Ruth Sabina Heathcock BEM (née Rayney) (11 January 1901 – 7 May 1995) was an award-winning remote area nurse in the Northern Territory of Australia who specialised in the treatment of leprosy.
[1] Heathcock was born in Murray Bridge in South Australia in 1901, one of seven children of railway engineer Frederick John Rayney and his wife Emily Melissa (née Soar).
[1] In 1930 Heathcock sailed from Adelaide to Darwin on the Malabar to join Dr John Flynn's Australian Inland Mission.
She commenced working at the tin mining settlement Maranboy where she met and married English soldier and Mounted Constable Ted Heathcock on 5 November 1931 at the Mataranka Hotel.
She lobbied to treat people on their land, despite policy at the time that required lepers to be moved to an isolated facility on Channel Island in Darwin Harbour.
[6] During World War II, Heathcock and her husband were evacuated, Ted to Alice Springs where he died in 1943, while Ruth took a group of lepers to South Australia.