The Dictionary of Sydney was archived in 2021.
Charity established to provide health care services and medicine to underprivileged adults and children in Sydney’s poorest inner suburbs that operated between 1900-1917. It was established by Dr Julie Carlile-Thomas and funded by Emma Dixson. Its first premises consisted of three small rooms in a building on Elizabeth Street before it was relocated to Macquarie Street. Mission doctors provided a unique service for sick Sydneysiders who were unable to leave their homes to enter hospital, particularly women with young children, and chronic incurable patients for whom no hospital bed was available. In its early years, a dilapidated phaeton pulled by an old horse, and driven by an even older man with a long white beard, transported the doctors on their house calls, and became a common sight in what were then known as the ‘slum’ suburbs of Sydney.