'Lady Doctor Anne', a trailblazer who pioneered children’s care in Limerick - Ireland News Beep

IT’S 80 years ago to the week since Limerick welcomed its first doctor specialising in childrens’ care.

A three-line advert placed in the Limerick Leader edition of May 4, 1946, advised that Dr Anne McMahon had “taken up residence” at Upper Mallow Street in the city centre.

It was this understated notice which marked the beginning of paediatrics in Limerick.

Dr Anne – or Nancy as she was known to many – blazed a trail for the profession in Limerick at a time when specialist care for infants was provided by GPs and physicians without the area of expertise.

Now, there are 20 paediatricians in Limerick – with five based at University Maternity Hospital who are solely responsible for providing care to newborn babies.

Dr Michael Mahony followed in Dr McMahon’s footsteps in Limerick, and was fortunate enough to meet her in 1992 when he began to run a clinic in the old Barrington’s Hospital.

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“She was very well-known across Limerick. They used to call her ‘Lady Doctor Anne’. People would knock at her door to see her. She would have had an old-fashioned bake-lite telephone, so those who could, called her,” said the retired paediatrician, who now lives in North Circular Road, after a career taking in Crumlin Hospital in Dublin and Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, among others.

The 1926 census revealed, aged six, Dr McMahon was living in O’Connell Avenue, before the family moved to Ennis Road.

Her father, a timber merchant, bought Dromore Castle near Pallaskenry, and the family moved there when Anne was 19.

She went to study in University College Dublin, before qualifying in 1943.

From there, she took a well-trodden path for many Irish people in heading across the channel, where she trained in Birmingham before a return to Limerick.

Ahead of her time, Dr McMahon realised paediatrics was going to become a speciality in its own right – something that was sped up by the creation in Britain of the National Health Service in the late 1940s.

She is remembered in a book by renowned local historian Sharon Slater which focused on 100 women of Limerick.

In particular, it was noted that the paediatrician went against the norm at the time by continuing to work even after she got married to Michael Tierney in Adare.

As Ms Slater notes: “In 1961, only five percent of married women had employment outside the home and women were actively discouraged from going out to work, but Dr Anne refused to give up practice.”

She ploughed a lonely furrow as Limerick’s only paediatrician up until 1957 when Dr Michael Curtin was appointed as a consultant at the newly opened Mid-Western Regional Hospital (now University Hospital Limerick).

Dr McMahon sustained significant injuries in a road traffic accident in 1976.

It forced her to retire early from practice, aged just58. She died in 2009, and is buried in Crecora Cemetery.

But the significant contribution she has made ensures her memory lives on.

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‘Lady Doctor Anne’, a trailblazer who pioneered children’s care in Limerick

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