Margaret Irene Lang
Matron Margaret Lang 1943 by Harold Freedman
Born23 May 1893
Oxley, Victoria
Died14 February 1983
Canterbury, Melbourne
NationalityAustralian
Known forfounding Australian Air Force matron-in-chief

Margaret Irene Lang (23 May 1893 – 14 February 1983) was an Australian nurse who became the Australian Air Force matron-in-chief at the Royal Australian Air Force Nursing Service.

Life

Lang was born in 1893 in the state of Victoria as her parents had been. They were Annie (born Martin) and John Douglas Lang, who was a miner.[1]

By the time she had trained as a nurse, Australia was involved in World War One. By 1917 she had become a matron but she left the hospital in Stawell to join the Australian Army Nursing Service, Australian Imperial Force briefly in Suez before she joined 300 of her peers on Salonika. In 1919 she was in London where she had four months studying domestic science at the South-Western Polytechnic. She left the military at the beginning of 1920 with the rank of sister.[1]

Victoria Police Hospital's ward in about 1946

She was a matron at hospitals in Melbourne including the Talbot Epileptics Colony before she returned to Stawell Hospital in 1924. She served there until 1938 when she joined the Victoria Police Hospital as matron.[2]

The Royal Australian Air Force Nursing Service was founded in July 1940 at the suggestion of Air Vice-Marshal Victor Hurley, the Director-General of Medical Services[1] based on the UK's Princess Mary's Royal Air Force Nursing Service as part of the RAAF. Lang was appointed its first Matron-in-Chief with Muriel Knox Doherty as a matron.[2] By December 1940 the service had 45 members, but this increased to over six hundred by December 1945.[3] All members held commissioned rank, and wore RAAF badges of rank along with the RAAF medical badge on their tunic lapels and capes, but did not use Air Force rank titles.[2]

At the end of the war in 1946 she returned to Victoria Police Hospital.[1]

Lang received an OBE in 1950. She died in Canterbury, Melbourne.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Hine, Margaret, "Margaret Irene Lang (1893–1983)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, retrieved 13 December 2023
  2. 1 2 3 "R.A.A.F. Nursing Service's Fourth Birthday". The Examiner. Launceston, Tasmania. 28 July 1944. Retrieved 13 January 2014.
  3. ↑ "Royal Australian Air Force Nursing Service (RAAFNS)". The Australian Women's Register. National Foundation for Australian Women; University of Melbourne. 2014. Retrieved 13 January 2014.
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