It was the first time ever that I sat face-to-face with someone who had outstripped by 30 years the life-span of three score and ten allotted us by the psalmist. I had met “Grace Auntie” in the home of her niece, my school friend, Dr. Gladys Vanniasingham (nee Sinnetamby), when we were both considerably younger and it seemed fantastic to me to meet this gracious and mentally alert personality again as she approached her 100th birthday on August 7, 2008.
What keeps her ticking so vibrantly? The answer, unconsciously revealed by Dr. Grace during our long conversation, was that what had sustained her through all the vicissitudes of a long life, was her unshakeable Christian faith and her genuine love of people.
We sat in the living room of her apartment in Gregory’s Road where she resides with her devoted son, Sudhir. The only signs of ageing were her head of shining white hair and a slight loss of hearing. Her voice sounded as vigorous as I remembered and her almost total recall of events was amazing. She talked freely both of her personal life and her professional career, but was sharp enough to know when to tell me, “That’s off the record, not for publication.”
Dr. Grace was born on August 7, 1908, to G.V. and Alice Sinnetamby and had three elder brothers and one elder sister. “Those four seemed to stand apart as there was a gap between them and the arrival of us four younger siblings.” She was the seventh child. “The eldest in the family was your friend’s father, E.J. Sinnetamby,” she said. The first school the young Grace attended was Wolfendahl Girls’ School. “Our house was on New Chetty Street. I have very happy memories of that time and place and the big cathedral (St. Lucia’s) that loomed over us.”
Since the Wolfendahl school kept pupils only up to age 13, Grace was moved to Good Shepherd Convent, Kotahena, for the next stage of her schooling. She remembers the nuns, all foreign, as having a gentle and felicitous influence on her life. “I think it was they who gave me a love of English poetry and literature.”
A big change of scene occurred when the family took up residence in “Horton House” at Horton Place, Colombo 7. Grace’s final school was Ladies’ College, Colombo, from where she obtained a First Class in the London Matriculation Examination which was then the qualifying exam for university entrance.
At that time, science was not a subject taught in any girls’ schools. Grace entered what was then the University College on Thurstan Road, with the intention of doing an English Honours degree. Fate decreed otherwise. Her elder brother, Dr. G.S. Sinnetamby (later the reputed Senior Surgeon of the General Hospital, whose name will be familiar to older readers), returned to Ceylon after his post-graduate studies in England, and set to work to veer his little sister’s mind away from English and in the direction of medicine.
So it was that Grace enrolled in the Medical College where she was delighted to find two friends from Ladies’ College - Constance Ebel and May Siebel – also studying medicine. She was taught anatomy by Dr. M.V.P. Peiris, while other hospital-based teaching was done by Drs. R.L. Spittel, J.R. Blaze, Cyril Fernando, Professors P.B. Fernando and Milroy Paul, the latter then being Professor of Surgery – all of them medical giants of an earlier era.
Grace qualified as a doctor in 1937, with First Class Honours. She served in the General Hospital, the De Soysa Lying-in-Home as it was then known, and the Castle Street Maternity Hospital. “There were no consultants about and we had fun,” she recalled with a chuckle.
Later, she was posted to Weligama and Beruwela as WMO (Woman Medical Officer). “There was a DMO and WMO, the DMO being a male.” Dr. Grace was accompanied by a ‘companion’, one Mrs. Jansz, who served as housekeeper and chaperone.
One incident she still remembers vividly more than 60 years after, is when she was called to attend on a fisherman’s wife who was in labour. “I went to the house and found the place crowded with odd characters, friends of the husband, and most of them the worse for liquor. I told the midwife to get them all out of the house (Dr. Grace’s knowledge of Sinhala and of Tamil was negligible, having studied entirely in English from kindergarten to university). The irate husband told the midwife he would “kill your doctor” if his wife died.
“The foetus was dead inside the womb and the mother seemed to be in a bad way. My midwife, alarmed by the husband’s threat of which I was unaware, quietly sent for the DMO.
“He came and at once administered an injection, the purpose of which baffled me. When I asked him what that was for, he replied: ‘Child, you don’t know the mentality of these people – when a doctor comes, they expect him to do something, at least give an injection!’” And with that remark, he went off, leaving the WMO and midwife to cope. Dr. Grace did manage to deliver the still-born baby, but had quite a struggle to get the placenta out.
To the relief of all, the mother pulled through and an exhausted Dr. Grace went home. The next morning, Mrs. Jansz informed Dr. Grace that a fisherman carrying a big fish, was waiting outside to meet the doctor. Properly clad and in his right mind, he apologized to her for any rudeness shown on the previous day while under the influence of liquor, and proffered the fish he had caught as a peace offering. “He later brought all his other children to my clinic, just to show me how grateful he was that their mother had survived the last pregnancy. With that encounter, I took a real liking to the rural poor and got on well with them.”
In 1946, Dr. Grace married Gunaratnam Barr-Kumarakulasinghe, a lawyer. They went to London for further qualifications and in 1948 their son, Sudhir, was born. Dr. Grace qualified as a Consultant Paediatrician, obtaining her M.R.C.P. and a Diploma in Child Health (D.C.H.), London. They returned to Ceylon in 1953 and Dr. Grace found it was one thing to get qualified, but quite another to be given her due professionally as a woman. Only Prof. C.C. de Silva, she said, was willing to allocate any beds in his ward at the Lady Ridgeway Hospital for Children, to a woman. The other two paediatricians flatly refused to do so.
“It was only in 1956, when Vimala Wijewardene became Minister of Health, that she saw to it that I was given a ward.” (Incidentally, that other well-known pioneering woman paediatrician, Dr. Stella de Silva, was her contemporary). Until that dispensation came, Dr. Grace was assigned to the Castle Street Maternity Hospital to provide medical care for newborns. At the LRH, her House Officers were Dr. Merle de Silva and Dr. Ranjit Atapattu (who in later years served as a Minister of Health).
Dr. Grace emphasized how generously Prof. Milroy Paul had given time to mentoring her in the early days. Another person she remembers with special affection is Dr. May Ratnayake, who was “the sole boss” of both the Lady Ridgeway Hospital for Children and the adjacent Lady Havelock Hospital for Women.
The work with newborns became a plus point when Dr. Grace, with the help of a Nursing Sister trained in Paediatrics, Sr. Grace Danforth, initiated specialized neo-natal nursing care. Prof. C.C. de Silva and she were the first Paediatricians to organize Special Baby Care Units in The Castle Street and De Soysa Maternity Hospitals. Dr. Grace was also responsible for compiling the first-ever neonatal morbidity and mortality statistics in Sri Lanka and on September 28, 1954, she was invited to read a paper at a meeting of the Obstetric Society. Her subject was “Neonatal Morbidity and Mortality in the DMH”. She was also invited by the Obstetrics Society to be Founder Joint-Editor (with Dr. Siva Chinnathamby), of the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Sri Lanka.
In 1961, Dr. Grace was the only woman delegate in a distinguished team led by Dr. P.R. Anthonis, that went to China to study Traditional Medicine, in response to an invitation issued by Chinese P.M. Chou En Lai, and she attributes her inclusion to the intervention of another great member of her sex, none other than our P.M. (and the world’s first woman in that role) Sirimavo Bandaranaike. “Two things that impressed me in China,” she told me, “is that the poorest patient attending a hospital O.P.D. was required to pay something, however small the amount, for the medical services given; and that mothers of children who were hospitalized were provided with lodging in buildings erected behind the hospitals.”
In 1963, Dr. Grace was elected President of the Paediatric Association of Ceylon and her presidential address was on the newborn. In the audience that day was the American Ambassador, Ms. Willis, who was evidently so impressed that she invited her to go to America on an Exchange Scholarship in 1965.
She was also invited to read a paper at a medical gathering in Tokyo. Sadly, her husband died that year and Dr. Grace was in no mood to travel abroad. However, she was later persuaded by Ms.Willis to accept the American invitation and she did go to the USA and was very glad she did. “There’s no-one to beat the Americans in warmth and friendliness,” she enthused.
In 1967, Dr. Grace who was then in her 59th year, resigned to go to London where her son was studying. She has fond memories of the years in England where she worked as a Consultant in several hospitals including the Middlesex Hospital and St. James Hospital in Balham. She also worked in Wales for a time. Dr. Grace liked most of all to touch on the voluntary service she put in at the Bermondsey Medical Mission, a Christian venture, when she was off-duty in the evenings. Working with and for the poor in London’s East End, “in a Christian atmosphere,” gave her deep satisfaction.
Dr. Grace returned to Sri Lanka with Sudhir in 1976. In 1997, at the first annual scientific congress held in July of that year, she was awarded the Fellowship of the Sri Lanka College of Paediatricians (F.C.P., SL), in recognition of her long years of service for Sri Lankan children. In fact, at the formal farewell given her on her retirement, the Director of Health Services, Dr. V.T. Herath Goonaratne, who presided at the ceremony, had described her as one who “introduced a great deal of changes in newborn care and pioneered comparison and analysis of statistics relating to neonatal morbidity and mortality in the two leading maternity hospitals in the country”. Her portrait was unveiled at the LRH on the same day as were those of Prof. C.C. de Silva and Prof. Milroy Paul.
“I have had a good life and I thank God for all the love showered on me and the help I received from many quarters. I love people – I don’t care whether they are good or bad. I consider humility the greatest virtue, for a lot of the trouble in the world seems to stem from human pride. I have greatly enjoyed interacting with people of many different races and nationalities in the course of my life – the diversity adds richness to life.”
As I stood up to take my leave of this centenarian who so graciously gave me her time, I asked her what advice she would give to a young woman of today. She thought for a moment and then quoted what I suspect is her favourite verse from the Bible: “Do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” |
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