Margaret Murphy began life about 18 weeks early weighing around 390 grams at St Margaret’s Hospital in Sydney. These days it’s still special, but not so unusual, for a prem baby to ‘make it’, but for Margaret, born September 19, 1909, it was and still is incredible.
“Wrapped in cotton wool inside a shoe-box, fed with an eye dropper, and she didn’t come home from hospital for three months,” says Elaine Murphy, Margaret’s daughter and only child. “Premmie girls are notorious for being the most determined,” chimes in Amanda Lonergan, President of the National Premmie Foundation.
Margaret survived at least one bubonic plague scare in Sydney prior to 1925. “Mum said that if you went out without your mask on you just got sent home, she never caught it.” “She was always a tenacious lady, but always a very quiet lady. “The vascular dementia, and the clots associated with it, gradually took away mum’s ability to hold long conversations, but right up until the day before she died she still communicated very easily. “She had a funny way of wiggling her eyebrows, so she didn’t say much but her expression was just amazing. “I’d always come away from visiting her buoyed up, because she always made me laugh,” says Elaine.
Margaret was never one to complain about anything, even when her husband Walter was beaten by street kids in Melbourne and passed away after 15 weeks in a coma. “She heard that attack, it happened right outside the front door of their Melbourne home in 1983 after Walter returned home from a dinner.
“Mum and dad had a routine, he’d ring the doorbell, take the dog for a walk and she would make the coffee.
“That night the dog came home and dad didn’t, mum went instantly deaf. She was shocked to the core, but she never complained about her lot in life.”
Margaret was always a spontaneous sort, Elaine reminisces. “On their honeymoon to Jenolan Caves, mum decided she’d climb the flag pole to tie a hankie at the top. “The flagpole is on the edge of a cliff, and when mum got to the top she froze up, then dad had to climb up and help her down.” Margaret was also a lover of fashion and hats, she was always a lady, always dressed up. “Whereas I’m a tomboy,” laughs Elaine.
“We lived in the Northern Territory for a while, and mum would ride around Arnhem Land on horseback.
“She loved the country and animals, she had a real way with animals.” Two days before Margaret died, Elaine hurt her hand and when she visited her mum, Margaret only expressed concern about the injury.
“It was a real mother thing. I thought, here you are dying and you’re still only concerned with my welfare, she was a mum right up to the end.
“I contacted Amanda because I thought that my mum’s story would give hope to parents of prem babies, that they can and do live full, happy lives,”
“Having a prem baby makes what should be a wonderul, happy time into something traumatic. “Mum was tenacious right to the end, she was born that way and she left that way,” says Elaine. Sadly, Margaret passed away earlier this month in her 99th year from the effects of her dementia.
Article in Bendigo Weekly
It is truly amazing. My great grandmother was also thought to be a very early prem and was sent home in a shoebox wrapped in cotton wool and she lived to be 104!