ABSTRACT
In response to a growing concern about New Zealandʼs maternal and infant mortality rates at the beginning of the twentieth century, the 1904 Midwives Act established formal midwifery training and registration, and enabled the setting up of St Helens Hospitals throughout New Zealand. From the establishment of the first four in 1905, these hospitals provided both maternity care for married women whose husbands earned less than £3 a week and a training place for midwives. By 1920, seven hospitals had been set up and, although the criteria for admission changed over time, St Helens Hospitals provided a safe maternity service for New Zealand women for the next seven decades. The hospitals are historically interesting for three main reasons: (i) they provide a very early example of statesubsidized maternity hospitals in the international twentieth-century context; (ii) the majority of births were attended only by midwives and maternity nurses; and (iii) the hospitals led New Zealand on all indices of safe maternity care.1 St Helens Hospitals were therefore a site of significant development in midwifery practice and maternity services in New Zealand.
