Great Military Hospitals 1902

Regular inspections of military hospitals had always been carried out, but at the time of the formation of Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service in 1902, both the Surgeon-General and the Matron-in-Chief QAIMNS made visits to all large military hospitals to check how the new nursing scheme was working, and to report on any improvements that needed to be made. An increased number of nursing sisters meant that they could be deployed in more hospitals, and take a larger part in the administration of the hospital and in the training of orderlies of the Royal Army Nursing Corps, which was not a universally popular 'improvement'. These reports, all from 1902-3, survive at The National Archives, and I've recently added those for the Royal Victoria Hospital, Netley, and The Herbert Hospital, Woolwich, and the Cambridge Hospital Aldershot to the Scarletfinders website, and they can be found via these links:

Royal Victoria Hospital Netley

The Herbert Hospital Woolwich

Cambridge Hospital Aldershot


I've already transcribed many of these hospital reports, which total almost one hundred, but the majority are for smaller barrack hospitals which never employed female nursing staff. Some of these small military 'hospitals' were truly awful, but a prize for one of the worst must go to Burnley:

This hospital had been closed about a week before our visit. It was in a most deplorable condition of filth and neglect, and was quite unfit for habitation. The non-commissioned officer in charge was, at the time of our visit, under arrest, and the equipment was removed. If this hospital is ever to be reopened, much will require to be done to make it suitable for sick soldiers. In fact the whole barracks presented a picture of the most abject squalor, and the sight of them must have a strongly deterrent effect upon any man in Burnley who might think of enlisting. They were really disgraceful.

There have been a lot of complaints recently about the treatment of soldiers in hospital today, but thank goodness things have got a bit better in the last hundred years!

Nurses and War - some books

I have a booklist on my main Scarletfinders website, but the intricacies of the web somehow result in this blog getting far more search engine hits than my main website. So for anyone searching for some reading material I've repeated some of my favourites from that list here, with additional comments on some of the books.

Military Nursing

Angels and Citizens - British Women as Military Nurses 1854-1914; Anne Summers; Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1988. One of the foundation pieces of writing about military nurses, and essential to the understanding of all that came after

One Hundred Years of Army Nursing; Ian Hay [Sir John Hay Beith] Cassell and Co., 1953. A broad history of the service, the 'hundred years' covering 1853-1953, which is a different hundred to the next book:

Sub Cruce Candida - A Celebration of One Hundred Years of Army Nursing 1902-2002; QARANC Association 2002. This more modern history is based on a photographic archive, showing nurses of QAIMNS, QARANC and the Territorial Army throughout the world, though with particular emphasis on two world wars. It was never published in great numbers and difficult to get hold of now.

Working for Victory? - Images of Women of the First World War 1914-1918; Diana Condell and Jean Liddiard; Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987. A wonderful collection of captioned images, many from the Imperial War Museum photographic archive, which show women at work during the Great War, civilians, nurses, munition workers, women's army - a bit of everything and excellent for uniform identification.

The Roses of No Man's Land; Lyn Macdonald; Michael Joseph Ltd., 1980. Over many years this book had become the most frequently read [and quoted] account of nursing during the Great War, although perhaps because of the track record of the author and the absence of competitors. My own feeling is that it says much about the Great War, and little about the actual lives and working conditions of the nurses, relying heavily on a few primary sources and concentrating on the untrained VAD rather than the professional nurse. Definitely a book written by a non-nurse for non-nurses to read!

Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps; Juliet Piggott; Famous Regiments Series, Leo Cooper Ltd, 1975. This book covers army nursing from 1642 to 1973 in 103 pages, so a very brief flip-through, but very useful if that's what you're looking for!

More to come.

Dancing

There was a good deal of dissatisfaction during the Great War, particularly by Canadian and American nurses working in France, that dancing was forbidden to members of the nursing services, either in their own, or in Officers' Messes. There seemed to be little lack of understanding as to why this rule was in place, and what its advantages were, but it was frequently held up as an example of the petty bureaucratic practices which were seen to be in place only to restrict nurses' enjoyment while on active service overseas. Maud McCarthy, Matron-in-Chief with the British Expeditionary Force in France, often pointed out that this was not her rule, but had been in force for many years after discussions between the War Office and the Nursing Board. She firmly believed that nurses should not lose sight of their purpose in France - that of caring for the wounded - and it would not help the morale of the soldiers to hear talk of dances and gaiety while they lay wounded and in pain.
So to put the record straight, I've found the source of the rule, and the action that followed. It started with a question in the House of Commons, put by Mr Athelstan Rendall, MP for Thornbury, Gloucestershire, to Richard Haldane on November 1st, 1906:

Mr. Rendall: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he will explain why nurses at Netley Hospital, and in the Army's service generally, are not permitted when off duty, except when on furlough, to take part in public or private dances, seeing that the prohibition does not apply to medical men in the same hospitals; whether a highly trained professional class, such as nurses, are to be placed in a different position on the ground of sex to officers in the Army, who, provided they are on duty at the appointed time have no restrictions placed on their use of time when off duty; and whether he will at once free the nurses from this interference with their liberty.

Mr. Haldane: I have consulted the Nursing Board which contains among its members many ladies of great experience in these matters, and they have advised to the following effect: 'The Nursing Board requires for Her Majesty's Nursing Service gentlewomen who are devoted first and foremost to their work for its own sake and the sake of their patients, and who will, therefore, desire to live quietly and unostentatiously without looking for much gaiety. Occasional attendance at operas, theatres, concerts, and other places of amusement is not incompatible with the due performance of their duties, and is allowed at discretion of the matron; but the late hours involved by attendance at balls and dances, in the opinion of the Board, incapacitates them from giving proper attention to their patients on the following day.

At a meeting a few days later, the Nursing Board discussed the rule and Sydney Holland moved that the Board should adhere to it, saying:

The main reason for the decision was that the late hours involved by attendance at balls and dances incapacitate Nurses for the due performance of their duties on the following day. If further reason is required it may be stated that the Nursing Board requires for Her Majesty's Nursing Service gentlewomen who are devoted first and foremost to their work for its owon sake and the sake of their patients, and who are content to live quietly and unostentatiously without craving for gaiety and excitement.

'It was therefore proposed by Mr Holland, seconded by Lady Roberts, that the Board adhere to the opinion expressed in the above quoted minute. Miss Stewart moved as an amendment that nurses in Military Hospitals should, in special cases, be permitted to attend dances under the strict supervision of the Matron, and provided that they return to their quarters by 12 o'clock midnight. The amendment was not seconded, but was put to the vote and rejected. Mr. Holland's proposal was then put to the vote and carried as a resolution of the Board.'

In All Those Lines

Some months ago I was sent a copy of this book to read. It is based on the diaries of Elsie Tranter, a member of the Australian Army Nursing Service, who worked in a variety of hospitals in France during the Great War. The original of the diary is held at the State Library of Victoria, and it's been dusted off, edited and published by Jennifer Gillings and Julieanne Richards. And what a worthwhile job they've made of it.
Unlike some similar memoirs, it's not simply a catalogue of wounded, dead and dying; of hardship and despair. Elsie Tranter makes her wartime journey very much more interesting than that, giving accounts of the places she visits on her travels, and a great deal of information about her life in general and her leisure time, well-balanced with stories of the soldiers she cares for and her life as a professional woman in wartime. There are many tiny incidents included which give insights into a nurse's life in France not normally found elsewhere, and which make this a unique account of that time. It also demonstrates that nurses with an adventurous spirit could find all sorts of ways to bypass certain rules, regulations and restrictions which were rife in France. She spends a good deal of time catching midnight trains and hitching lifts on lorries to visit places she should not really have been in. It's definitely the story of an Australian!

'In All Those Lines - the diary of Sister Elsie Tranter 1916-1919'
Edited by J. M. Gillings and J. Richards and published by the editors, 2008: ISBN:9780646495590

Honours and Mentions

Several times recently people have contacted me to say that I've failed to include their relative in a list of awards of the Royal Red Cross that I have on the Scarletfinders web site. Initially I found this a bit puzzling as I don't have any details of RRCs on there, but eventually the penny dropped. I recently put up a couple of pages on awards of the Military Medal to members of QAIMNS and the Territorial Force Nursing Service, and that seems to have caused some confusion in people's minds between the two. I wrote a fair bit about Military Medals here in October last year, but just to clarify the vast differences in the numbers of awards I've been checking some of the figures.

During the course of the Great War, there were only 135 Military Medals awarded to women - all nationalities, all theatres of war. Of these, 87 were to nurses working with either QAIMNS or the TFNS in France and Flanders. As for the Royal Red Cross (1st Class) and Associate Royal Red Cross (2nd Class) there were simply thousands in total, not only to nursing staff, but to any woman who had done good work in any capacity concerned with the care of the British soldier. The number awarded to nurses working in France and Flanders under the auspices of the War Office alone was 264 for the RRC and 919 for the ARRC, with another 1755 mentioned in dispatches. When you start adding those women working in the UK and other areas of war, the list starts to look endless. So sheer numbers have excluded the inclusion of a list of RRC awardees on the website, although I do have a complete digital copy of the relevant volumes of the RRC Register, and should be able to find any individual entry if needed. Perhaps at some time in the future I will settle down and organise an online index of the RRC Registers, but I really hope that The National Archives do it first!

Our Hospital ABC

T are the Tents whos inmates maintain,
They are fine healthy places in spite of the rain

Several years ago I bought a copy of a book called 'Our Hospital ABC'. Published in 1916, it's a variation on a child's alphabet book, but based on a VAD's life in a military hospital. All the illustrations are by Joyce Dennys with verses by Hampden Gordon and M. C. Tindall. Joyce Dennys died in 1991, and since then there has been a great surge of interest in her work, and I thought it might be of interest to include a couple of the pages from this small book which is becoming increasingly rare. Some difficulty with scanning has resulted in the image colours not being quite true, and the uniforms are more blue in the original, but they are still a delightful look back at life as it was then.

N are the Nurses, the right sort of wenches,
To look after the lads who are back from the trenches

Difficulties with Recruitment 1903

When QAIMNS was formed in 1902, many of the staff and conditions of service were carried over from the old Army Nursing Service. At the same time, it was planned that the new Service would be an elite, forward-thinking one which would be the envy of civil hospitals and aspired to by many nurses. However, when the Nursing Board met in September 1903, it was to discuss the failure of their recruitment process to supply adequate numbers of nurses of the right calibre. The following abridged notes are taken from the minutes of that meeting, and set out some of the perceived reasons for the problems [The National Archives, WO243/20].

'The Nursing Board are face to face with the position that they cannot get nurses to join the Q.A.I.M.N.S... The terms of the service have been circulated amongst the civil hospitals, and there is but one opinion, that the terms offered are inadequate.
The Nursing Board must either be empowered to offer better terms, or the military service must be the dustheap into which is shot those nurses from civil hospitals whom the civil matrons do not want to keep, or female nursing of soldiers must be abandoned.
The Nursing Board want to attract into military nursing, firstly, the really good nurse, women who would assuredly succeed in civil nursing, and not the failures, who are many in number; secondly, women of good social position - very important.'

'When a young woman of 28 has finished her training at a civil hospital she looks round and decides what her future is to be, whether she will stay in hospital work, or, whether she will take up private nursing. In the former case, if at all good, she is quite certain of getting almost at once to be a sister, and from that position to gain, as she feels sure she will, a salary of £60 to £100... She then sees before her a matronship, perhaps first of a cottage hospital, with six to ten beds, and then of a larger hospitals, with a salary of £150, £300 and even £400...
If she stays in her civil hospital promotion is rapid. Few people realize how rapid...
But in the military service the promotion will be, and always has been, very slow. In civil work there are many openings for obtaining a better position and salary, in military nursing very few. Another reason why promotion must be slow in military nursing is that once having been in it for any length of time a nurse, never mind what her position, is absolutely debarred from any nursing appointment outside the Service. No matron of a civil hospital would take into her hospital a nurse who has been in a military hospital - a nurse who has had no experience in the nursing of women and children or of old people. It is a specialized service. So equally no committee would ever appoint as matron of a civil hospital a nurse from a military hospital; she would not have been in close touch with all the modern improvements which every year take place in the big civil hospitals. Thus all outlets are closed to women in the military service ... and the result is that "once in, always in" must be the state of affairs for any woman taking up military nursing. To sum up, if a nurse stays in military nursing she unquestionably loses her nursing pecuniary value. Her capital, so to speak, is depreciated.'

The Nursing Board solution to these problems was to offer a new, increased salary and pension scale which still did not look particularly attractive alongside the civil hospital scales that they had just set out. I find it interesting to reflect on the "once in, always in" comment, and the depressing view that on leaving the service, these well-trained and educated women would be found useless in civil nursing. Neither have the Board extolled the virtues of the Service, particularly the opportunities of overseas travel, and a certain security in their everyday life. I'm sure that many 'leavers' went on to have productive and rewarding careers after leaving military nursing, but these notes do provide an interesting angle on QAIMNS and its perceived 'elite' status.