Dr Rosemary Anne Jones

Dr Rosemary Anne Jones, better known as Rosie, was born Robert Anthony Jones in Worcester, England, 17 November 1938.* The youngest of three children, Rosie recalled being an avid reader as a child and quite the scholar of Latin. She attended Shaftesbury Grammar School in Dorset and graduated when she was 16 years old, subsequently studying medicine at the University of Bristol.

After graduating in 1962, Rosie worked in several hospitals around Bristol where she met and married her first wife. They then went to Uganda, Rosie working as a government medical officer at Kabale Hospital in Uganda from 1965 to 1967.

It was while in Uganda that Rosie first developed an interest in obstetrics and gynaecology. She returned to the UK for a few months before moving to South Africa in March 1968; there, she took up a position as registrar in anaesthetics, obstetrics and gynaecology at Edendale Hospital in Natal.

From 1970 to 1973 Rosie was registrar in obstetrics and gynaecology at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town. She was a staunch opponent of apartheid, working in hospitals that mostly treated black and coloured patients, and she even attended African National Congress meetings. Rosie returned to the UK in 1973 where she held positions as research fellow then senior registrar in obstetrics and gynaecology at The New John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

In 1974, Rosie saw an advertisement in the British Medical Journal for a locum role in Dubbo, New South Wales, which offered excellent pay. Rosie successfully applied and immigrated to Australia with her family in October 1974, and she worked as regional senior specialist for the Dubbo and Orana region for almost five years.

In late 1979 Rosie moved to Port Adelaide and set up a private practice, later moving to North Adelaide, where she continued to practise until her death. In tandem with the private practice, over the years Rosie held roles including as senior visiting medical specialist at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, board member of LeFevre and Port Adelaide Hospital, senior visiting medical specialist at Lyell McEwin Hospital, and senior visiting medical specialist at Queen Victoria Hospital’s Mid Trimester Abortion Unit. Rosie had two proud claims to medical fame. One was her research and work prescribing hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women. The other was her pioneering work in performing Australia’s early, and South Australia’s first, laparoscopic surgical procedures in 1989.

From 1996, Rosie also worked with Dr Rob Lyons at the South Australia Gender Dysphoria Unit, prescribing affirming hormones for trans clients and also performing small procedures. In 2009 she was a founding member of the Australian and New Zealand Professional Association for Transgender Health (ANZPATH), which from 2019 became AusPATH.

Rosie was not just an advocate for trans health care; she was trans herself. Rosie was one of the earliest members of The Beaumont Society – an organisation for trans cross-dressers in the UK – and served as a trustee of the Beaumont Trust, founded in

1974 to educate the public about trans issues. She was a contemporary of Virginia Prince, one of the first transgender advocates, who published the ground-breaking magazine Transvestia. In 2004, Rosie made the decision to transition medically and began living fulltime as a woman. She described great support and affirmation from the hospitals, her patients and her family when she informed them. Rosie married her second wife as soon as same-sex marriage legislation was passed in Australia.

Rosie also had a long-term commitment to voluntary assisted dying (VAD), in part influenced by the death of one of her brothers. In 2005 Rosie became co-founder of the South Australian initiative Doctors for AMA Neutrality on Voluntary Euthanasia. This later expanded to become a national group, morphing into the present Doctors for Assisted Dying Choice. She was an ambassador for VAD in South Australia, and the legislation passed in June 2021 came into effect two days after Rosie’s death.

Throughout Rosie’s life she had a passion for classical music, and she was a strong supporter of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Another of her passions was reading, and she belonged to several book clubs over the years, notably the George Hassell book club. She took great pleasure in gardening, supported several charities – mainly nature-based and wildlife campaigns – and was always broad-minded in her politics.

Rosie’s diverse human interests and professional endeavours have left a legacy of humanitarian and empowering work that gave individuals sovereignty over their own bodies. Rosie was complex, colourful and quite the character, memorable to all who met her.

Dr Rosie Jones died on 28 January 2023, aged 84. She is survived by her two daughters, Stephanie and Helen.

- Professor Noah Riseman of the Australian Catholic University, who interviewed Dr Jones for the Australian Queer Archives, provided this obituary on behalf of her family.

*It is generally considered best practice not to refer to trans people by their previous names unless they indicate that it is okay to do so. Rosie specifically requested that the photograph of herself pre-transition be in her funeral booklet. medicSA was asked by the family to include Rosie's previous name for this obituary.