The Online Cenotaph team thanks Juliana Smithells for sharing her extensive research into Ada McLaren and the wider Wilkinson family. Her work has enabled us to create an Online Cenotaph record for Ada and bring greater attention to the life and service of this pioneering New Zealand doctor.

The full biography written by Juliana is available here.

Juliana also acknowledges the Wilkinson family members who researched and produced The Wilkinson Family, privately published in March 1980; Kate and Tim Wilkinson; her husband, Dr Tim Smithells; the University of Edinburgh archives; Professor Roger Jeffery; Walter Bonnici; and the General Medical Council.

Thanks also go to contributions received from:

• Archives at Edinburgh University Medical School

• Professor Roger Jeffery of the University of Edinburgh

• Walter Bonnici co-ordinator of RAMC website

• The British Medical Council, London, UK

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References

¹ “The Great Divide: Kate Wilkinson and the Movement for Rational Dress.” Christchurch City Libraries Ngā Kete Wānanga o Ōtautahi, 2 October 2023. ↩︎

² Standish and Preece, Photo. A ‘REFORM DRESS WEDDING.’ (Marriage of Mr J. R Wilkinson, M.A., to Miss Kate Walker in Christchurch.). New Zealand Graphic, Volume XII, Issue IX, 3 March 1894, Page 193. ↩︎

³ Neil Begg. 'Begg, Charles Mackie', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1996. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand (accessed 17 September 2026). ↩︎

⁴ Brocklehurst, Steven (26 November 2017). "The female war medic who refused to 'go home and sit still'". BBC Scotland News. Retrieved 15 August 2021. ↩︎

⁵ REPRESSION, North Canterbury Gazette, Volume 3, Issue 82, 19 February 1935, Page 5. ↩︎

⁶ ibid. ↩︎

Further Reading

• Wilkinson, V., Wilkinson, A., Hood, E.K., Pharo, C., Steven, D. (1980). The Wilkinson Family.  published privately in Christchurch, New Zealand.

• Newell, Antonia. ‘Was the Involvement of Women Doctors in British Military Medical Service in the First World War a Success or a Failure?’ MA dissertation, University of Wolverhampton, January 2020.