The Dr Mary Booth Lookout is located on the North Shore just east of the Sydney Harbour Bridge at Kirribilli. The lookout is near Dr Booth's former home at the end of Waruda St and has spectacular views across the harbour to the city skyline, Harbour Bridge and Opera House.

Dr. Mary Booth.
(1869-1956), Physician and welfare worker.

Born on the 9th of July 1869 at Burwood, Sydney, Mary was the eldest of three daughters of teacher William Booth and his wife Ruth.
She matriculated from Airlie School in 1886 and attained a BA from the University of Sydney in 1890. She then studied as a medical student at the University of Melbourne in 1894, before leaving for Scotland with her sister Eliza, and in July next year enrolled at the College of Medicine for Women, University of Edinburgh (M.B., C.M., 1899).

Dr Booth was appointed to the Department of the Government Statistician as anthropometrist in 1900 and lectured on hygiene at girls' secondary schools.
She was a founder of the Women's Club in 1901, and corresponding secretary in 1905-07 and later a vice-president of the National Council of Women of New South Wales.
She was lecturer in hygiene for the Department of Public Instruction in 1904-09, and then in 1910-12 was employed by the Victorian Department of Education to help establish the first school medical service in that State.
In 1913 she visited Britain and represented the Commonwealth government at the English speaking Conference on Infant Mortality in London.

Back in Sydney by 1914 and the outbreak of WW1, she founded the Babies' Kit Society for the Allies' Babies and in June 1915 opened the Soldiers' Club in the Royal Hotel, George Street; she was its honorary secretary until it closed in 1923. From September 1915 she was a member of the executive committee of the Universal Service League and campaigned vigorously for conscription. Other war work included organizing the Centre for Soldiers' Wives and Mothers and setting up a war widows' fund. In 1918 she was appointed O.B.E.
In 1920 she unsuccessfully contested the North Shore seat in the Legislative Assembly as an independent feminist and, supported by the Women's Reform League, failed after negotiations to stand for a Senate seat in 1922.

In 1921 she founded the Anzac Fellowship of Women and remained president until 1956.
She was an office-bearer of the New Settlers' League of Australia, and a member of the Women's Migration Council of New South Wales.
When British ex-servicewomen began arriving in Sydney, mostly as assisted migrants, she founded the Ex Service Women's Club.
From 1921 she looked after boys migrating under the 'Dreadnought scheme' and in 1923 set up the Empire Service Club. She raised funds, supervised the Empire Service Hostel and in 1925-44 published the monthly Boy Settler, all as a contribution to maintaining 'our own British Stock' and counteracting communism.

She belonged to the University of Sydney Society for Combating Venereal Diseases after the war, and in the 1920s to the League of Nations Union and the English-Speaking Union.
A member of the Town Planning Association of New South Wales, in 1920 she told the royal commission on the basic wage that young families could be happily brought up in a flat if it was designed with proper space for the children; in 1929 she attended the 12th Congress of the International Federation for Housing and Town Planning in Rome, and visited Britain.

In 1931 the Anzac Fellowship of Women set up the Anzac Festival Committee, with Dr Booth as chairman and the governor-general Lord Gowrie and Lady Gowrie as patrons, to encourage the arts rather than sport in the 'Anzac Season'.
In 1939 Mary Booth persuaded Sir Robert Garran to write the script for an historical pageant beginning with Richard Coeur de Lion. Her last major initiative was to found in 1936 the Memorial College of Household Arts and Science, on land adjoining her home at Kirribilli.
In 1961 its funds were used to found the Dr Mary Booth scholarship for women economics students at the University of Sydney.

She died in the Rachel Forster Hospital for Women and Children on 28 November 1956 and was cremated with Anglican rites.

Abridged from an article by J. I. Roe
Print Publication Details: J. I. Roe, 'Booth, Mary (1869 - 1956)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 7, Melbourne University Press, 1979, pp 345-346.