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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

Endell Street Military Hospital


ericwebb

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I learn [on impeccable authority] that a commemorative wall plaque is to be unveiled on the site of the old Endell Street Military Hospital tomorrow, Friday 7th November, at 11.45am.

However my informant points out that the ceremony itself is chiefly for those with family connections with those who worked there. This is a narrow thoroughfare and the police have concerns over crowd and traffic control. Hence, if interested, please visit later. [Endell Street is just behind Covent Garden.]

Regular contributors to the forum will not need telling that this was the only official British military hospital in the Great War run solely by women.

For an excellent short history of the hospital see: Endell Street Military Hospital

Cheers all,

Eric Webb

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Eric

It was and I was lucky enough to be invited as Director, AMS Museum. It was unvieled by the senior female doctor in the Army, Colonel Hillary Hodgson and there was quite a crowd present.

The plaque was draped in the flag of the Sufferage Movement and some of the females present were sporting ribbons in the same colours.

Afterwards there was a small exhibition of photographs of the hospital put together by Jennien Geddes.

Pete Starling

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As Eric said, we had to limit invitations to the ceremony because the Endell Street pavement isn't very wide, and the road is busy - in the event about 70 people were there, including several whose mothers, grandmothers or great-aunts had worked at the hospital. However, the plaque is now up for everyone to see.

Jennian

post-15932-1226211450.jpg

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PS I should have explained that 'Deeds Not Words' is the motto of Mrs Pankhurst's organisation, to which Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson both belonged.

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No photos of nurses, though I have scanned the picture of the entire staff of the hospital in August 1916, which presumably includes Miss Pearson. The trouble is that there are around 200 people in the photo, which is just like a school photo, and it isn't easy to identify individuals. Also, because it's a long photograph I had to scan it in two halves and try and paste it together.

The original is the frontispiece to Flora Murray's book, 'Women as Army Surgeons', published in 1920, if you want to try yourself. If not, send me an email I can give you my jpeg of it.

Jennian

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Thanks, Jennian. I have Flora Murray's book and had always assumed that Pearson was in the photo. But which one ?

These things are sent to try us.

I have Pearson's medals. For those interested, the 1914 Star is named E. Pearson W. HOSP: CORPS

NGG

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  • 2 years later...

I don't know if everyone has gone to sleep since the last posting here?

Lucky old Pete to get invited! Do you need an assistant at Keogh???

My question is about patients at Endell Street - about 24,000 soldiers, they say.

It turns out that a woman i'm researching, Emily Moore, who joined the WRAF as a housemaid in 1918 died in Endell Street hospital 18/19 November 1918. While i'm waiting for her death certificate, does anyone know if the patients included many women? Or maybe (perhaps unlikely?) she was posted there?

Thanks if you can help, thanks if you can't. Paul.

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I think "Deeds and Words" is yours, Jennian? Brilliant, thanks. BTW i just read that out of over 26,000 patients treated at Endell Street, 24,000 were men. Suppose the 2000+ women were any military(?) service women within easy reach of Holborn?

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This is what Flora Murray says about the female patients:

"In August 1917 sixty beds were set aside for women, and were available for QMAAC and other women's units until January 1919. Ladies who had been working abroad with the YMCA or canteens found hospitality at Endell Street, and the wives of officers and NCO's, with children and little babies and their governesses and their nurses, returning from the East, spent a few days there. In all, two thousand women passed throught those wards." So a motley crew.

Jennian

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Ah, thanks for that, Jennian. Dad says he read somewhere that the top floor was reserved for women. Maybe i'll get a source for that some time.

Paul

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More info: looks as though your father was right. "The women's wards, at the top of the East Block, were the best in the hospital, and as the women were less destructive than men, it was easy to make them homelike and comfortable. The arrangement to take women was initiated as a temporary measure, but it continued for more than two years. The work was both surgical and medical. The recruiting for the women's units had not always been prudent, and many women were sent home unfit, as the result of illnesses or operations occurring before enlistment.."etc

Jennian

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I shall walk round the corner and take a look next time I go to the Poetry Café in Betterton Street.

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How lovely it would be to have a nominal roll of the medical & nursing staff at Endell Street:

"The New Hospital for Women lent their matron to Endell Street, and she and Murray and Anderson between them conducted around a thousand interviews in early 1915, searching for suitable non-medical staff." [Grace Hale, ‘The women's hospital corps’, St Bartholomew's Hospital League News, Mar. 1917, pp. 755–8, 757].

"Murray was Doctor in Charge; Anderson was Chief Surgeon. They had with them around 15 doctors, including visiting specialists, 36 nurses..." [imperial War Museum (hereafter IWM), Women's Work Collection (hereafter WWC), MUN 18.6, Ministry of Munitions Committee for the Organisation of Women's Services, 8.12.16, Evidence of Dr Flora Murray, p. 43].

Super, too, to have the same for Women's Hospital Corps in France?

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This for starters: the list I've compiled for non-medical staff of the WHC, from a variety of sources. Those with asterisks served with the WHC in France. I've put in the schools, where I knew them, because girls' public schools are a great source of info. There was also a large group of American orderlies, known as the 'Hazard Unit' because they were brought over by Mrs Hazard of Syracuse, in 1918. I have a few names but can't find them at the moment. They weren't a success - complained at the conditions, shirked work and were often at odds with the other orderlies.

Matron at Endell Street

Miss Hale

Sisters:

Beatrice Whitehouse - Leamington High School; Newnham College

*Miss Breen

*Miss Pearson

*Mrs Lawrence

*Miss Clemow

*Miss Belton

Sister May

Sister Beales

Sister Moore

Quartermaster

*Olga Campbell - St George’s, Edinburgh

Transport Officer

*Mardie Hodgson

Orderlies:

*Isabel Lowe

Miss Anderson

Miss Nicholson

Miss Paul

Miss Chance

Miss Tanner

Eva Graham Prior

Joan Mary Palmer

Mary Graham

Nina Last

Barbara Last

Sylvia Campbell - St Leonard’s School

Hilda Milne - St Leonard’s School

M Rettie - St Leonard’s School

Jean Grant - St Leonard’s School

Gladys Greenless - St Leonard’s School

Janet Greenlees - St Leonard’s School

M Lowenfield - Cheltenham Ladies’ College

Gladys E Morrison - Cheltenham Ladies’ College

Geraldine Massy - Roedean School

Olive Peirs - Roedean School

Barbara Johnson - Roedean School

Kathie Bell - Roedean School

Sybil Nicholson - Roedean School

Dalzie James - Roedean School

Kathleen Bell - Roedean School

Dorothy Low - Roedean School

Norah Craggs - Roedean School

Maisie Duncan - Roedean School

Marjorie Wheatley - Roedean School

Olwen Craggs - Roedean School

Phyllis White - Roedean School

Alice Pirie-Gordon - Roedean School

Lorna Lewis - Roedean School

Phyllis Thompson - Roedean School

M Harnett - Wycombe Abbey School

Nancy Cook – Syracuse University

Marion Dickerman - Syracuse University

Records and administration:

*Miss Jarvis

*Esther Hatten

Emma Hepburn - Roedean School

Marian Illingworth - Roedean School

M Ashley Cooper - Wycombe Abbey School

Macintosh - Wycombe Abbey School

A Paing Macintosh - Wycombe Abbey School

Joyce Ward

Pathology assistant

Helen Wilks

Xray

D Robinson - Cheltenham Ladies’ College

Library

SF Fergusson - Cheltenham Ladies’ College

Evelyn Glover - Cheltenham Ladies’ College

* = also served with the WHC in France

I also have a list of about 37 doctors, which I can give anyone who is interested.

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should have asked - can anyone add to the list? There were many more.

Additional names from the Royal Red Cross Register (TNA 145/1 and /2) are:

Florence Gertrude Hughes, Staff Nurse, Acting Sister

Elizabeth Lawton, Sister

And to add some forenames for a few of the others:

Gertrude Hale

Evelyn Maud Clemow

Rose Amelia Beales

Ethel May

Louise Mackenzie Lawrence

Sue

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Thanks, Sue. I found surnames of other nurses/orderlies - Nicholson, Finch, Read, Gilmore, Chandley, McCall, Shingles, Morgan, Dawes, Hancock - in a scrapbook at the IWM, but didn't think it would be possible to work out who they were. However, in this forum someone may know.

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  • 1 month later...

I also have a list of about 37 doctors, which I can give anyone who is interested.

I would love to have that list, please, Jenny. Emily Moore's certifying doctor was H M Arnell, MB.

Paul

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