Ellen Kent Hughes

Ellen Mary Kent Hughes was born on 29 August 1893 in Fitzroy, Melbourne.[1] Hughes was the eldest of seven children of Wilfred Kent Hughes, a surgeon, and his wife Clementina Rankin, who had been a nurse in England. Hughes was the niece of Rev. Ernest Selwyn Hughes, Frederic Hughes and Eva Hughes. Two of her siblings, Wilfrid Kent Hughes and Gwendolen Kent Lloyd,[2] would also achieve significance in the community. Hughes attended Ruyton Girls' School, Kew. She left school in 1912 while her mother was in a hospital for tuberculosis.[1] Hughes enrolled at the University of Melbourne in 1913 residing at Trinity College Hostel. She would complete her M.B.B.S. degree in 1917.[3] Hughes married Paul René Loubet of France and a medical-assistant at the Children's Hospital, Melbourne in July 1917.[4] Loubet died three months after they married.[5][6] Hughes was pregnant with their child.[7]

Hughes' colleagues assisted her in finding work after her husband's death, at Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital for Women and Children.[1] In 1918, working under the professional name of Dr Kent Hughes, Ellen worked as resident medical officer at the Hospital for Sick Children in Brisbane.[8] She was a resident at the Hospital during the influenza and diphtheria epidemics of 1919[9] where she took the responsibility almost single-handedly for 200 desperately ill children. Her son was cared for by his Nanny, Alice Pickup, who would reside with Hughes for 54 years.[10] A locum job became available in Mitchell, a town west of Brisbane.[11] Hughes took the job. She met Francis Garde Wesley Wilson and in August 1920, Hughes married Garde Wilson. They would have four children together. The family moved to Kingaroy,[12] and Kent Hughes was elected to the Shire Council there in 1923.[1][13]

The family moved to Armidale in 1928, where Kent Hughes opened a medical practice with Roger Mallam, and continued her active community work. She worked as an Honorary paediatrician at the Armidale and New England Hospital, government medical officer and a justice of the peace. Kent Hughes was particularly interested in indigenous women's health, which remained one of her interests throughout her life.[1]

Kent Hughes served as an alderman from 1937–1968 in the Armidale City Council.[14] She was Deputy Mayor from 1963–1964. She was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1968. She became a Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners in 1971, and was awarded the freedom of the city of Armidale in 1975.[1]

Kent Hughes retired from work in 1977. She died on 16 May 1979 in Armidale and was survived by her five children.[1]

Her home, Kent House was given over to a community centre in 1990.[15] A scholarship was established in her name in 2016, to encourage young women of the South Burnett region, where Hughes had been a young doctor, to pursue a tertiary education.[16]

The forecourt in front of the South Burnett Regional Council Chambers in Glendon Street, Kingaroy, is also named in her honour.