Doris Irene Taylor MBE
Doris Taylor’s contribution to social welfare in Australia is both significant and long-lasting. Meals on Wheels, the organisation she founded in Australia in 1953, provides regular, balanced and nutritious food through its own kitchens to the elderly and infirm in their own homes, at a small charge. It serves the needs of many thousands of Australians every day.
Doris Taylor was a remarkable woman, but her contribution is not particularly well known beyond her home state, where her house is recognised an an historic site.
Photo of Miss Doris Irene Taylor MBE Courtesy of Meals on Wheels SA
Doris was born on 25 July 1901 in the Adelaide suburb of Norwood. At seven, she had a serious accident; she became permanently disabled at the age of 12 as a result of a spinal injury. She spent the rest of her life wheelchair-bound. When she was still a child, doctors suggested to her mother that she live out her life in a Home for Incurables, but she and her mother were adamant that she should live at home, which she did until her death. While Doris had mobility only in her head and shoulders and to a limited extent in her arms, she was intelligent, capable and determined to participate in society. Living through the Depression with a widowed mother and four siblings, she was concerned about the plight of others, especially children. She became secretary of a local kindergarten mother’s club, organised fundraising schemes to provide clothes for children of the unemployed and helped to establish a soup kitchen in the school grounds.
With her experience of disability, Doris Taylor understood the problems of elderly and disabled people trying to remain in their homes and devised a scheme to deliver a daily midday hot meal. This was the founding idea of Meals on Wheels. It was based on schemes established in London during the Second World War and later in South Melbourne.
On 6 October 1953, Doris organised a public meeting to launch the scheme; aged pensioners provided the first donation of five pounds ($10) to establish scheme, incorporated later that year.
It was the first Meals on Wheels in Australia, using volunteers to produce and provide daily meals. A block of land in Port Adelaide became the site of the first kitchen that was formally opened by then Governor of South Australia, Sir Rupert George, on 23 October 1954. The first cooked meals were delivered by 11 volunteers. The South Australian group now has some 10,000 volunteers and more than 100 kitchens.
With Doris Taylor’s tireless encouragement and promotion of its work, the new scheme quickly gained support from local service clubs, businesses, trade unions and women’s organisations.
As a young solicitor, Don Dunstan, later the South Australian premier, helped to draw up the incorporation of Meals on Wheels and became its first president, serving from 1954-59. (Incidentally, Doris Taylor is also credited with persuading Dunstan, to join the Labor Party and in 1952 to seek pre-selection for the seat of Norwood. He stood against her cousin and in 1953 won the seat. Don Dunstan described Doris Taylor as his political inspiration and “one of the great unsung heroines of Australia”)
From its outset Meals on Wheels delivered five hot meals weekly to people unable to cook for themselves. It continues to do so almost 70 years later. Some require meals for short periods but others, who are elderly or infirm for extended periods. Apart from nutritious meals, the daily routine of visitors allows people confined to their homes to experience essential social contact and lessens their isolation.
By 1967 more than two million meals had been served in South Australia and the South Australian model was replicated in other states and was extended to cover others services, such as home help, hair care, laundry, library and chiropody services, frozen meals and a hospital-based meal service. An important element of the service is the small charge levied for the meals that both helps to support the organisation and remove concern for users that they are reliant on charity.
Doris Taylor continued to be a driving force behind Meals on Wheels and travelled extensively to promote the organisation. She was indefatigable, courageous and inspirational. For some 20 years she was the organisation’s paid organiser.
Doris Taylor was awarded an MBE in 1959. She died in the Royal Adelaide Hospital on 23 May, 1968.
Contributed by Di Johnstone; with appreciation to the Kensington and Norwood Historical Society and Meals on Wheels (SA)
Further reading
Meals on Wheels (SA): www.mealsonwheelssa.org.au/history
Greg Crafter, Taylor. Doris Irene (1901-1968), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 16 Melbourne University Press 2000, pp 364-365; on line editionhttp://adbononline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A160438b.htm
Don Dunstan, Felicia, the political memoirs of Don Dunstan, South Melbourne: Macmillan, 1981.
Suzy Baldwin (ed) Unsung Heroes and Heroines of Australia, Elwood, Vic.: Greenhouse, 1988)
Michael Cudmore, A Meal a Day: A History of Meals on Wheels (SA) Incorporated 1953-1966, Wayville, SA: Meals on Wheels (SA), 1996
South Australian Parliament, House of Assembly Hansard, Wednesday 8 September 1993, pages 643-4
http://www.kensingtonandnorwoodhistoricalsociety.com/plaque_doris_taylor.html
http://sameomory.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?c+1587
http://www.library.unisa.edu.au/about/annexes/dtaylorwing.asp
http://www.kensingtonandnorwoodhistoricalsociety.com/plaque_doris_taylor.html
Australian Women's History Forum 