‘She smoked, she swore, she sat with her legs apart’: Dr Lilian Cooper, Australia’s battlefield surgeon
Dr Lilian Cooper and Dr Agnes Bennett were indomitable medical pioneers and now a musical's being staged about them.
Meet Queensland’s first ‘lady’ doctor — a swearing, smoking, straight-talking revhead who later became a skilled battlefield surgeon operating on the front line.
Dr Lilian Cooper arrived from the UK in 1891, along with her lifelong partner Josephine Bedford after the women of Brisbane had written to the London School of Medicine for Women requesting a ‘lady doctor’.
The story of what happened next has now been brought to life in a musical, A Girl’s Guide to World War.
“I don’t think Dr Cooper was quite what the women of Brisbane expected,” the musical’s co-writer Katy Forde says.
