woman

[Guest]

Hi,

I'm doing some research about the nurse Mary Jane Robertson. She served as a sister (Vad?) in the Lady Margaret Hospital in Bromley in 1915-1916. My (wounded) great granduncle, frontsoldier in Ypres, Belgian soldier, was at the hospital in 1915. I'm looking for more info about the hospital and about the nurse. Thank you for helping. Grtz. Mary

[Sue Light]

Hi,

I'm doing some research about the nurse Mary Jane Robertson. She served as a sister (Vad?) in the Lady Margaret Hospital in Bromley in 1915-1916. My (wounded) great granduncle, frontsoldier in Ypres, Belgian soldier, was at the hospital in 1915. I'm looking for more info about the hospital and about the nurse. Thank you for helping. Grtz. Mary

There's some general historical information about the hospital here:

Lost London Hospitals - Lady Margaret, Bromley

The British Red Cross Archives have all service details of a fair number of VADs and trained nurses who served, although many of the nurses working in auxiliary hospitals of this type were civilians, and therefore no surviving records. The BRCS need a written enquiry to do a search.

British Red Cross Archives

Sue

[Guest]

Thank you, Sue. I found out some things about the lady margaret, but I can't find the register with the names of the nurses in it. Lady Margaret was a very special (fruitarian!) hospital, owned by Josiah Oldfield who was a personal friend of Ghandi. During WWI in the hospital remained some Indian soldiers and (but not much) Belgians. One of them was my great granduncle..

I would like to know if miss Robertson was a matron, a sister, a nurse, what her skills were. My family heard from my great granduncle that she might have been someone rather important. But I can't find her name anywhere. Maybe i'd better go to Imperial War Museum?

grtz

Mary

There's some general historical information about the hospital here:

Lost London Hospitals - Lady Margaret, Bromley

The British Red Cross Archives have all service details of a fair number of VADs and trained nurses who served, although many of the nurses working in auxiliary hospitals of this type were civilians, and therefore no surviving records. The BRCS need a written enquiry to do a search.

British Red Cross Archives

Sue

[Sue Light]

Mary

Very few records of any sort survive for most of the auxiliary hospitals. The few that do are likely to be in local libraries or archives, but the chances of finding any registers of either staff or patients for the war years are virtually nil. A building that was a civil hospital pre-war, and continued to act as a civil hospital post-war may still have wartime records of any soldiers nursed there held in local archives. Almost all auxiliary hospitals were private concerns working under the British Red Cross Society/St. John of Jerusalem, and there was no requirement to lodge any records after the war - they were the property of the owner/commandant, and more often than not were either taken home or destroyed. Also where patient records are held locally, most are still subject to a 100 year closure at the discretion of the archivist. It's not impossible that some exist, but doubtful. Bromley Archives, or the London Metropolitan Archives would be the most likely places to ask.

With regard to Mary Robertson - it's quite a common name, so not easy to trace someone of that name without knowing more about her in the first place. There are several Mary Robertsons who worked as trained nurses with Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service or the Territorial Force Nursing Service who have files at The National Archives - the Catalogue can be viewed online, but the files are only available by visiting TNA - I'm not sure how one might tie her in with earlier service at Lady Margaret Hospital. The IWM would only have records if she had private papers lodged there - they hold no personal service records. There could possibly be a mention of the hospital or of Mary Robertson in their Women's Work online database, but I feel there's only a slim chance. On the hospital page I linked to before, there are several links at the bottom of the page relating to information about the hospital. It would be worth looking carefully through them all, especially the one for A2A (Access to Archives) which is a national database of archived material.

Sue