This fine memorial to Margaret Cruickshank is one of New Zealand's few memorials to a woman other than Queen Victoria. It honours Waimate's local doctor, who died in the influenza epidemic of 1918. Cruickshank was the second woman to graduate from Otago Medical School, and moved to Waimate as a doctor in 1897. During the epidemic she worked tirelessly before falling victim to the disease. The marble memorial was sculpted by William Trethewey, who had prepared a plaster cast and displayed it in a shop window so locals could comment on the accuracy of the likeness. At the base of the memorial are the words: ‘The Beloved Physician/Faithful Unto Death’. For many years a bowl of fresh flowers at the base of the monument was regularly replenished.
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Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand
by Jock Phillips
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