News of the death of Australian artist Charles Blackman , 90 , brings back memories of Julia Owen , known as The Bee Lady of Bromley , England, with whom I had dealings in Sydney , back in the l970s. An Austrian with a medical background , she was a woman with strong convictions and deep animosity towards the medical profession , she unexpectedly came into my life when I wrote a report in the Sun-Herald newspaper about a doctor who said she was getting out of medicine because the profession was more interested in making money than looking after patients .
By Peter Simon
After publication, I received a telephone call from a woman with an accent who averred doctors were pocket picking bludgers, and she was coming in to prove her statement. She arrived at the Fairfax building in her chauffeur driven Daimler , with a BEE numberplate . Thus I met , for the first time , the great Bee Lady of Bromley , the subject of much media coverage and controversy overseas.
She had treated many people , some in high places , with medicated bee venom and herbal packs for rheumatoid arthritis, skin and eye conditions, gout , lumbago , sciatica , fibrositis , neuritis and nervous disorders.
She branded as evil the General Medical Council of Britain because it allowed doctors to inject patients with gold and cortisone for such conditions, of little use and treated her as a quack , a charlatan . Cortisone, she protested , produced terrible moon-faced patients.
I was invited to her house at Turramurra on the North Shore of Sydney , where she lived with her English husband , Jack , member of a family which had supplied the United States of America with prime cattle breeding stock in the early days. He had been almost a cripple, treated by specialists , until she applied her medicated bee venom and had him up on his feet , so he married her.
She sat me down with my portable typewriter at a desk which had once belonged to a Russian Czar , an auction house sticker attached to it and told me details of her life ; nearby was a clock presented to her by a former patient, the last King of Italy and a Charles Blackman painting , along with large paintings of prize livestock which had belonged to her husband's family.
Julia knew Blackman's wife, Barbara , a poet , writer and librettist , and openly discussed her blindness. Her poor eyesight had been diagnosed as optic atrophy at the age of 22, which deteriorated rapidly until she became totally blind . Dramatic eyes are a feature of Charles Blackman's renowned paintings of Alice in Wonderland and schoolgirls .
There was nothing, Julia told me , that she could do to help Mrs Blackman and explained the reason why . I interviewed people she had successfully treated, including a stockbroker and a banker . A prominent politician and his wife asked her to look at a their child , but she honestly told them his condition was due to a petit mal , a brain seizure , and she could not help in any way .
I was taken into the backyard at Turramurra and shown Julia's beehives . From what I gathered , they were fed on a special mixture before being used to sting a patient . She discussed the possibility of opening a clinic in country Bowral to carry out bee venom treatment.
I was taken into the backyard at Turramurra and shown Julia's beehives . From what I gathered , they were fed on a special mixture before being used to sting a patient . She discussed the possibility of opening a clinic in country Bowral to carry out bee venom treatment.
My wife had suffered from a sore left hip for quite some time; Julia applied a poultice with a base of potato on the spot for about two and a half hours and she has not experienced pain there ever since . One day Julia turned up unannounced at our house in Coogee in the Daimler with a pair of chandeliers to add to our semi detached .
At her request, I contacted the great ALP politician, former NSW Premier, Jack Lang , nicknamed The Big Fella , who experienced the ribbon slashing event by Captain Francis de Groot of the New Guard at the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge . Lang was later sacked by the governor during the tough Depression when he said English bond holders should wait to be paid to protect jobs and conditions in Australia . When I called on Lang he was still running his newspaper, The Century , started in 1938 , the very day I was born .
The Bee Lady felt he was a strong minded fighter who might be interested in her story . When informed about her , he was open minded , said new ways of doing things had to be examined , he knew a woman who could benefit from her treatment .
