This Is Your Life: Mary Hawkins

Sister Mary HAWKINS

The final edition of This Is Your Life to be produced by the BBC

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Mary Hawkins, nurse, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the BBC Television Theatre.

Mary took up nursing in the mid-1930s, training at the Royal Cancer Hospital and the Royal Devon and Exeter. Her studies were interrupted by rheumatic fever, but she went on to work as a tuberculosis specialist at the Hawkmoor sanatorium, in Bovey Tracey. During the war she volunteered for the Hadfield Spears nursing unit, attached to Free French forces in north Africa. She took part in the invasion of Italy, setting up advanced mobile casualty stations while under fire. At the siege of Cassino, she was awarded the Croix de Guerre, having treated the wounded for three days and nights without sleep.

Mary worked briefly with the Red Cross before joining Save the Children, working tirelessly in various war zones of the world, including Lebanon, dealing with the aftermath of the first Arab-Israeli war; South Korea assisting with the children of 4 million refugees from the Korean War; helping to save at least 3000 lives with the establishment of a reception centre to care for the refugee children as they escaped the Communist invasion of Budapest in the Hungarian uprising.

programme details...

Edition No: 256
Subject No: 256
Broadcast date: Thu 30 Apr 1964
Broadcast time: 8.50-9.15pm
Recorded: Mon 27 Apr 1964
Venue: BBC Television Theatre
Series: 9
Edition: 30

on the guest list...

Major Derek Cooper
Dr Roy Midgeley
Evelyn Fulroth
Charles Segaud
Ronald Yeats
Enid Pearce
Ilonka Wittman
Hans Gluchi
Maan Abu Nowar

production team...

Writer: Peter Moore
Director: Michael Goodwin
Producer: Vere Lorrimer
Executive Producer: T Leslie Jackson

related pages...

A Medical Life

examining the medical profession

Timeline

the show's fifty year history

The Audience

the applause, laughter and tears

Series 9 subjects